Retail IT | Year 3 | Issue 09
ISSN 2217-6012
Exclusive interview:
NRF 2013:
Infobip: Learn how to keep your consumers engaged
Let’s talk about POS e-commerce
Mr. Bill Martin, Founder and Executive Vice President of ShopperTrack
Which technology and innovation will lead the future of the retail?
Contents In this issue... News
Page 5
News from the Asia, Middle East, Europe, Africa, Australia, and North/South America.
Seize the mobile opportunity
Page 24
Mobile marketing and mobile payments continue to strengthen brand loyalty and increase sales at a time when retailers struggle to cut through the noise and build deeper relationships with an increasingly fickle ad price-sensitive shopper.
Social-web
Page 27 The retail industry has been influenced by the social web as much as any other sector of the economy. This extended interactivity means that the retail industry can no longer ignore its customers and needs to start engaging with people who are discussing brands, products and services.
NRF 2013
Page 31 Retail IT magazine visited New York and attended the NRF. Find out which technology and innovation will lead the future of the retail
Exclusive interview: Mr. Bill Martin, Founder and Executive Vice President of ShopperTrack
Page 36
Food for Thought
Page 39
What are the main problems in the retail business and how can they be solved?
Page 42
During the world’s largest retail IT fair, the NRF in New York, we met Bill and discussed technologies and trends.
How to use advances in video surveillance to improve your food retail business
The most common problem in retail business is long waiting in lines for the products that are measured on scales. Check for solutions!
Location Matters in Today’s Retail Landscape Page 45 How to better match merchandise to local communities, optimise store floor space, staff and products and improve your day-to-day operations so you profit today and secure tomorrow’s growth. IT in the fitting room Page 49 It would be ideal to have a solution which supports the customer during their time in the fitting room. Such a solution could make a significant impact on customer service and in doing so directly increase profits. Is now the time for web POS?
Page 51 One simple but very powerful idea has generated a printer solution for which you no longer need a driver. The idea comes from the worldwide leader in printing solutions, Epson, which was first time presented on this year NRF show.
The Art of Allocation - Right Stock, Right Place, Right Time
Page 55
Let’s find out how do retailers ensure that high-fashion products with short lifecycles are placed in the right channels, in the right quantity and replenished carefully to minimise end-of-season markdowns.
Gearing up for Growth Page 57 Harry Manley, Managing Director at multichannel retail specialist Omnica, says retailers need intelligent order management systems if they are to keep day-to-day issues under control and drive down costly manual intervention. POS e-commerce Page 60 Most retailers have seized the opportunity the Internet has to offer and have created e-commerce websites to sell goods and services and this is a key growth element in most retail businesses.
Editorial:
Managing Editor: Darko Pavić
Publisher
Retail Media Stražilovska 31/3 21000 Novi Sad, Serbia
Managing Director Dipl. Ing. Darko Pavić Advertising Director Ivana Slemenšek Design and Production Ivan Moritz Photographer
Srđan Srđanov
Web Site:
www.retail-it.info
Year of publication Frenquency
No. 9 – Year 2013. 4 times per annum
RETAIL IT
Get ready for modern retailing Dear readers, Welcome to the first issue of Retail IT magazine in 2013. We started this year with some major changes in our strategy. Retail IT magazine is now totally free for everybody and can be read online on any device. We see this change as a major milestone in our development, and our readers think so too : traffic to our site has increased to more than 300 unique visitors per day. But you can see our statistics for yourselves – we are pursuing a strategy of openness and transparency in this area and you can view our web stats at http://www.retail-it.info/webstat. This year had a great start, and not just for us – it started in the best possible way for the whole retail IT world. After all, there is no better event with which to begin the year than NRF. Retail IT was there and we had the chance to see, touch and talk about the future. This issue brings some great topics directly from NRF, like payments, online POS and management of fitting rooms. Continuing the series of great events, we are very excited about the Retail IT summit in Serbia. This unique event in the Adriatic region will bring together the most interesting companies, leading innovators and top retailers. At the summit, on April 18th in Belgrade, the major topics will be payment technologies and payment solutions. The whole-day session will once again be a platform where the industry comes together. Don’t miss it – join us and let’s touch the future together.
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Asia NEWS Global brands to ride the consumer wave in Indonesia Indonesia remains a major destination for global retail players as its middle class continues to expand and consumption grows unabated. Companies such as Uniqlo, Zara and Massimo Dutti are reshaping Indonesia’s retail landscape. The presence of these global brands is evidence of the maturity of the Indonesian consumer and the strong buying power in the country. Given the size and financial strength of these global retailers, their presence in the domestic market will also help support the property sector, especially commercial and retail projects. Over the past few years, Jakarta and other cities have seen the emergence of worldclass, modern shopping centres which attract middle income consumers
Tesco, Carrefour, Sainsbury’s file applications for Indian entry
UK-based supermarket chains Tesco, Carrefour and Sainsbury’s have submitted applications seeking entry into the Indian market through the foreign direct investment (FDI) route. During a conference in Mumbai, Commerce and Industry Minister Anand
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Sharma stated that the Indian authorities had received investment applications from each of the three retail companies. The retailers made their approaches during the UK Prime Minister David Cameron’s visit to the country. Sharma added that the investment board would fast-track the proposals when they came up for consideration.
Godrej Industries to increase Nature Basket store count to 40 outlets by 2016
GfK introduces shopper mobility insights service for retailers
Leveraging the exponential growth of smart devices, research firm GfK has launched Location Insights, a new service that aggregates data from mobile networks and devices to enable retailers to better understand the movements and demographics of crowds. GfK’s latest report showed that the sales volume of tablets doubled across the region in 2012, especially in the six key markets tracked by GfK— Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines. Demand for smartphones also continued to grow, surging by 50 percent in volume over 2011. Stanley Kee, Managing Director of GfK in Southeast Asia, today’s retailers face unprecedented competition to serve customer needs in more dynamic ways. “By focusing on traffic patterns, and not people, our solution provides retailers with unprecedented insights based on crowd movement statistics,” he said.
Diversified Indian conglomerate Godrej has outlined its plans to increase the store count of its Nature’s Basketbanded gourmet outlets over the next three years. The store count is expected to be expanded to 40 with new outlets opening in several tier I cities in the country. Godrej Industries chief strategy officer Vivek Gambhir told the Economic Times that the plan is to consolidate and deepen the brand’s presence in existing cities. “Once we get to a certain amount of minimum scale in our existing footprint, then we will look to add more in Tier-II Tier-III cities, though not in the next three years,” added Gambhir.
Chevron to add 100 outlets in Philippines to expand retail presence Multinational energy firm Chevron plans to expand its retail network in the Philippines to further strengthen its brand presence worldwide. The chain plans to open around 100 new retail outlets in the country over the next five years. Chevron’s expansion plan is
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Asia NEWS expected to require an investment of PHP1bn ($24.5m). Chevron Philippines assistant manager for government and public affairs Katrina Ignacio said that the company is willing to increase the target number in future.
Lulu blazes a retail trail in Kerala
McDonald’s plans Russian expansion with 150 new outlets by 2016
Global fast food major McDonald’s is planning to expand its retail presence in Russia by driving deeper into the provincial areas of the country. The chain plans to unveil 150 new selfoperated restaurants in Russia over the next three years. McDonald’s Russia CEO Khamzat Khasbulatov explained that the chain was interested in expanding beyond the Ural Mountains, in the Western and Eastern Siberia as well as the western enclave of Kaliningrad. The chain currently operates 357 restaurants in over 85 Russian cities, with 46 outlets unveiled in 2012. “We will keep the pace of growth we have been showing so far,” said Khasbulatov. McDonald’s current outlets are all company-owned and operated, with the company now open to franchise agreements. The fast food chain signed its first franchise agreement with a Russian franchisee, Rosinter, in 2012, with the first restaurants expected in Moscow and St Petersburg by the end of 2013.
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The Abu Dhabi-based retail group Lulu is aiming to expand across India, after opening its first mall on the subcontinent. The group launched its 16 billion rupee (Dh1.08bn) shopping centre in Kochi, a port city on the Arabian Sea in the state of Kerala. The shopping centre has attracted a host of global brands, including Nike, Levi’s and McDonald’s, which all have stores in the development. The mall, which is one of India’s largest, covers 7 hectares and includes an ice rink, a multiplex cinema, food court, a Lulu hypermarket and a bowling alley.
Sun Art Retail to expand Chinese presence with 50 new stores by 2013 end China-based hypermarket chain, Sun Art Retail Group, plans to strengthen its presence in the country by unveiling 50 new stores by the end of 2013. The move comes on the back of the decision by several international retailers such as Carrefour and Wal-Mart to close some underperforming stores, while other retailers have slowed new store openings. Sun Art’s executive director Peter Huang said that a similar pace of
expansion could continue over the next few years. The retailer is a joint venture between Taiwanese conglomerate Ruentex Group and privately held French retailer Groupe Auchan, and posted a 50.6% rise in net profits for 2012.
Reliance Retail, Future Group to shut down office supplies, stationery chains in India
Several office supplies retailers in India have shut stores in the recent past, demonstrating the difficulties blighting the sector. Reliance Retail has initiated a process to wind up the operations of the four Office Depot stores in the country, while Staples is divesting its 49% stake in the cash-and-carry joint venture with Future Group. A third US stationery retailer, Office 1 Superstore International, had earlier shut down the India franchisee, despite plans in 2010 to unveil 200 outlets. Reliance Retail spokesperson said that the office supplies and stationery sales business model was not scalable. “Consumers won’t walk into high street stationery shops to buy a few pencils. It’s not worth our while,” the spokesperson lamented.
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The Middle East NEWS UAE’s Tejuri launches new online retail venture
A new online retail venture selling more than 150 international and local brands has been launched in the UAE. Tejuri. com, an e-shopping mall, has been endorsed by the Department of Economic Development (DED) and features DED accredited retailers across many retail sectors. These include Sharaf DG, Reebok, Marina Exotic Home Interiors, Jumbo, Eros, THEFACESHOP, Al Jaber Opticals, National Stores, Grand Optics, Springfield, Triumph, Sanrio, Al Motahajiba, and Al Thawb Al Watani.
New Al Ain mall set to Bulgari Assets Seized open in August
Wahat Hili Mall, a new shopping mall project in Al Ain, will be completed and opened to the public in August, officials have announced. Saeed Al Dhaheri, CEO of Wahat Hili Mall, said he expected 175,000 visitors per week to the shopping centre by the end of this year. Wahat Hili Mall’s biggest anchor, Géant Hypermarket, which will occupy more than 6,900 sq m, has begun fittingout work, and all tenants would take possession of their leased units by the end of May, he said in a statement. Al Dhaheri added: “Wahat Hili will be much more than a mall, in terms of shopping, dining, entertainment and convenience; rather, the shopping complex will be a catalyst for further economic growth in Al Ain.”
Lals Group to open 50 Daiso stores
Qatar said to be eyeing UK’s Marks & Spencer in $12bn deal
Lals Group, which owns the franchise of the Japanese retailer Daiso in the Gulf, expects to open another 50 stores in the GCC over the next three years. Jayant Ganwani, Vice Chairman and CEO of Lals Group, said that if everything went as planned 50 new stores would be opened in the Gulf region by the end of 2016. Jayant Ganwani, Vice Chairman and CEO of Lals Group, said that if everything went as planned 50 new stores would be opened in the Gulf region by the end of 2016.
Qatar’s sovereign wealth fund is eyeing UK retail chain Marks & Spencer in a GBP £8bn (US$12bn) deal, according to London’s The Sun newspaper. Qatar Investment Authority (QIA) purchased London luxury store Harrods for GBP£1.5bn in 2010 and already owns a string of other assets in the UK, including a 26 percent stake in supermarket Sainsbury’s. Marks & Spencer has about 1,000 locations worldwide, including in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, and employs about 80,000 people.
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Italy’s tax police have confiscated real estate properties, including a site in Rome’s Via dei Condotti, life insurance policies and corporate investments traceable to Bulgari executives for a total value of $60 million at current exchange, according to a release issued by the Guardia di Finanza, an Italian police force under the authority of the national minister of economy and finance. The investigations are focused on alleged fraudulent earnings declarations and evasion of tax payments of around $4 billion going back to 2006, through an alleged system of fictitious companies in the Netherlands and Ireland, set up in order to avoid paying taxes in Italy. In the statement, the tax police said it had unearthed nine pages of documents Bulgari executives named an “escape strategy,” to find alternatives to Italy’s high tax rate and, in particular, to legislation introduced in 2006, “referring to taxes to be paid on dividends coming from countries with a privileged fiscality.”
Beverly Hills cupcake firm opens first Gulf bakery Sprinkles Cupcakes, a Beverly Hillsbased bakery said to be popular with Hollywood stars, has opened its first Gulf outlet in Kuwait. The brand, which was founded in 2005 and has 11 bakeries across the US, has been brought to the region via a franchise agreement with
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The Middle East NEWS MH Alshaya Co. Sprinkles claims to have been the original cupcake bakery and the inspiration for many other similar chains. The company’s Kuwait outlet is located in Avenues Mall.
Eros Group opens 32nd retail store in UAE Eros Group recently opened its 32nd retail store in the UAE, making the group the most widespread retail network in the country. The new store is located in Dubai Mall, the largest shopping mall in the world. Eros announced that it was located on level two, in the electronics section. “It’s a pleasure to announce the opening of our 32nd store in the UAE – we have brought the brand closer to the consumers with a new store in the prestigious Dubai Mall,” said Deepak Babani, CEO, Eros, who added that the group is looking into diversifying into different sectors. Eros Group distributes Samsung AV and Mobiles, Hitachi’s entire consumer electronics range, TCL flat panels, Sonos, BenQ flat panels, Candy appliances and Lenox, among a large number of other brands.
Nakheel to expand Dragon Mart
Nakheel is expanding Dragon Mart with the aim of attracting a more international retail mix catering to the needs of the nearby International City community,
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Gulf News has reported. The developer aims to split in half the retail mix of the new mall expansion between international and Chinese brands, said Omar Khoury, director of Dragon Mart. “We are targeting 50% international and 50% Chinese,” he said. “There is a huge community with no international brands of food and beverages, they don’t have an offering of hypermarkets,” said Khoury. About 99% of the existing Dragon Mart is occupied by Chinese retailers.
Toshiba introduces its state-of-the-art 84 inch Ultra HD 4K Regza LED in Dubai
Toshiba, the world leader in innovative and high technology, upped the ante in the world of TV when it introduced its state-of-the-art 84 inch Ultra HD 4K Regza model in Dubai with a four times greater picture quality compared to full HD. The model, to be priced under $20,000, will be launched in the Middle East and Africa this summer. According to Toshiba officials the brand holds nearly 11% of market share in the TV segment in the region. However, with the introduction of this new model, it has the opportunity to increase this by 15%.
Esprit launches its latest concept store in Abu Dhabi
Esprit, the international fashion brand, launched its latest signature store in the capital city of the UAE, Abu Dhabi. The store is located in Marina Mall, the shopping getaway for the Emirate. The new store is dedicated to celebrating the creative and welcoming spirit of San Francisco – the birthplace of Esprit. The launch was well supported by shoppers, the media, fashion bloggers and Esprit employees who were seen appreciating Esprit’s new Spring summer 2013 collection and enjoying the true Californian lifestyle. The guests showcased their creativity and tried their hands at bag design, stamping them with designs inspired by nature.
Japanese retailer unveils new outlet in Dubai Daiso, a Japanese retail concept has unveiled its new outlet in the Dubai Mall, marking the opening of its 10th store in Dubai and 20th store in the UAE. The new unit also raises the total number of stores UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to 35. The new store is located on the Lower Ground level and is laid out over 7700 sq ft helping customers navigate easily and shop for quality Japanese household items.
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Europe NEWS Debenhams to open two new stores in the Baltics
Debenhams is to extend its foothold in the Baltic region by opening two stores in Latvia and Estonia. Based in Riga and Tallinn, the new shops are a further step towards one of the retailer’s key growth pillars - to expand the brand internationally. The Latvian store will open in March 2014 in Spice, one of the two biggest shopping centres in Riga. The shopping centre currently has more than 150 shops, services and catering facilities covering 77,000 sq m. The retailer will also open a store in Tallinn, Estonia in the autumn of 2014 which will sit over two floors of the new Panorama City shopping centre.
Moo.com opens first physical store Online business card printer Moo.com has chosen London’s Shoreditch as the location for its first physical store. Situated in the Boxpark development, the new store showcases the company’s range of designs, products and paperstocks as well as providing a click and collect service for products ordered online. Richard Moross, CEO and founder of Moo, explained: “Personal branding and beautiful design is so important to our customers that we
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wanted them to be able to actually touch and experience it – the Moo Shop is the perfect way for them to interact with our products and experience first-hand what they see online. Moo is constantly innovating and looking for new ways to excite our customers and this mix of online and offline is the perfect combination.”
Tesco to transfer 2,000 jobs in distribution restructure
Tesco is restructuring its distribution operations in the UK by closing three centres and moving work to two new sites in Reading and Dagenham with the transfer of 2,000 jobs. The three centres identified for closure include Harlow where 800 staff are employed, Weybridge which has 650 employees and Chesterfield with 400 staff. Although the Magor distribution centre in south Wales will remain open, 150 jobs will be cut at the site. Tesco is understood to be looking to streamline its distribution centre operations by moving work to the new sites in Reading and Dagenham. The supermarket said that all staff whose current jobs are being lost will be offered new employment at other sites within Tesco.
Domino’s Pizza to launch 18 outlets in Germany in 2013
UK-based master franchisee Domino’s Pizza Group plans to launch 18 new outlets in Germany through 2013 to boost its presence in the country. The company plans to double its store count in the market through this expansion. “This is an acceleration in the store opening programme compared to the 14 stores in the master franchise agreement,” stated the company. Commenting on its German expansion Domino’s Pizza Group chief executive officer Lance Batchelor remarked that it has seen an encouraging progress in the country citing 19.3% and 24.1% growth in like-for-like sales for its Berlin stores. “This market has good demographics for our business and we are seeing improving trading performances from these stores. “I look forward to reporting further progress in due course,” explained Batchelor.
Hotter outsources EPOS maintenance to support store expansion strategy As part of an intensive store expansion strategy, UK shoe retailer, Hotter has outsourced the installation, support and maintenance of their EPOS hardware to the Esteem Group. As well as supporting the EPOS systems
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Europe NEWS in their current 45 stores, managed service provider, Esteem will also supply, install and maintain EPOS equipment at 20 new store locations planned to open across the UK. Hotter, the UK’s biggest shoe maker, aims to create over 200 jobs with the new store roll out.
Lidl equips managers with iPads to improve store performance
German discounter Lidl is to equip its UK area managers with iPads featuring a specially designed in-house app after investing £500,000 as part of the Lidl Mobile Office initiative. The managers in the grocer’s sales division will be able to access sales information from the retailer’s head office system through the tablets in what the grocer claims is a UK grocery first. The retailer said that the move allows managers additional time to focus on individual store performance and development. It added that the move would cut paperwork, improve efficiency and aid communications between its sales, logistics and head office functions. The iPads will be rolled out in the UK from March 20 after being trialled in Germany.
WM Morrison plans to unveil 100 new stores British Supermarket chain WM Morrison is expected to unveil up to 100 new convenience stores in the UK as part of its expansion plans for the country. The
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retailer had earlier acquired several sites from defunct chains such as HMV and Blockbuster to fuel its own expansion. According to WM Morrison chief executive Dalton Philips, the lack of an online food business and a small convenience estate was to be blamed for the company’s recent underperformance. The chain is therefore also keen to launch its online platform later this year to reverse falling sales. Morrison is looking at various options – such as using stores, either in London or in the north of England, or dark stores to cater to online consumers.
Costcutter, Palmer & Harvey sign JV agreement to form convenience chain Costcutter Supermarkets Group and distribution giant Palmer & Harvey have inked a new JV agreement to create the UK’s second-largest convenience chain. As per the terms of the agreement, Costcutter will take over 800 Mace, Supershop and Your Store outlets as P&H quits its retailing business to focus on distribution. Further, both the firms will form a joint buying group, The Buyco, which will be equally-owned and have a buying power of £5bn.
UK retailers’ growth strategy boosts investment for instore Point of Sale advertising In the UK, 100% of retailers polled say that they need to adapt and broaden their market focus to drive growth, finds a survey by Epson. As a result, and despite
current economic pressures, over half of UK retailers are optimistic that their budgets for in-store point of sale (POS) advertising will increase substantially by 2020. The Epson 20|20 Vision Survey interviewed 500 retail brand and marketing managers across the five largest European economies – the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain – to evaluate the retail industry’s use of instore print and electronic POS signage today, and how it will change up to the year 2020. The survey reveals that the volume of print and electronic POS advertising is predicted to change considerably over the next few years as retailers seek to protect and expand their business by more accurately targeting customers by age, gender and product value.
Europe’s largest shopping mall to open in Leeds Trinity Leeds, the £378m scheme developed by FTSE 100 property company Land Securities, will attract an estimated 23m visitors a year, and feature a large range of major retail names including Primark, Topshop, Mango, Next and Urban Outfitters. The 1m sq ft centre is already 90pc let, with around 120 shops, restaurants, bars and coffee shops. It will bring 46 new names to the city and is expected to generate around £29.5m in annual rent for Land Securities. “Before then it wasn’t the right time to start a major scheme, it has been a difficult market,” says Richard Akers, an executive director. “But we saw an opportunity in Leeds, we knew there was strong demand.” Around 20pc of the development will be dedicated to leisure, which is a larger proportion compared with older centres.
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Africa NEWS Pick n Pay Heading for Keetmanshoop
day expenses, which means they are spending less on items such as furniture and defaulting more on repayments.” Retailers Truworths International and Edcon also warned of a weak consumer environment.
Clicks gains on retail market recovery
South African grocery retail giant, Pick n Pay, has completed the takeover of OK Grocer at Keetmanshoop. This was confirmed by Pick n Pay’s regional manager, Lourens Engelbrecht. Engelbrecht said the retailer planned to retain all workers, but added they would undergo a recruitment interview process. “All workers have an opportunity to work for Pick n Pay,” Engelbrecht said. The owner of OK Grocer, Jakobus Hendrik Oosthuisen, rejected accusations that he had cheated the workers, saying that severance payments had been calculated as stipulated by the Labour Law. “If we have made some calculation errors, they can come back so that we can rectify the error,” said Oosthuisen.
JD Group: Consumer spend to stay weak JD Group, a South African furniture retailer and financial services provider, said high unemployment and an oversupply of unsecured lending is causing consumers to spend less on durable goods. “With our target market under pressure, it’s been very difficult for furniture sales,” Chief Financial Officer Bennie van Rooy said. “Customers are protecting their day-to-
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Clicks climbed the most in almost seven months as food and drug retailers continued to recover from an early-year slump driven by slower consumer spending. The four-member FTSE/JSE Africa Food & Drug Retailers Index added 0.6 percent, after climbing 2.6 percent last week. “The retailers were smacked too hard and we’re seeing them coming back,” Ferdi Heyneke, a trader at Afrifocus Securities said. “Clicks didn’t rise in line with the likes of Shoprite and Spar last week and is catching up.” Shoprite rose 3.3 percent last week, while Spar climbed 4.1 percent. South African retailers suffered share price declines earlier this year after trading updates showed slower sales growth amid rising unemployment and lower consumer spending.
Big plans on way for Witchery, Mimco in South Africa Woolworths has big plans for the Witchery and Mimco brands in South Africa, according to group director of planning for clothing and general
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merchandise, Paula Disberry. “You’ll see us doing similar things that we’ve done with Country Road and Trenery. We are excited, in particular about Witchery in SA, as well as Australia. It’s becoming more fashion forward, targeting a younger customer, somebody who is looking for a slightly smarter, sexier, more glamorous look. We think that fits well in our portfolio because we don’t have any meaningful offer of that type of merchandise at this point and at those price points. “We think it will get particular traction with the Gauteng customer, and in particular the younger black customer,” said Ms Disberry.
Pick n Pay deputy CEO stays on
Retailer Pick n Pay Stores said that deputy CEO Richard van Rensburg will stay on a deputy CEO. He was appointed to the executive position of deputy CEO for a three year period‚ effective from October 1, 2011‚ so that the company could benefit from his experience in the implementation of strategy. In this function‚ the IT‚ supply chain and property functions reported directly to him. Following the resignation of Nick Badminton as CEO‚ he assisted acting CEO‚ Gareth Ackerman‚ in the day-to-day administration of the company whilst a search was conducted for the company’s new CEO.
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Africa NEWS New CEO for kalahari.com
South African online retailer, kalahari.com has appointed Caren Genthner-Kappesz as its new CEO. Genthner-Kappesz, who relocated to Cape Town from Berlin, brings with her a wealth of experience in online shopping and in the high-tech industry. Her credentials include nine years at eBay as general manager for shopping.com Germany and as a director and GM for eBay Express Germany. Genthner-Kappesz takes over from Gary Novitzkas. “My goal for kalahari.com is not only to stay the clear market leader in South Africa but also to continue to be a pioneer and thought leader in the industry.” says GenthnerKappesz, who has also worked as COO at brands4friends, an eBay subsidiary and market leader in Flash Sales in Germany.
Nakumatt opens 40th branch in Thika, Kenya Nakumatt Holdings says it has attained its midterm corporate expansion goal, with the opening of its 40th branch in Thika town. The opening of the Sh300 million Nakumatt Thika town supermarket
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comes barely a week to the close of the retailer’s financial calendar at the end of February 2013. As part of its regional expansion plans, Nakumatt Holdings has two years ago announced its midterm corporate expansion goal geared at opening 40 branches by the close of it’s 2012/13 Financial Year. With this commitment, Nakumatt Holdings has been actively undertaking a strategic regional expansion plan that has seen the retailer establish 33 branches in Kenya, one in Moshi, Tanzania, two in Kigali, Rwanda and four in Uganda.
Business startup bags big Woolies contract
Truworths leads the plunge
Truworths International Ltd. led a decline in South Africa’s consumer stocks, which fell the most in a month as spending contracted for the first time since 2009. Truworths, South Africa’s biggest clothing retailer by market value, declined 2.6 percent. South African retailers have suffered share price declines this year after trading updates showed slower sales growth amid rising unemployment and lower consumer spending.
SAP seeks to take advantage of Nigeria’s growth A steadfast commitment to exceptional quality, service and big dreams has allowed a startup company to turn their dreams into reality by manufacturing and supplying luxury paper bags for Country Road and Trenery - brands owned by Woolworths Holdings. Bagpac, based in Johannesburg, produces and supplies recyclable paper shopping bags for Trenery and Country Road stores, and is one of 40 small businesses that have experienced accelerated growth through the Woolworths enterprise development programme. When Woolworths placed its first order, Bagpac manager and owner Humeira Kazi manager could hardly have imagined that it would be followed shortly by an order of 400 000 bags to be delivered within 11 months.
Enterprise application software company SAP has ‘reaffirmed its commitment’ to develop the role that technology can play in West African nation Nigeria. Pfungwa Serima, SAP Africa chief executive officer, has said that through strategic partnerships both in the private and public sphere, technology could help develop the Nigerian economy. He added, “SAP provides the tools for businesses and government alike – large and small – to provide the investment community with the returns that they expect through technology solutions that can scale and be rapidly deployed.”
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Australia NEWS Australia retail sales jump, government spending surges Australia retail sales boasted the biggest increase in seven months in January while government spending far outpaced all expectations last quarter in a major boost for economic growth that argues against the need for a near term rate cut. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported government spending surged 4.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, mostly due to a jump in investment by the States. On the face of it, that alone could have added around one percentage point to economic growth in the quarter, implying figures on gross domestic product (GDP) due on Wednesday could be much stronger than first thought. “It looks like growth could have been one percent or more for the quarter,” said Michael Turner, a strategist at RBC Capital Markets. Analysts had been looking for growth of 0.6 percent or a little less.
Baskin-Robbins inks agreement to triple store count in Australia
Australia. The ice-cream chain, owned by Dunkin Brands International, as per the agreed terms is planning to unveil 200 new outlets in the country over the next ten years. The Baskin-Robbins brand currently operates 80 stores in Australia. Galadari Brothers, the parent company of Galadari Ice Cream (GICC), is a longtime Baskin-Robbins licensee in the Middle East. Baskin-Robinson offers a wide range of ice cream flavors and frozen treats such as sundaes, ice cream cakes and frozen beverages via its 7,000 outlet network in 50 countries.
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flagship to attract international brands such as Zara, Topshop, and Forever 21, who are all yet to open in Brisbane. Chris McCluskey, development director at ISPT, said “A number of popular retail brands have expressed interest in securing prime Queen St Mall space and this development at 155 Queen St will help meet that demand,”
Visa to outlaw hefty card fees
Woolies takes top spot Woolworths has been named the most valuable retail brand in Australia, beating its rival Coles, according to the latest Interbrand report. Global e-tailers including Amazon, Asos, Macy’s, Net-aPorter, and Wiggle were nominated as international retailers whose e-commerce and distribution strategies aimed at Asia Pacific consumers created challenges for local brands. “Right now, Australia is ripe for disruption. Global players are seeing the opportunity with the strong dollar, solid economy and Australian consumers losing patience and loyalty with local brands,” Andy Wright, GM and head of brand experience, Interbrand Sydney, said.
Queen St Mall makeover
Speciality ice-cream retailer BaskinRobbins has inked a new franchise joint venture agreement with Galadari Brothers (GB) to triple its store count in
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The Industry Superannuation Property Trust (ISPT) has proposed plans for a $70 million retail store in Brisbane’s Queen St Mall, in an attempt to lure global retailers to the state. ISPT, who has spent more than $500 million on the mall in the past two years, wants to create a three level
Hefty credit card surcharges could be on the way out after Visa became the first company to ban Australian retailers from slapping on the fees. Among the biggest culprits accused of using surcharges as a revenue source are taxi companies, who place a 10 per cent surcharge on customers who pay with their credit card. Airlines and large retailers with market power have also been accused by consumer group Choice of over-the-top fees. However, independent eftpos provider Tyro Payments says the major banks were also to blame, imposing unnecessary fees on struggling small retailers, who then pass the costs onto customers. “The truth is many small businesses are being forced to fund the lucrative loyalty programs of the major banks, by absorbing these costs,” Tyro spokesman Jost Stollmann said in a statement.
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America NEWS
Nordstrom to unveil 17 new outlets in 2013
US-based department store chain Nordstrom plans to unveil 17 new stores in the 2013 fiscal year as part of its expansion plans. Sixteen of the stores will be Nordstrom Rack-branded outlets while one of the stores will be a full-line outlet. The retailer also plans to re-locate three of its existing stores – two in the state of California and one in Hawaii.
Shutl sets up shop in North America Shutl, the same-hour, same-day e-commerce delivery specialist, has expanded into North America. The company’s service will go live in New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago, and will roll out to fifteen additional cities in the coming months. As a part of the US launch, Shutl has appointed Steven Chen as vice president and general manager of North America. Chen’s previous e-commerce roles include chief operating officer at social shopping site Kaboodle and vice president of business development for price comparison shopping engine Nextag. In his new role Chen will focus on spearheading the continued growth and momentum of Shutl out of its North American headquarters in San Francisco.
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Chesapeake Bank deploys iPad kiosks by Codigo
in several different areas. Dominique Boies, acting CEO, remains Rona’s EVP and CFO. He will assist Robert Sawyer and play an important role on the corporation’s management committee. “On behalf of the board, I would first like to thank Dominique for the excellent work he has accomplished since he took on the role of acting CEO,” said Robert Chevrier, executive chairman of the board of Rona.
Bi-Lo names SVP operations Kiosk and digital signage provider Codigo has announced it has supplied its iPad Kiosk solution to nine locations of the Virginia-based Chesapeake Bank. The deployment is a result of the bank’s recently launched financial management system myBank, myFinance, myMobile. The iPad kiosks enable bank customers to educate themselves on the new system and familiarise themselves with mobile banking. Each iPad is synchronised with a remote server that houses that device’s content, the announcement said, allowing content revisions to happen nearly instantaneously.
Canadian hardware retailer Rona names new CEO Canadian hardware retailer, Rona, has named Robert Sawyer president and CEO, effective from April 2013. Sawyer has more than 30 years of experience in a major Canadian food company and specialises in retail operations and distribution to dealers operating under different banners. Under his prior employer he held various executive positions and helped improve profitability
Anthea Jones has assumed the role of president at Bi-Lo. He will continue to serve as SVP operations. Jones comes to the position from the Bi-Lo side of the recent merger between regional supermarkets Bi-Lo and Winn-Dixie. He signed on with Bi-Lo in 1999 after 17 years at Food Lion. He also is the immediate past board chairman for the Global Market Development Center. Jones succeeds Michael Byars in the position. Randall Onstead continues as president and CEO of the combined company, Bi-Lo Holdings.
Delhaize banners earn Energy Star award Delhaize’s Food Lion, Harveys and Reid’s chains have earned their 12th consecutive Energy Star award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
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America NEWS “We are honored to receive this Energy Partner of the Year Sustained Excellence award for the twelfth year and are committed to increasing energy efficiency in our stores,” Susan Sollenberger, director of energy, maintenance and equipment purchasing at Delhaize America South. “Food Lion, Harveys and Reid’s remain dedicated to environmental stewardship and are proud to continue to lead the way with energy conservation initiatives.”
Costco reportedly to expand HQ
“We have 269 stores in U.S., but with more than 314 million people in the country, we haven’t exposed everyone to H&M yet.” Watch out, Americans. The wear-them-once basics are coming for each and every one of you. “This is just the beginning,” Kulle said , revealing 10 new locations, including the Roosevelt Collection in Chicago; Union Station and The Shops at Georgetown Park in Washington; the French Quarter in New Orleans; City Place in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Waikiki Business Plaza in Honolulu, one of the brand’s biggest new markets to date.
Supervalu Closes Sale of Five Retail Banners to AB Acquisition LLC
Costco Wholesale Corp. will expand its Issaquah, Washington, headquarters. Issaquah’s director of economic development, Keith Niven, said the club retailer would expand the headquarters to take up as much as 1.5 million square feet. The Tacoma, Washington News Tribune reported that the company currently occupied three buildings that were full to capacity.
Supervalu has announced that it has completed the sale of its Albertsons, Acme, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s and Star Market stores and associated Osco and Sav-on in-store pharmacies to Cerberusled AB Acquisition LLC. The deal is valued at approximately USD 3.3 billion which includes USD 3.2 billion in debt assumption and USD 100 million in cash.
H&M’s Going After Every U.S. Consumer This Year
Walgreens and Alliance Boots new Partnership
The Swedish retailer opened 40 Stateside stores in 2012—which begs the question, hasn’t their aggressive push for U.S. markets already started? Not according to Daniel Kulle, U.S. president of H&M,
Walgreens an Alliance Boots have entered a long-term partnership with AmerisourceBergen that will enable all parties to benefit from greater scale and global opportunities, while reducing
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costs and increasing patient access to pharmaceuticals. A Walgreens executive will be appointed to AmerisourceBergen’s board upon Walgreens and Alliance Boots together acquiring a 5% equity stake. An Alliance Boots executive will be appointed upon exercise in full of the first warrants.
EVP & COO of Metro Inc Departs
Robert Sawyer, Executive VicePresident (EVP) and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Metro Inc, has decided to leave the retailer after 33 years. The heads of the Quebec and Ontario divisions will now be report to the President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Eric R. La Flèche. The retailer has announced that the position of COO will not be filled. Sawyer will be joining another company as President and CEO.
Amazon Becomes Aggregift’s First Participating Retailer Amazon is the first retailer to work with Aggregift, a new startup that allows its users to initiate crowdfunding campaigns for gifts. To start a gift campaign on Aggregift, a user can simply insert the link of the product page from Amazon’s site. If gift recipients do not like their crowdfunded gift, they can choose to receive an Amazon.com gift card for the same value of the gift instead.
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Business NEWS Wal-Mart executives predict February 2013 could return worst sales in seven years
successful expansion strategy in Asian markets. As Chief Commercial Officer, Luis will now be responsible for all business units, merchandising, licencing, corporate strategy and consumer insights.
Visa to be more flexible, eyes emerging markets A cache of internal emails from retail major Wal-Mart has described sales for the month of February 2013 as being totally disastrous. Blaming the increases in payroll-tax and continued tardiness in the economy, the emails accessed and published by Bloomberg, termed the sales the worst in the last seven years. Wal-Mart vice president of finance and logistics Jerry Murray is reported to have written to his colleagues that the February month-to-date sales were a total disaster. “The worst start to a month I have seen in my 7 years with the company,” added Murray. Wal-Mart issued a statement which fell short of categorically denying the claims, but said, “As with any organization, we often see internal communications that are not entirely accurate, that lack the proper context and represent individual opinions.
Coach names Victor Luis new CEO US upscale leather goods maker Coach said on Thursday that longtime CEO Lew Frankfort will step down in January 2014 and be replaced by Victor Luis, who currently oversees all of Coach’s businesses outside North America as President of Coach International Group. Luis has been a member of the company’s senior leadership team for the past seven years and has led Coach’s
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Visa Inc.’s new CEO Charles Scharf says it is time for the credit-card giant to loosen up. Scharf said Visa needs to shed its image among some banks and merchants that it is onerous to deal with as it continues its war on cash. Furor over the company’s processing fees and rules that merchants must agree to in order to accept Visa’s cards have been a thorn in the side of retailers big and small over the years, leading to numerous lawsuits and increased scrutiny by regulators. Visa has already laid the groundwork for that effort, striking deals in countries including Rwanda and Myanmar, as it works toward a goal of generating more than half its revenue from international markets by 2015.
BlueStar EMEA Distribution appoints new Marketing Managers BlueStar, the global distributor of solutions-based ADC, mobility, pointof-sale, RFID, digital signage, and ID and security technology, has made two
new key appointments: Marketing Manager for the UK and Marketing Manager Nordic Region.
e-commerce sites new cybercrime frontier The retail sector – and e-commerce sites in particular – was the hottest target for cyber-attacks involving data loss in 2012, according to a new report. The annual report from security vendor Trustwave finds that attacks took place across nearly every industry and country and involved nearly every type of data in 2012. From an analysis of around 450 data breach investigations in 19 countries, Trustwave said it determined that the attacks originated from 29 countries in 2012. The top attacker locations were Romania (33.4 percent) and the US (29 percent). Trustwave recommends organisations explore the use of security event visualisation technologies to help identify patterns of attack and emerging vulnerabilities before an event occurs, and to lock down any discovered holes once an attack does take place.
Dixons shuts down Pixmania outlets
British electronics chain Dixons Retail has decided to shut all of its Pixmania stores while also reducing its online operations. Pixmania is majority owned by Dixons, and will now have an online presence in 14 countries as opposed to
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Business NEWS the earlier 26.The move is part of the retailer’s efforts to turn around its flagging business; The chain recently closed 10 outlets in France following the closure of 40 outlets in Spain, Portugal and Belgium, reported Bloomberg. The brand had a portfolio of over 1,200 stores in the Czech Republic, Denmark, Ireland, Finland, France, Greece, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the UK.
Co-operative Group appoints new HR director
The Co-operative Group has appointed Rebecca Skitt as is its new group HR director. Skitt will join the retailer in March from Barclays where she led the HR function for the global retail and business banking division. Prior to Barclays, Skitt worked with Unilever as vice president of human resources for the global foods category. Commenting on the appointment, Peter Marks, Cooperative Group chief executive, said: “I’m delighted Rebecca is joining us. She has a great track record in transforming organisational culture, capability and performance and I wish her every success in her new role.”
Metcash names Ian Morrice CEO Australian grocery wholesaler Metcash announced the appointment of Ian Morrice as CEO, effective on 30 June
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2013. Morrice will replace Andrew Reitzer who announced in September last year his intention to retire in 2013. He will be retained as a consultant to the board for three years after stepping down. Reitzer’s successor Morrice has more than 30 years of retail experience. He has been a director of Metcash since June 2012.
Google denies physical retail foray
proposed stores expected to be unveiled in China and Japan. Gap chairman and chief executive officer Glenn Murphy noted that the expansion is focused towards better leveraging the company’s global brand to further its market share and shareholder value. The chain had unveiled 33 stores in China during the 2012 fiscal year, and plans to add 35 new ones in 2013; while the Old Navy brand made its debut in Japan in 2012 with plans to roll out 20 additional stores this year.
Tesco to expand online offerings
Internet search major Google has sought to quell speculation regarding the company opening a chain of its own retail stores. Google’s Android division head Andy Rubin said such speculation was incorrect and suggested the company did not view such a move as being particularly beneficial. Instead, according to Rubin, the company believes that consumers do not need to physically experience a product in order to make a purchasing decision. “They don’t have to go in the store and feel it anymore,” Rubin said.
Gap, focus on AsiaPacific market Global clothing retailer Gap plans to roll out nearly 85 new outlets in 2013 as part of its worldwide expansion plans. The expansion will primarily be focused in the Asia-Pacific region, with 55 of the
UK-based retail major Tesco plans to expand its online offerings with the launch of two specialist portals catering to ebook and music retail through the remainder of 2013. The chain previously acquired an 80% ownership in online TV and film website Blinkbox, and will add Blinkboxbooks and Blinkboxmusic to its e-commerce offering. Commenting on the developments, Blinkbox chief executive and founder Michael Comish said that they had appointed premier digital media executives to lead its online expansion, including the launch of three e-commerce businesses. Facebook retail head Gavin Sathianathan and Warner Music executive Mark Bennett have been drafted in to head Blinkboxbooks and Blinkboxmusic respectively. The move by Tesco is also likely to pit the retailer against e-commerce majors such as Amazon.
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Business NEWS Top retailers to meet K3 Retail continues to man who has been at attract the best the pinnacle of ‘Retail People’ organised cybercrime Internet Retailing Expo confirmed that they have experienced overwhelming demand for meetings with Tony Sales, ‘Britain’s Greatest Fraudster’, now reformed. Tony, who is offering one-onone fraud prevention consultation to retailers at IRX2013, has had over 250 requests for meetings from UK retailers. Tony earned his dubious title after defrauding UK retailers out of an estimated £30,000,000. Tony now uses his experience as a fraud consultant to the retail industry. At IRX2013 retailers have had the opportunity to book a faceto-face consultation with Tony or the option to see a forty-five minute closed door presentation on beating e-payment fraud.
Kingfisher appoints Andrew Livingston as Screwfix CEO Kingfisher, the owner of B&Q, has appointed Andrew Livingston as the new chief executive of multi-channel tool and DIY retailer Screwfix. Livingston was previously commercial and e-commerce director at Screwfix. Prior to that he was director of showroom at B&Q and chief operating officer at the Wyevale Garden Centre chain. In his new role, Willett will oversee the development of the group’s multichannel operations.Kingfisher said that Willett will also become chairman of Screwfix, remaining closely involved with the business.
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in the industry and expertise in providing consumer financing programs. “We’re pleased to work with them to build our business and provide home furnishing shoppers with promotional financing offers,” added Cornell.
Metro AG Cash & Carry chief to leave K3 Retail has appointed Max Way as Head of Multichannel Retail to further develop its position as a leading authority and enabler in the world of multichannel retail. The role was created to ensure the K3 team broadens and deepens knowledge across all areas of retail; from marketing to finance and supply chain, through to PCI compliance and customer service excellence adding value to customer projects through prior and on-going strategy support.
American Signature, GE Capital Retail Bank ink private label card agreement US-based furniture stores operator American Signature has inked a multiyear relationship agreement with GE Capital Retail Bank. As per the agreed terms, GE Capital will provide consumer credit card services through the home furnishings retailer’s 126 American Signature Furniture and Value City Furniture locations in the US. American Signature Furniture executive vice president and chief financial officer Ed Cornell remarked that the company choose, GE capital due to its longevity
German retailer Metro AG said the head of its Cash & Carry business, Frans Muller, is leaving the company on March 31 by mutual agreement, adding Chief Executive Olaf Koch will take on responsibility for the unit. Metro has over 2,200 stores across the world ranging from cash and carries to electrical stores and department stores. Earlier this month, it cut its dividend for the first time and reported a fall in earnings as economic woes in Europe led shoppers to spend less at its stores.
Microsoft unveils flagship online store Software major Microsoft has unveiled its flagship online store on Tmall.com extending its product and service offering availability on China’s largest consumer e-commerce platform. The company had earlier launched the Microsoft Online Store - MicrosoftStore. com.cn for the Chinese market in October 2012; while the Tmall.com portal looks to further build on the success.
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IT NEWS Hybrid approach to m-payments recommended for efficiency, security A hybrid approach to m-payments needs efficient solutions to mitigate security risks involved in data transmission, research firm Frost & Sullivan recommended in its latest report. Recently introduced payment options using mobile phones integrate near-field communication (NFC) technology with a cloud-based system. With this approach, cardholders’ account details will no longer be stored on a secure element within the mobile phone, but will instead be maintained in the cloud. Frost & Sullivan believe that successful combinations of NFC and cloud will require solutions to help mitigate the security risks involved in data transmission.
American Express launches new online payment solution
Financial service corporation American Express (AmEx) has launched a new online payment solution, ezeClick, to be employed for online shopping in India. AmEx card members can employ the unique user ID following a one-time registration. ezeClick virtual wallet stores
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Amex cardholders’ data such as card number, expiry data, 4 digit CID and postal code for future use. Commenting on the new solution AmEx India President Sanjay Rishi said that the solution would eliminate the regular use of cards by its members when shopping online.
MasterCard enhances digital payments
a reduction in returns caused by customers buying the incorrect size of up to 77%. The new version of the Fits. me Virtual Fitting Room enables retailers and brands to offer an accurate, fun, sophisticated and, now, much more stylish means for shoppers to ensure they buy the right size when buying online. Fit Advisor uses a shopper’s measurements to generate and display intuitive graphical indicators showing how an item will fit, but – unlike the Fits. me Virtual Fitting Room – it does not display a photograph of the item to show how it will fit.
Tesco leaps into the future with Virtual Reality Software MasterCard has introduced MasterPass, a digital service that allows consumers to use any payment card or enabled device to discover enhanced shopping experiences that are as simple as a click, tap or touch – online, in-store or anywhere. “Every device is becoming a shopping device,” said Ed McLaughlin, chief emerging payments officer, MasterCard. “MasterPass brings together all of the ways we pay for things, from traditional plastic cards to digital wallets, and gives consumers the ability to make a payment from wherever they are and with one simple experience.”
Fits.me launches bold new Virtual Fitting Room Data from online clothing retailers using Fits.me virtual fitting room solutions demonstrate that retailers can achieve
Supermarket Tesco is to use virtual reality technology to plan how its category ranges appear on shelves. Tesco is reportedly the first UK retailer to integrate the technology of virtual reality company Red Dot Square into its existing systems and ways of working. The company will use it to drive efficiencies and identify sales opportunities in its UK and Ireland stores. With the new approach Tesco will no longer require physical product specimens from each of their supplier manufacturers. This will cut the planning process enabling significant time savings for their colleagues and suppliers. Tesco’s investment in the partnership includes the remodelling of meeting space at its Welwyn Garden.
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IT NEWS Swedish electronics retailer SIBA AB selects EazyStock inventory software EazyStock, the cloud-based inventory management solution, has been selected by one of Scandinavia’s leading home electronics retailers, SIBA AB, to support improved inventory optimisation. SIBA operates retail stores across Sweden, Norway and in Denmark under its sub brand ComputerCity. EazyStock is a sophisticated cloudbased inventory management solution developed by Syncron, the global supply chain software vendor. It provides small to midsize businesses with lowcost, high-performance inventory forecasting, planning and optimisation capabilities to reduce inventory carrying costs, improve customer service levels and eliminate repetitive inventory management tasks.
incorporate innovative technologies to inform, engage and attract customers to their stores but many still struggle with the complexity or cost,” said Ray Carlin, vice president and general manager, Retail Solutions, HP. “HP’s new media players and its full portfolio of signage solutions mean retailers of any size will be able to deploy affordable and compelling in-store signage.”
Toppan Printing and Plastic Logic are demonstrating a 42in digital signage module
HP continues to push digital signage
HP has unveiled two new media players for retail and hospitality businesses that run the Windows Embedded operating system. The HP MP6 Digital Signage Player has an Intel dual core processor and HD graphics and can power digital shopping centre or hotel directories. The HP MP4 Digital Signage Player is HP’s thinnest player and can display brand-related content through static images or full-screen videos. It has a 64-bit AMD processor with Radeon HD 6320 graphics. “Retailers want to
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Printing technology expert Toppan Printing and Plastic Logic are demonstrated a 42in flexible, reflective digital signage module created using organic thin film transistors (OTFTs). The large area flexible electrophoretic display (EPD) module consists of 16 10.7in Plastic Logic monochrome flexible plastic displays, tiled in a 4 x 4 configuration with an effective pixel pitch of 0.7 mm. According to the partners, this is approximately six times better resolution than existing EPD signage. Less than 3mm thick and lightweight, the flexible signage can be hung on a wall like a poster and is likely to enable a range of new and improved applications.
NEC expands X Series with LEDbacklit digital signage displays
NEC Display Solutions of America, a provider of commercial LCD display and projector solutions, announced the addition of two super-slim digital signage displays to its specialty X Series portfolio, the 46-inch X462S and 55-inch X552S large-screen displays. These industrial-strength, full-HD LCD displays leverage LED backlighting technology, which delivers improved power consumption and provides flexibility for a variety of installations, including those requiring Americans with Disabilities Act compliance (when used with select display mounts). Measuring a mere 1.8 inches deep, the X462S and X552S are not only super-slim and ultra-light, they also deliver a maximum brightness of 700 cd/m², making them suitable for the most challenging applications in retail, hospitality and government, according to NEC.
Olea officially launches Milan digital signage kiosk Olea Kiosks announced the official launch of its pedestal-style Milan Kiosk that boasts versatility and configurability for interactive digital signage applications, according to a news release. The kiosk can accommodate single- or multitouch LCD monitors with
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IT NEWS the option to orient the display to portrait or landscape mode. Because the Milan can support larger monitors, it allows dual use of the monitor through the ability to split the screen for applications such as retail and wayfinding, the announcement said. Through collaborations with Elo and 3M, the Milan is available in 32-, 42-, 46- and 55-inch sizes. The Milan kiosk can also be configured with additional hardware peripherals including thermal printers, a media player device, magnetic and smart card readers, proximity sensors, and QR and barcode scanners.
register and reload a Dunkin’ Donuts Card, add money to an existing card, set a card to auto-recharge and view all previous card transactions. It supports payment using American Express, Visa, MasterCard and Discover.
PSAV intros digital signage video wall
Dunkin Donuts mobile app adds support for Apple Passbook
Dunkin’ Donuts’ mobile app for iPhone and iPod touch now supports Apple’s Passbook, allowing users to add their Dunkin’ Donuts Cards to Passbook and pay for food, beverages and merchandise at participating restaurants. They only need to scan their Dunkin’ Pass in-store or at the drive-thru. John Costello, President, Global Marketing & Innovation for Dunkin’ Brand, said the app had seen more than a million downloads in just over six months, and the company was continuously looking for ways to enhance the app. The Dunkin’ App allows users to purchase,
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Box Technologies launches its ‘Personal Stylist’ at RBTE
PSAV Presentation Services is now offering a new communication platform for meeting professionals that uses nextgeneration interactive digital signage to deliver information and entertainment to event attendees, the company said. The PSAV Interactive Video Wall enables planners to present their message in a digital format that is branded to their unique themes and provides sponsorship and advertising opportunities. The PSAV Interactive Video Wall is available in two standard sizes, each using 46-inch square screens configured in either a two-by-two or three-by-three display. With 32 touchpoints on the entire surface, meeting-goers can view maps, presentations, games and more. Each of the 46-inch TouchLED panels feature backlighting to provide outstanding energy efficiency. On average, this display technology uses 30 percent less energy when compared with LCD or plasma technology.
Box Technologies (Box), which works with leading retailers, banks and public sector organisations, has launched its ‘Personal Stylist’, creating a truly interactive tool for today’s shopper. Through the Personal Stylist wall shoppers can view what clothes and shoes will look like on, as opposed to on the hanger, and they can also mix and match other garments to see what complements the item they are looking to buy. The technology creates a common interface, and real interaction between the shop and the customer. It also has the ability to provide personalisation, based on a customer’s shopping history.
Home Office launches CCTV best practice guide for small shops The Home Office has compiled a guide for retailers on the use of CCTV in small shops. Launched at the Association of Convenience Stores’ Crime Prevention Forum, the guide offers retailers guidance and information on how to get the most out of their CCTV systems. It also provides a flavour of the advice to be made available alongside the
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IT NEWS Government’s new surveillance camera code of practice when it comes into force. ACS chief executive James Lowman said: “CCTV is crucial to many retailers and this guide will help them optimise its value, providing staff and customers with peace of mind and deterring criminals. We also welcome the Government’s consultation on the CCTV Code of Practice and we urge retailers to be mindful of the provision in the Code when they install CCTV within their business.”
allows it to be used with tablets to ensure comfortable customer experiences in information or feedback kiosks.
The new PowerScan 9500 imager
Microsoft showcases Windows 8-based retail devices
Launch of a brand new Nordic ID UHF RFID reader at CeBit
Nordic ID Stix is a sleek, easy-to-use and flexible UHF RFID reader for interactive read/write applications with adjustable reading range. With the Nordic ID Stix the retail environment has a champion performer that optimises ease-of-use with a small footprint, especially suitable for tablets and point-of-sale with limited space. The device meets the needs of a global organisation through its EPC Class 1 Gen 2 and multi-regional frequency support. It is equipped with two LED indicators. Nordic ID has used its own powerful RFID engine in the Nordic ID Stix, as it has in all its other products, to ensure a good read. The company has fine-tuned the RFID reader to be able to read multiple UHF RFID tags at any time which makes it ideal for point-of-sales applications, for example. The small size and light weight also
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research and shop for everything they need for their business or home office, the company said.“Staples customers are very excited about the new computers and tablets featuring Windows 8, and we’re enhancing the Staples.com experience for Windows 8 users,” said Steve Bussberg, SVP Staples.com. “Staples makes things easier for small businesses by using the latest technology, and the Staples Windows Store app enables customers to shop Staples even faster.
The PowerScan 9500 family of imagers, constructed with Datalogic’s optical system, hardware architecture, and decoding software, offers an advanced solution for the ever-increasing demands of industrial environments. The Manufacturing and Transportation & Logistics industries rely on speed and reliability when managing goods and tracking merchandise to improve efficiency and reduce costs. “Datalogic’s PowerScan 9500 imager includes a series of innovations that make reading easy and intuitive, resulting in significant performance improvement and time savings, which are crucial for companies faced with pressing deadlines,” commented Giulio Berzuini, General Manager & VP, Hand-Held Scanners, Datalogic ADC.
Staples launches Windows Store app Staples has launched its own Windows Store app for Staples.com. The app provides customers with access to Staples Rewards and features tools that make it easier for small businesses to
US technology giant Microsoft showcased its new Windows 8-based retail devices in the four days event. “Last year, we released Windows 7 for Embedded Systems. What we are doing today is evolving the Windows 7 technology into a new platform – Windows 8,” said John Boladian, Business Group Lead for Windows Embedded in Asia. Windows 8-based platforms and technologies enable retail devices such as digital signage, pointof-service (POS) terminals and kiosks to participate in intelligent systems that are designed to enable data to flow across a company’s infrastructure.
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Seize the the mobile mobile opportunity opportunity Seize
Maja Perovic Lazarevic is Public relations and marketing specialist. Graduated at Graduate School of Business studies, on-going master studies at Graduate School of Political Science in Belgrade, Serbia. In 2007, she started her carrier on one national TV station in Serbia. Later on she continued her work in area of public relations for IT sector. She is in Infobip since 2012 at the position - PR specialist. Her work in public relations is reworded several times. Some of her papers where published in OESCE 2006 edition and in regular publications of Graduate School of Political Science in Belgrade, Serbia. Infobip is an international provider of mobile messaging and mobile payments. Its in-house developed solutions are used by businesses and organizations around the world. Infobip’s portfolio includes SMS messaging, m-payments, push notifications, developers’ libraries and MNO solutions. Services are offered in a cloud, with very simple integration and 24/7, highly skilled support. Operating in 26 offices, it serves tens of thousands of business users, allowing them to reach 5,9 billion devices in 190 countries. Maintaining one of the best platforms in the industry, Infobip has 160 direct connections and covers a total of over 800 mobile network operators. Infobip is an associate member of the GSM Association, Mobile Marketing Association and Mobey Forum. Maja Pervic Lazarevic, Infobip
Mobile marketing and mobile payments continue to strengthen brand loyalty and increase sales at a time when retailers struggle to cut through the noise and build deeper relationships with an increasingly fickle ad price-sensitive shopper. RETAIL IT
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25 A retail business owner knows there are only three ways to increase revenue - get your consumer to spend more money, get more consumers, and raise prices. The first two methods are the most attractive so you put together advertising campaigns, which can be time consuming and expensive. Bringing mobile into the marketing mix, you can forget about rising prices and costeffectively increase sales by upgrading consumer engagement and loyalty. Ten years ago if you wanted to skip any mass media promotion, your campaign would be almost invisible or unrecognisable. With the mobile revolution picking up pace, the whole perspective of marketing has changed. The number of new consumers coming to your store or buying your products is directly affected by the way you do promotion and communication. Mobile is a new window of opportunity and the most effective channel of modern marketing. We’re witnessing an explosive growth of smartphone penetration and the trend is only going to pick up even more steam. The analysts note that in addition to smartphones, tablets have created new ways for brands to engage with consumers, while e-commerce, which started on desktops and laptops, is gradually steered to m-commerce. As this revolution goes on, IP-based services are becoming an essential part of the consumer engagement strategy of any business. One fact is widely recognisable – mobile phone is man’s new best friend. That translates to convenience and personal touch that cannot be ignored if you want to keep your business competitive. That said, it’s logical that worldwide retailers are set to spend $28 billion on mobile marketing campaigns in 2013, according to Juniper Research, with the annual spend spiking to $55bn by 2015. Although mobile marketing includes different types of technologies, SMS, USSD, mobile apps and push notifications are the driving force of today. There are many cost-effective solutions for putting your message instantly into the hands
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of your consumers. The best thing is to have a one-stop-shop for your mobile future. By using the technologies like SMS, USSD, push notifications, mobile apps and network queries you can now invite consumer to in-store sales, ask them to participate in surveys, visit your website, enter a contest or opt-in for a discount via mobile. With a little creative thought, you can see that there are many possibilities with this new technology added to your marketing plans. SMS as the personal, prompt and lowcost channel There’s no doubt that SMS marketing is becoming increasingly popular among marketers as part of their integrated campaigns. Not only is SMS popular with users of all demographic groups, it is also reliable and guarantees delivery to any kind of handset in any geographic region. In addition to these consumerfriendly features, SMS can be easily combined with social media, mobile apps or mobile web sites as a notification, confirmation and interaction tool. Not to mention that SMS offers significantly lower costs, without any app or web site development, providing a superior ROI. Due its personal nature and one-to-one communication it is vital that any messaging is relevant to the target audience. As the SMS message is delivered directly to the target audience, the open rates are over 90% in no more than 5 minutes upon delivery. For acquisition purposes, SMS marketing can help you to qualify leads and segment potential customers quickly and easily. This method works particularly well for brands where a two-stage campaign is required to gain a sale. Use USSD technology and know what your costumer is thinking about Before, after and especially during any marketing campaign comes market survey. Surveys have always been the only way to find out if your strategy is effective. If you want data from a specific group at a specific time, classical penand-paper surveys are time-consuming,
costly and not so user friendly. By introducing USSD-based surveys into your marketing portfolio you will be able to save money and time. USSD is not a new mobile technology but it can be used for various types of session-based A2P communication. The polling can be promoted by an SMS or push notification and it’s usually initiated by calling a number like *111#. Through this simple technology you can get feedback in real time and all over the world if necessary. Push the message through your app – keep your consumers engaged The newest data show that almost 50% of buyers make a research on their phone before making a purchase. If you want your consumer to have immediate access to your website or online store, mobile apps are an absolute must. With smartphones and tablets occupying our lives, you would be more than mistaken not to offer this tool as an ideal channel for information and user engagement. With quality mobile apps combined with push notifications, you can make your every campaign count. It’s a tool that instantly informs your consumer about new promotion or sales, popping up on their smart phone screens, using any type of Internet connection. With vital intelligence gathered through analytics, geolocation and context added to the equation, mobile marketing activities can be very accurately targeted. Push messaging, integrated with SMS and USSD services provide a converged offering, enabling businesses to reach and engage their consumers through a single provider. With all these solutions added to Infobip’s portfolio, we continue to provide the largest and most universal communication channel, creating new opportunities for our partners and clients. Drawing its strength from global connectivity, sales network and the world’s largest non-telco network designed and operated entirely in-house, Infobip is able to facilitate different mobile technologies for any business. It’s exactly Infobip’s infrastructure and expertise that allow companies worldwide to quickly leverage their potential and seize the mobile opportunity.
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THIS IS NOT A MOBILE PHONE. IT’S YOUR BEST MARKETER. REACH. ENGAGE. MONETISE. With 26 offi¬ces, 110 partner operators, and tens of thousands of clients worldwide, our mighty in-house built platform is changing the business reality today. Tens of millions of daily transactions - SMS, USSD, push notifications, network queries and m-payments - smoothly connect merchants and their customers, bringing your business closer to success. Transform a mobile phone into your best marketer. NOW.
Infobip UK: +44 20 8144 5208 Infobip Brazil: +554132244879 Infobip CIS: +7 495 642 7243 Email: info@infobip.com www.infobip.com
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Social Social web web
From humble beginnings of only static pages with basic layouts to today’s very advanced web applications and highly interactive sites that handle millions of transactions, the Internet has come a long way since it was invented. The Internet is widely used these days for a multitude of different purposes. A large part of business is now conducted online and for some companies it the only way of doing business instead of just being a part of it. Retail IT | Year 3 | Issue 09
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28 Recent years have seen the phenomenal rise of regional and global social networks or social media, such as Facebook, Twitter, Myspace and YouTube, which are used by millions of people around the world to interact and keep in contact with each other. The social web means people have a voice and they increasingly want to speak to and share with their peers. The retail industry has been influenced by the social web as much as any other sector of the economy. This extended interactivity means that the retail industry can no longer ignore its customers and needs to start engaging with people who are discussing brands, products and services. Retailers have noticed that the social web is a very important factor in the retail industry. Their websites are no longer dull and simply for buying goods and services; they’re now engaging with existing and potential customers through the social web. Most retail websites have social media plugins that enable interaction with customers who are able to log in using social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Google+). Some retailers no longer rely on their main websites, instead using various specially created pages on social media networks in order to interact with their clients. These networks give retailers the opportunity to form a relationship with millions of customers but also speak to them oneon-one.
Many companies have taken advantage of the enormous rise in smartphone ownership and have built applications making the connection with customers more personal and direct.
typically include increasing revenues, reducing customer service costs, getting feedback on products and services and improving public opinion of a particular product or business division.
Retailers have created rich Facebook pages to promote their products and offers, and existing and potential customers can express their opinions, make suggestions or complain about a product or service on these pages. Retailers use Twitter for immediate engagement with customers and for receiving and answering questions. Because of their wide presence on the Internet, retailers gather big data and making sense of it is no easy task: they need to analyse and understand it so the data can be used for specific purposes and business decisions taken based on this data.
Once the business goals have been identified, various key performance indicators for objectively evaluating the data should be defined. For example, customer engagement might be measured by the number of followers on a specific social media website account (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) or by the number of comments, shares and mentions of the company’s name. Retailers can either build their own tools for analysing the data or use third party tools. There are a number of different types of software and tools for analysing data that harvest and store data found in posts made on Twitter, Facebook and other social media networks.
For a start they need to identify their needs: what kind of data they need to gather and how the data will be used. The first step is to determine which business goals the data that is gathered and analysed will serve. Objectives might
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They can use the data obtained from their presence on the Internet or data which has gathered by other companies specialising in social media analytics. They can also make specific information
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29 available to third parties provided that they have the customer’s consent and obey the laws and regulations in place in regions and countries. Social media analytics software provides retailers with the ability to glean data from social media channels such as Twitter, blogs, wikis and public and private forums.
Text analytics tools enable retailers to analyse large volumes of data for word or phrase frequency and usage trends and to categorise social media entries into interaction types (complaints, enquiries, opportunities, preferences, etc.). By categorising interactions and analysing the use of targeted words and phrases across multiple interactions, it is possible to determine the opinions being expressed by existing and prospective customers about product or issues. Solutions are available from big names such as SAP, IBM and Microsoft, both those geared towards large companies and more budget-friendly ones for small retailers. SAP Social Media Analytics by NetBase SAP Social Media Analytics by NetBase, now a solution extension offered by SAP, provides marketers accurate, real-time
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analytics for understanding their markets through the social web. It processes billions of social media posts across millions of sites globally to extract structured insights that businesses can use to quickly discover market needs and trends; quantify market perceptions about products, services, and companies; and effectively track their success in the market.
sentiment. IBM Cognos® Consumer Insight (CCI), a packaged social media analytics solution, enables companies to automatically collect consumer generated content from the Internet; measure customer sentiment; and analyses perceptions about the brand, competitors and general product and shopping trends.
SAP customers now have a fast, reliable way to: - Rapidly monitor and respond to market reaction to new product launches. - Quantify market perceptions about products, services, and companies. - Track the success of marketing campaigns. - Discover insights and uncover trends in customer preferences. - Accurately identify strengths and weaknesses in competing products.
Microsoft Microsoft Codename “Social Analytics” is a suite of Azure services for developers and end users enabling businesses to integrate the social web into their business applications. Its goal is to enable businesses to build connections and communities among customers, influencers and their employees; to support customer needs for high value information guided by peers and experts/ influencers; to engage in conversations and respond to buzz around hot topics; and to make the voice of community actionable across the product lifecycle.
IBM IBM’s social media monitoring and analytics solution can help companies leverage the power of social media to generate actionable insights into consumers’ preferences and behaviour, addressing their expectations and enhancing their shopping experience. The solution, based on innovative research and software technologies, helps companies understand consumer
Many other smaller companies offer bespoke solutions to suit smaller retailers.
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31
Retail’s BIG Show 2013
Which technologies and innovations will lead the future of retail? This question is not easy to answer. But after visiting the Big Show in New York, we have certainly got plenty of new ideas. This annual show, with a focus on technology for retail is something special every year. But this year it was an even more record-breaking event.
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32 Retail’s BIG Show is NRF’s flagship industry event held annually in New York City, and took place in January 2013. The four-day event offers an unparalleled education, networking with colleagues, and an enormous EXPO Hall full of technologies and solutions.
The record-breaking numbers merely underline the success of this event. The greatest interest apparent in the industry was related to 3 major topics: - payments - security and - mobility.
The statistics on this great event are impressive. As published by NRF there were 27,600 attendees from 82 countries. And the following figures give an even better idea of how big this event was: - there were 6,000 Krispy Kreme doughnuts delivered for attendees - the most attendees came from Brazil with 1,736 attendees - there were 16,500 hotel room nights booked - there was $21+ million in economic impact for New York City - there were 125 educational sessions with 298 speakers - 3.75 terabytes of data were used to capture video from the event
Payments In the area of payments there is a great deal of movement. The simplification of payment processing, internationalisation of payment infrastructure and innovations like the ewallet were just some of the things being strongly emphasized by retailers and technology providers.
mobile technologies. Android phones and tablets are gaining in importance as Points of Purchase. The potential that is hidden behind these technologies is massive, and retailers are just beginning to recognise it.
Using mobile devices like phones and tablets for shopping is already a reality today
All the leading international solution providers were in New York
For two full days, the EXPO Hall is a showcase for the industry’s most innovative technologies. Retail executives searching for the most effective solutions and tools find them in specialty pavilions, exhibitor booths and exhibitor-led BIG !dea educational sessions. It would not be an exaggeration to say that anybody who is doing anything in the segment of retail IT was there. The event was full of ideas and innovations. Under the motto “What’s next?” the future was in focus.
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Payment is without doubt a major future topic in retail
Security As something that goes hand in hand with payments but is also related to all other aspects of retailers’ daily business, security has a very special place at this event. The best technology cannot be used if the security risks are too great. Mobility The third area that was strongly represented was mobility. In this case consumer mobility not retailer mobility. A number of technologies and products were presented that utilize the latest
These 3 elements generated the greatest discussion and drove the most interesting presentations. On the other hand, technologies like the social media were almost entirely absent. It seems that the utilisation of this area has still not begun, and the tools and technologies are not there. Maybe we can find the answer to the question “What’s next?” not in the products, technologies and innovations presented but in all those which have not been presented yet. A good example is the use of the social media or, for example, links between POS and social networks. However, this year’s fair clearly shows that the future of technology in retail is becoming a reality with a host of interesting new ideas.
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Innovative way of mobile workforce management. Managed tasks in the store, perform some inventory tasks or check product information it is an easy issue with motorolas SB1 smart badge. This smart mobile device and related workforce application were successfully launched and presented during NRF.
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34 The leading international retail and banking specialist Wincor Nixdorf launched a new payment product during the Big Show. The eWallet is this German company’s innovative way of creating a symbiosis between banking, payments and retailing. The race for market leadership in the banking segment gives a unique significance to the product and technology aspects of the eWallet strategy.
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35 If prices of certain items are changed several times a day, a great deal of effort is needed to implement these changes. In such cases, and especially in the case of items like vegetables and fruits, electronic self-labels are a great alternative for reducing this effort and related costs. One of the biggest show stoppers to installing these labels have been integration issues and related costs. In additional, installation has always been a complex hurdle. Digi, the leading international manufacturer of scales from Japan has introduced a very innovative solution. By attaching a transmitter to the Digi scale, electronic labels can immediately be used. There is no need to integrate any other solution since item data is taken from the scale. Installation itself is also very easy.
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36
Interview Interview ShopperTrak ShopperTrak
Bill Martin, Founder and Executive Vice President of ShopperTrak Bill Martin remains actively engaged in ShopperTrak’s day-to-day operations and holds a seat on the company’s board of directors. He contributes to the organization’s strategic planning and marketing processes. Mr. Martin is a highly recognized expert on retail traffic and business intelligence. He appears regularly on broadcast media programs on ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, MSNBC and CNBC as well as in articles in business outlets including the Wall Street Journal and trade press. Bill Martin,Shoppertrak
How many customers are in the stores? Where do they spend most of their time? How effective are retailers’ advertisements? What decisions need to be taken to make the business more effective? These are just some of the questions which are answered by people traffic analysis solutions. One of the world’s largest counters and analyzers of retail foot traffic is certainly ShopperTrak. Since 1995 ShopTrak has been a market leader, headed by the vision of Bill Martin, its founder. During the world’s largest retail IT fair, the NRF in New York, we met Bill and discussed technologies and trends.
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37 Retail IT: Bill, can you give us some words of introduction to ShopperTrak? ShopperTrak has been on the market for 17 years on the market and belongs to the largest customer traffic counting company in the world. We have 60,000 devices installed in 75 countries around the world, so we are global in nature, headquartered in Chicago. We have offices in the Middle East, in London, in Shenzen China, Dubai and South America. When we started out, the idea was to help customers to understand how many people come into their store and how many of them actually buy. We coined the phrase “conversion rate”. It represents the number of people who actually buy as a percentage of those who come in to the facility. We found out that the conversion rate can be affected by having the right number of the right people, placed at the right time, saying the right things, doing the right things, with the right products. This means it is something that the retailer can influence by applying the right retailing strategy. That’s more easily said than done, but after introducing a particular retailing strategy the retailer can use conversion rate as a measurement of its effectiveness. And that became pretty popular over the years. At the beginning, only completed transactions were used as a measurement of success, but now we find that traffic itself is becoming more important. The transaction is already done and nobody can influence it any more. Traffic, on the other hand, is something which can be used to influence the number of sales transactions. That’s the reason why traffic is becoming so important for retailers. Today we have roughly 500 retail customers as well as some mall development companies who want to know how many people come into the mall or shop. We are able to take the data and compile higher-level data from it, which begins to tell us how many people are in a shopping pattern within a particular mall. These combinations of the different data create real added value.
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Retail IT: Working with and managing data is always a hidden business model, which means the shop owner or shopping mall tenants are very interested in getting that data. I suppose that the retailer or mall owners are able to sell this data later. Is this a kind of additional business model for the mall owners? Yes, we see that in Europe, but not in the US. In China too, in some cases. The mall developers will put in the traffic counter when the store is being built. In that case, the mall developer gets the data too. In the US the relationship is not good enough to share that kind of information, but in Europe and Asia you see more willingness to do that. I think a lot of the rents and leases are built on sales numbers and transaction numbers, so they use traffic as a benchmark, they are getting the real numbers, so we see that quite a bit, but the whole understanding of consumer behavior becomes very critical in your strategy, at least in the US and with all of our clients. They are really trying to get a sense of: is my promotion working? is it bringing the right people? are the people on the ground able to convert it into a sale? And that’s the key to it. So now we have developed a whole series of porting tools, interior tracking – once they get in where do they go, how long do they stay? The device is installed overhead and it monitors the doorway, 24/7, counting every person that comes in and every person that goes out, so through that we get some other individual data such as average shopping time, i.e. how long customers spend in the shop. Retail IT: Tell us a little bit about the technologies that ShopperTrak is using and creating? IIt’s camera-based, in fact it’s a stereo camera, seeing in 3 dimensions, so we can get height, speed, presence and direction. Firstly we are capturing data when people come through the doorway. As you can imagine that is a lot of data. To
generate real added value we also provide what’s called a managed service. Instead of just collecting the data we host the whole solution and generate the required analyses. The solution owner just needs to take the business decision. Retail IT: What are the key benefits for the retailer, in introducing such a technology and using it in the supermarket or hypermarket? When we originally started, most of our customers were in specialty retail, not in the supermarket business. Recently though we have started to do more work with supermarkets. They want to know where the customer went once they came in the store – did they go to the dairy department, did they go to the meat counter, where they went in the store. Secondly they want to be able to know how to staff the front end. So based on traffic coming through the door we want to project how many lanes we need to have open 15 minutes into the future, based on what’s going on at the front door and where people are moving within the shop. And that’s a new concept we are working on, we don’t have any of it installed, but the core process is there, to help our customers to better manage the expectations of the shopper. If they go to the meat counter we want to make sure that the meat counter has enough staff, then we want to make sure that there are enough staff on checkouts, to make sure they have a good experience as they leave the store, too. Retail IT: Thank you Bill for this discussion. We are sure that tracking the movements of the customer in the store – in combination with marketing and sales data – has an important future in retail. The decisions that can be made based on that data can directly influence business processes and the turnover of the retailer. We wish ShoppingTrak every success in the future and we look forward to hearing about new technologies and trends in this segment.
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Food for Thought How to use advances in video surveillance to improve your food retail business
Mr. Hedgie Bartol has more than 15 years of expertise in retail loss prevention in the areas of access control, identity management, fraud prevention, network video surveillance and systems integration. He is currently Business Development Manager for Retail at Axis Communications. Axis is an IT company offering network video solutions for professional installations. The company is the global market leader in network video, driving the ongoing shift from analogue to digital video surveillance. Axis products and solutions focus on security surveillance and remote monitoring, and are based on innovative, open technology platforms. Mr. Hedgie Bartol, Axis
Digital IP video is helping today’s food retailers become a whole lot smarter about how they run their stores. Thanks to increased image resolution, onboard storage and especially on-board intelligence, retailers are expanding the traditional role of video surveillance cameras from asset protection to merchandising, marketing and even employee productivity and compliance. Retail IT | Year 3 | Issue 09
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40 In a recent survey conducted by the Food Marketing Institute and Axis Communications, participants cited some important advances in network video that they have been able to leverage across their organizations. - Asset protection: Tying video into exception-based analytics is helping AP teams be more proactive in monitoring their stores for customer and employee theft, and keeping tabs on organized retail crime activity such as shelf-sweeping. Sophisticated motion detection and cross-line detection are helping them protect displays containing high-theft items. Integrating video with POS transactions is helping AP teams monitor for sweet-hearting, bottomof-basket loss, and self-checkout scams. - Safety and risk management: SRM teams are using video to monitor stores and their surrounding property for compliance with safety procedures as well as to mitigate risks. The highquality HDTV and megapixel video footage provide the exceptional forensic detail critical to investigating false slip-and-fall claims and other injury reports. Video cameras are also enabling management to remotely monitor food preparation areas to ensure compliance with food safety procedures and to better understand the cause of loss and the likely potential for crosscontamination – whether accidental or deliberate. Using network camera technology allows SRM teams to give law enforcement and first responders remote access to live video for critical situational awareness in emergencies such as abductions, AMBER alerts, natural disasters, hostage situations and active shooter scenarios. - Marketing and merchandising: Marketing and merchandising teams are using video and third-party analytics solutions to better understand customer buying behavior, measure marketing effectiveness, and monitor stores for display compliance as well
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as out-of-stock conditions. These insights can reveal precise and objective data they can use to allocate shelf and aisle space, determine product assortment and price optimization. Video content analysis is also shedding light on ways to improve store layout and product placement in order to grow the basket and ultimately the bottom line. With dwell time and people counting analytics, marketing teams are able to measure the effectiveness of internal displays and vendor marketing promotions. As an additional revenue stream, the marketing and merchandising team can potentially sell video access to vendors for them to monitor their own displays for compliance, effectiveness and customer behavior. - Operations: The operations teams teams review many of the same analytics used by other teams in the organization to better understand customer flow and staffing needs. Advanced analytics help operations teams monitor sales conversion rates, labor/customer count ratios, end-cap effectiveness and efficiency of service counters. When done in near real-time, store managers can reassign staff to address customer needs before a complaint arises. In other areas of store operation, video surveillance is being used to review direct store delivery and receiving procedures, conduct remote store and food safety audits, as well as monitor coolers and freezers for temperature readings and potential leaks. - Distribution and transportation: To mitigate risks to employees and associates, many food retailers use video surveillance to ensure compliance with safety procedures. This includes monitoring time clocks, aisles, store exit and entry points, loading docks and warehouse operations to minimize accidents and injuries as well as loss from product mishandling during the loading and unloading of shipments. Some innovative food retailers are even
using in-truck video surveillance to review driver safety and improve behaviors – capturing video of specific G forces, vehicle speed, hard turns, rapid acceleration, impact forces, collision and overall receipt of goods upon delivery. - Project management: Many food retailers are coming to realize that there are an infinite number of ways they can leverage the business intelligence captured by their video surveillance systems. In addition to integrating video with their other systems – POS, Electronic Article Surveillance (EAS), access control and alarms – some food retailers are using their surveillance systems to monitor contractor progress at new construction projects to ensure safety regulations, company standards and project timelines are being met.
What’s new on the video horizon for food retailers? Participants in the FMI survey compiled a wish-list of improvements they hope to see in the near future that will help them further optimize their investment in video surveillance technology and positively impact their bottom lines. - Better bandwidth and storage options: With advanced H.264 compression, greater edge storage capacity and hosted video options, video is beginning to consume an ever-smaller footprint on the network, especially during high-traffic hours.
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41 Many of today’s network cameras house SD and microSD memory cards capable of storing from 32GB to 64 GB of video, which translates into days’ worth of video recorded at full frame rate in HDTV-standard 720p resolution. If the cost and size of storage devices continues to drop as it has in the past, it will soon be possible to store weeks and eventually even months of recorded video in-camera. Internal SD cards give food retailers the option of storing high-quality HDTV video at the edge and streaming lower frame rate, lower resolution video over the network to minimize bandwidth consumption. Or they can store the video during peak times and upload it during off hours for additional bandwidth savings. Another option would be to store the video remotely in the cloud or on network attached storage (NAS) devices. - Better aisle coverage: While HDTVnetwork cameras generally conform to the 16:9 panoramic format that complements today’s wide-format HDTV video monitors, innovative camera manufacturers have even turned the aspect ratio on its side, delivering a 9:16 corridor format to provide food retailers better coverage of high-racking shelf environments with fewer cameras. - Better lowlight protection: Affordable lowlight and night vision cameras give food retailers greater asset protection in vulnerable lowlight areas such as parking lots, cash wrap rooms, stockrooms and loading docks. Because of their ability to “see” in near and complete darkness, they save retailers the cost of keeping lights on during off hours. In the absence of any light, thermal cameras can detect the heat signature of any animate or inanimate object. For environments with light as low as 0.5 lux (less than moonlight), advanced Lightfinder lowlight sensors and lowlight lenses coupled with advanced image processing technology can record
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HDTV video in full color and with extremely low noise. Cameras with wide dynamic range (WDR) Dynamic Capture capability compensate for backlighting at entrances and bright morning and mid-afternoon sun that create silhouettes and haloing in tradition cameras. WDR Dynamic Capture equipped cameras simultaneously assimilate information from all light levels in the scene, allowing food retailers to clearly see objects both in the brightly lit and dark areas of the video frame that might otherwise be hidden from view.
- System outage detection: In addition to active tampering analytics that send an alert when a camera’s lens is blocked or the camera is knocked away from its normal field of view, some video surveillance systems perform active health monitoring to detect outages. In some configurations, other cameras on the network can recognize if one of their “siblings” has an outage and automatically generate an error report. - On-the-go applications: With network video accessible from any authorized device with an Internet connection, many food retailers view live and recorded video on-the-go from their smartphones. Being able to monitor mission critical activity on-demand rather than on-premises saves food retailers the expense of traveling to each site, while allowing them to gather specific intelligence on store activity in real time. As more applications are developed to give
video context to other data gathering and analytic systems, the amount of data collected and pushed from smartphones and tablets to the data center will continue to add value to the in-store surveillance beyond security and asset protection. - Onboard vehicle cameras: Installing surveillance cameras in trailers to monitor the loading and unloading process presents some unique – though not insurmountable – challenges. In addition to the vibrations from the truck motor and backlighting issues when trailer doors are open, if the cameras are not covertly installed they may be prone to tampering and vandalism. While there are already ruggedized cameras on the market that can withstand the vibrations of onboard video surveillance and will trigger alarms when tampering is detected, further advances need to be made to optimize the technology for this environment. Chew on this So where are you in the spectrum of smart video users? Today’s network cameras have matured from passive eye witnesses into intelligent computers that can now evaluate what they see. Advances in image processing, light sensitivity and onboard storage continue to push the boundaries of our surveillance camera expectations. In the past three years alone we’ve seen quantum leaps in resolution, performance in low and variable lighting conditions, onboard video storage and intelligence. And all these achievements have enabled network cameras to take on a more vital role in analyzing, managing, and acting on events they see. To thrive as a food retailer, you need to stay at the forefront of this technology or risk being left behind by your competitors. You need to recognize that the business intelligence gathered from your cameras can help you chart a course for success not just in loss prevention, but in every phase of your operation.
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What are the main problems in the retail business and how can they be solved?
Hiroyuki Nakazato - European area manager, working over 30 years in Teraoka Digi Teraoka Seiko is one of the international leading manufacturer of scales, printers, weigh/wrap/ labelling and POS as ‘DIGI’ brand name. The creation of innovative products and new markets is best expressed by our corporate slogan, “Searching for a New Balance”, which has guded our company since its founding in 1934. DIGI has successfully created new value and established new standards in a growing array of industries for our customers around the world. By bereaking the blance of conventional common sense and envisioning new directions, we have created opportunities of growth and groundbreaking products, from the world’s first electronic price computing scale to integrated wiehging/wra/labelling systems. Hiroyuki Nakazato, Teraoka Digi
The most common problem in the retail business is the long time spent waiting in line for produce to be weighed on scales. Other problems include customers not being able to see product information and prices clearly, dissatisfied customers walking away and operators making errors due to cluttered displays and having to remember lots of product codes. RETAIL IT
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43 The most common problem in the retail business is the long time spent waiting in line for produce to be weighed on scales. Other problems include customers not being able to see product information and prices clearly, dissatisfied customers walking away and operators making errors due to cluttered displays and having to remember lots of product codes. Customer service is the most important thing in the retail industry and that’s why manufacturers of retail solutions are working hard to solve these problems. With value-add solutions hosted in some PC based scales, profits will increase, and operation efficiency and customer service will be much easier and faster.
Customer benefits like in-store promotions, recommended recipes, advertising and product information are possible through a communication channel provided by the multimedia capability of the scales. Every retail stores strives for increased sales and profit and with up-selling and crossselling functionalities, that are possible because thanks to the multimedia capability of the scales, this is a real opportunity. For example, if a customer buys meat, he or she may decide, after seeing the recommended recipe from the multimedia option, to additionally purchase some vegetables, bread or wine.
know how long they have until they are served. With this option customers can go to other counters, buy other products, browse other produce and then come back just in time to be served.
What are value-add solutions and what do they offer? Value-add solutions are devices that can help both operators and customers. Operators can perform their job more precisely and more professionally with very little chance for error and customers are served quickly and easily. Some solutions can be easily placed anywhere in-store to provide customers with product information due to their small size and high contrast. Other value-add solutions can have bigger, colour displays and can be placed on counters, on products or can even be hung from a ceiling and used for promotions, advertising, best buy campaigns, recipes, etc. These devices allow customers to easily navigate the store and locate the product they want to buy. Where are value-add solutions used? Customers want clear product prices and information in one place. PCbased scales can automatically update electronic price labels and other valueadd solutions whenever the scale database is updated, thus allowing customers to get all the information they need in one place. This possibility saves time, ensures price integrity and is very simple and easy because it is done from one place.
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Serving customers in an orderly manner, maximising customer convenience and solving problems such as customers walking away and long queuing times can be achieved using an integrated queue and collection management system that directs shoppers to the right counters for prompt service. This solution displays the number of the customer who is next in line to be served and the remaining time until the next customers, so the people in line
Electronic displays, like electronic price labels, with a built-in Hi-touch sensor that works as a remote preset key, facilitate fast customer service. By tapping these devices, the sensor sends information about the corresponding Price look-up (PLU) code to the scale, presented as an icon on the operator display for easy selection. Operators no longer need to remember PLU codes or search cluttered displays for the right items and can concentrate fully on serving customers. With electronic displays it is possible to increase operation efficiency and reduce errors. Digital-format training materials, which can be displayed on the operator’s display for easy reference whenever the need arises, dramatically lower training costs and increase operator performance. With digital training materials operators are fully equipped and trained so that they can do their job quickly, professionally and more precisely and increase customer satisfaction.
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Location Matters in Today’s Retail Landscape
Simon Thompson is the group leader of Esri’s commercial business industry solutions. Prior to joining Esri, Simon held senior positions in enterprise GIS and IT companies. He is a widely published author and speaker on the use of location data and geographic science in retail analysis and geomarketing. He works with Global Tier 1 retailers, who wish to profit from Simon’s experience and interests in the role of technology in democratising information, social media, Big Data and the changing dynamics of the global supply chain. As the GIS leader, Esri’s Geographic Information System (GIS) software is used by the majority of retail leaders for everything from market planning and site analysis to logistics and merchandising. Currently, there are more than 1,000,000 users, in 350,000 organisations across the globe. Simon Thompson, Esri
Succeeding in retail has never been easy but the combined tidal waves of the New Normal and ever accelerating technology change and consumer information has many wondering if success for traditional retail is even possible today. We are awash with data and information. Really big data that is enabling consumers to comparison shop and showroom, leaving some bricks and mortar store owners disenfranchised. But it doesn’t need to be like this. Retail IT | Year 3 | Issue 09
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46 Consumers are not just receivers of information, they are information generators. They are barometers that will enable you to better match merchandise to local communities, optimise store floor space, staff and products and improve your day-to-day operations so you profit today and secure tomorrow’s growth. How? Just add location. Location Matters An obvious truth that’s often overlooked is that national market share is the sum of local market shares. Every location has different sales, costs and profit drivers, and every location has a different set of customers with different demographic characteristics and desires. So every customer is the starting point for business analytics and everything they do, every interaction with your network of stores, every online search, social interaction, every offer and marketing contact, has a location too.
Location matters. Not just because of the mass adoption of smartphones, location-aware applications or the explosion of location-based big data. Location matters because it ties many of your business units together and makes it possible to solve problems which had no answers before. It lets you ask new questions and gain new insight and understanding. Location analytics, viewed by many as the next big thing in business intelligence, is lifting the fog of war between the connected consumer and retailers. Want to know where and why stock is turning over quickly and might lead to
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out of stocks? Just add location. Want a better reading of your competitive climate? Just add location. Location analytics lets retailers explore, model, evaluate, investigate and understand the localised market. It keeps stock at the right level so you don’t sell short or discount value and drive profits down.
A hotspot here, a cold spot there. It’s incredibly easy to compare and contrast different places and understand what changes are taking place and the degree and rate of change that occurs over time and space. Location analytics goes beyond simply viewing information in immensely powerful, simple maps. It’s the analytics tools and techniques that tap into your data and bring out the whole story. It’s being able to ask questions of your data, to tie that data and your graphs and charts to ideas, hunches and discoveries that can change the way you do business and the business you do.
What is Location Analytics? Graphs and tables are the bread and butter of retail operations. Business intelligence extended this with dashboards of KPIs, dials, charts and gauges that turned data reports into cockpits from which many attempted to fly by wire. But even with all this, their window on the real world was missing. Maps let you know where you are and what’s ahead. When you can interact with that map, you are more able to understand the patterns that you are seeing. Not only can you discover where stores, customers, the competition, and manufacturing and distribution plants are located, but you can see where geographic features like mountains, rivers, and motorways are having an effect on your business. Gaps in coverage leap off a map and are readily discernible.
The Truth Is Out There Imagine you need to ascertain the true trade area of a store because of competition or cannibalisation. With location analytics, you can easily answer that question and much more besides. You can find out exactly where revenues are coming from for every dollar of revenue or fraction of a percent of your customer base. Location gets you hyper-local. It turns generalities into details, so you tell the whys from the what. Next step, figure out the how.
It’s no surprise that the back page weather map is much more popular and understandable than all those individual statistics in the spreadsheets that accompany them. The detail we look at for separate cities is also the origin of national trends and patterns of variation.
Using location analytics you can optimally calculate the number of sites needed to cover a new market and maximise revenues and profitability. At the same time you can modify the formats, size and operating parameters to explore different scenarios of how
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47 much business would be generated at one location versus another. Not only can you model, analyse, and shift information, you can actually find the locations for those best sites and the optimal network of stores and merchandise. When you understand location, you can take advantage of dissecting those variables that make each place unique. What does this mean to today’s retailer? It means that you can discover and deliver the right products to the right people at the right time, every time. For decades retailers have relied on segmentation and persona to divide and group their customers and markets to more precisely target their best customers and prospects. Segmentation systems operate on the theory that people with similar tastes, lifestyles, and behaviours seek others with the same tastes – “like seeks like.” These behaviours can be measured, predicted, and targeted. Segmentation is coarse
at a time when profitability is linked to micro-segments and marketers are striving for mass customisation. Location is a way to build a better understanding of consumer behaviour, to model customer diversity, their habits and sentiment from the perspective of the retailer using all the information we have on them – from loyalty cards and checkin to social media likes and followers to offers and coupons. With location as the steel thread that connects all of these online and offline behaviours the anonymous shopper becomes a known consumer. Beyond Alphabet Soup The line between mobile shopping, search, comparison shopping and check-ins is already blurred. Mobile social media or “Mocial” marketing has evolved into SoLoMo - Social, Local and Mobile marketing all mashed up into one big concept that uses location to improve customer intimacy and connect the customer’s activities to individual location.
If you want to stop sales from leaking out of your store as the showrooming customer compares prices online, you need to know the customer is in the store in the first place! SoLoMo does that and location analytics takes location and puts it to work, making it a powerful weapon in your arsenal of marketing and business tools. Today it’s possible to have a segment of one, yet aggregate individuals into thousands of hyper-local groupings that reflect your customers better. Location and location analysis enables retailers to differentiate merchandise assortments and tailor them precisely to local tastes and market potential. In the limited space that’s every consumers’ shopping trolley, location is enabling bricks-andmortar retailers to successfully fight for every dollar and maximise the value of every transaction. In today’s competitive marketplace, location’s a winning strategy that you can’t afford to overlook.
Better Business Analytics. Just Add Location. Attend the Esri Business Summit July 7–9, 2013, San Diego, California Attend the Esri Business Summit and take part in keynote presentations, targeted executive tracks and exhibits created to help you pull actionable intelligence and business insight from your organization’s data.
Register to attend at esri.com/bizsummit
Retail IT | Year 3 | Issue 09
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IT in the fitting room
Retail IT | Year 3 | Issue 09
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50 Influencing the purchase decision of the customer is always a primary target of the retailer. The retailer is always looking for new models and new technologies to achieve this. In fashion retail the customer takes most of his or her decisions in the fitting room. It would be ideal to have a solution which supports the customer during their time in the fitting room. Such a solution could make a significant impact on customer service and in doing so directly increase profits. It is abundantly clear that technology needs to enable the business. In order to derive the greatest possible advantage from the business strategy, technology can be a great help for or even driver of new ideas and concepts. Additionally, the right technology can solve some problems specific to retail and in doing so significantly reducing costs to the retailer.
organizational problems connected with this area in the fashion store. On the other hand, the fitting room is the place where the decision to buy or not to buy is made. We can even say that the fitting room is the most important area of the fashion store. A fact which confirms this even more strongly is the fact that the conversion rate on the shop floor is around 10%. This means that only 10% of customers entering the store and browsing products actually buy something. The conversion rate in the fitting room is around 70%. Furthermore, analysis shows that the conversion rate of non-served fitting rooms is half that of served fitting rooms. This clearly shows that influencing the customer’s behavior in the fitting room can lead to a higher conversion rate. When we talk about IT in retail we tend to think of complex software solutions for the supply chain, the point of sale or other areas of retailing. But it does not always make sense to reach for the big guns. Sometimes there are small-scale technical solutions that implement ideas with amazing effects. The “small guns� sometimes produce much greater benefits much faster than large-scale solutions.
One such problematic area in fashion retail is the fitting room. Currently there are almost no solutions addressing the problems of process automation, providing the best possible assistance to the customer, possible theft and other
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An example of such a solution is that from Alert Technologies. It implements a process which begins with the store assistant escorting the customer to the fitting room. Inside the fitting room there is a button. By pressing this button, the
customer can electronically (by radio, pager or mobile) alert the store assistant in the event that he or she needs further assistance. The button outside the door flashes or lights up if the store assistant is needed, for example just to give his or her opinion on how the customer looks in a new shirt or to bring the same shirt in another size. Depending on the frequency with which the light is blinking the store assistant can immediately see which customer has been waiting longer. All actions, either on the part of the customer or of the store assistant can be saved in the database. By running certain reports, the processes connected with the fitting rooms can be analyzed and, with the right measures, optimized. Some of the data which can be captured and made good use of are: - how many customers visit each fitting room; - how long they stay each time they visit the fitting room; - how many times they receive services; - what the response time of store assistants is. Clearly this kind of solution can increasing the level of customer service, and customer service being the name of the game this is an obvious opportunity to increase sales.
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Is now the time for web POS?
Imagine if there were a printing solution for which you didn’t need to have a driver installed. Imagine if you could control this printer by sending simple XML data to it. Imagine if you could share the printer between several different POSes and completely out of the browser. What if we told you that this future is already a reality?
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For many years now there has been ongoing discussion about online POS. There are voices which are dead set against it. The major argument is that master data and transaction data have to be stored locally in case of network or other problems. And this is true. Greater security is indeed achieved if all data is redundantly stored in several places, for example on each POS, on each store server and on the head office system. Usually there are even more places where the data is saved, such as archive systems and backup solutions. However, proponents argue that internal and external networks are now of a high enough quality and there are almost no offline situations. In addition, there are now some very interesting technologies which make it possible to save a certain amount of data within the browser. These technologies are able to bridge the situation where the browser is offline. This means that the web-based application can continue working as if it is online – all data is saved within the browser and as soon as the network is established again, the data is exchanged. In any case, whoever is right, the biggest
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problem in the implementation of webbased POS solutions has been retail specific hardware, particularly with regard to the printer. If a receipt printer needs to be used at the POS then some kind of printer driver needs to be installed. In most cases we are talking about the UPOS standard, meaning a JavaPOS or OPOS/POS for .net driver. This means that a real online POS, where just the browser is needed to provide the functionality, is not possible. A printer driver has to be installed at the very least. This fact has other consequences – for example dependence on a particular operating system. This was true until now. One simple but very powerful idea has generated a printer solution for which you no longer need a driver. The idea comes from the worldwide leader in printing solutions, Epson. Epson has created a printer which has a processor, operating system and web server. It has to all intents and purposes an embedded PC with an Intel Atom Processor. The operating system can be either POSready 7 or Linux. In both cases Kiosk
applications or POS applications can use it. But the most powerful and interesting feature is that there is a welldefined web based interface (XML) for communicating with the printer. Printing something is as simple as requesting an Internet page in the browser. The printing application just needs to speak XML. This is opening up very interesting areas for the use of such printers. Just think of mobile applications, web-based POS solutions, customer loyalty applications, web based kiosks or kitchen printers. Printer sharing in the network can also easily be implemented. This EPSON solution, called OmniLink, was officially announced during the NRF in New York. Production and shipping should begin as early as the first quarter of this year. There are already many software vendors who have included these printers in their solutions. In doing so they are creating highly innovative and interesting solutions for retail. We are very keen to see the impact this simple but powerful idea will have in the world of retail IT.
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NO NEED TO SHOP AROUND...
Visit jda.com info.europe@jda.com
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The Art of Allocation - Right Stock, Right Place, Right Time
Lee Gill joined JDA in January 2012 as Vice President, Retail Strategy for the EMEA region. In addition to developing and implementing the company’s retail strategy, Lee is also responsible for building JDA’s executive-level relationships with customers and key prospects. Lee has considerable retail sector experience having held a similar role at i2 Technologies where he was Vice President of Retail Strategy in EMEA. In this role he worked with a number of retailers covering fashion, hard lines and grocery, many of which were in the infancy of building multi-channel formats. JDA® Software Group, Inc., The Supply Chain Company®, offers the broadest portfolio of supply chain, retail merchandising, store operations and all-channel commerce solutions to help companies manage the flow of goods from raw materials to finished products and into the hands of consumers. Lee Gill, JDA
The days of selling within seasons are long gone; sales periods that once spanned months have now shrunk to weeks. This ‘multiplier’ effect presents retailers with huge challenges, because shoppers want the latest, most fashionable products immediately. So how do retailers ensure that high-fashion products with short lifecycles are placed in the right channels, in the right quantity and replenished carefully to minimise end-of-season markdowns? In today’s complex retail landscape, it’s vital to have the right products in the right place at the right time to satisfy individual shopper demands. Armed with smartphones, tablets and laptops, modern consumers are well equipped to shop elsewhere if they can’t find what they’re looking for immediately. This article by JDA outlines how retailers who can respond quickly and allocate their products precisely are the ones who’ll succeed in the future. RETAIL IT
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55 How intelligent allocation software can put smiles on the faces of retailers and customers alike The days of selling within seasons are long gone; sales periods that once spanned months have now shrunk to weeks. This ‘multiplier’ effect presents retailers with huge challenges, because shoppers want the latest, most fashionable products immediately. So how do retailers ensure that highfashion products with short lifecycles are placed in the right channels, in the right quantity and replenished carefully to minimise end-of-season markdowns?
the need to transfer stock or mark it down. Large quantities of misdirected merchandise also interfere with retailers’ ability to turn over inventory and make space for new products. This is where intelligent allocation software can make a huge difference. Matching supply with demand – with greater precision By using this software to gather and analyse data on local demographics and shopper behaviour, retailers can adopt a more scientific approach to allocation that’s tailored to specific stores. The flow of stock can also meet store demand without sacrificing speed. Each store gets the merchandise they need, in the right blend of colours and sizes, without being overloaded or understocked.
allocation activities, vastly reducing the amount of staff time dedicated to them. Intelligent allocation is helping retailers boost sales by delivering greater product availability. It’s also having the same effect on their profit margins, by drastically reducing markdowns, terminal stock levels and inventory carrying costs. In fact, one international fashion retailer has managed to improve its store sales by 9.9%, while another has increased its in-stock rates from 90% to 97% – with no increase in inventory.
If retailers’ initial assumptions on allocation prove inaccurate, this can easily be rectified in the replenishment stage by redirecting their second wave of stock to stores that are performing the best. And when it comes to the final push, they can employ the same targeting techniques to allocate markdowns.
Retailers today commonly push products quickly into stores using a ‘scattergun’ approach. When new products land in the distribution centres or warehouses, 60-70% is often sent directly to stores. Sizes and colours are distributed evenly, no matter where the stores are located and regardless of the buying patterns of local shoppers. This manual allocation process has a single goal: move merchandise rapidly. There are benefits to this approach in that trendy products are available when consumers demand them, and retailers know that at least some of their merchandise is reaching customers. But this approach also has a downside: where merchandise fails to sell as hoped, costs accumulate because of
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Boosting availability, flexibility and profitability Allocation software can transform an inefficient, inaccurate process into something precise that matches products with demand at local store level. Some retailers have even been able to automate 95% of their daily
In today’s complex retail landscape, it’s vital to have the right products in the right place at the right time to satisfy individual shopper demands. Armed with smartphones, tablets and laptops, modern consumers are well equipped to shop elsewhere if they can’t find what they’re looking for immediately. The retailers who can respond quickly and allocate their products precisely are the ones who’ll succeed in the future.
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What are the most significant challenges faced by retail, hospitality and consumer-focused businesses today? www.onwindows.com/speak
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Gearing up for Growth Harry Manley is Managing Director of multi-channel retail specialist, Omnica, an ERP provider which helps retailers to improve their core business processes, including order management. Previously Commercial Director of Maginus, Harry has over a decade experience in the IT industry. Established in 2007, Omnica provides a fully integrated ecommerce ERP system for ecommerce and direct marketing, based on Microsoft Dynamics AX and its own Omnica MCR product set. With a single focus on the requirements of multi-channel merchants, Omnica MCR brings together online, catalogue and retail store operations within a single business system. Used in a wide range of companies across the UK and globally, the Omnica solution gives organisation’s comprehensive control over multi-channel sales, CRM, catalogue management, promotions, procurement, fulfilment, warehousing and customer service. An end-to-end solution, it allows companies to market, sell and deliver products and services over multiple channels and provides the flexibility and functionality to drive customer engagement and business growth. Omnica is a Gold-certified Microsoft Dynamics partner, and was selected as a finalist for the 2012 Microsoft Dynamics ISV of the year for the UK. Harry Manley, Omnica
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58 When daily order volumes are measured in thousands rather than hundreds, even the smallest exception to normal ways of working can lead to significant admin overhead. Harry Manley, Managing Director at multichannel retail specialist Omnica, says retailers need intelligent order management systems if they are to keep day-to-day issues under control and drive down costly manual intervention.
With no let up in costs or customer expectations for faster delivery and lower prices, retailers face the challenge of providing the best possible customer experience at the same time as managing orders profitably. With the profit margin on a returning customer said to be seven times higher than that of a new customer, the benefits of good customer service need little explanation.
managing exceptions manually becomes time-consuming, costly and eventually impossible. In order to gear up for growth, multichannel retailers need an intelligent order management system to automate the exceptions as well as the standard process. Understanding customer expectations and industry best-practice are essential prerequisites to implementing an order management system, which equips you for growth. So where can an order management system help your business? Let’s start with how you communicate with customers. Everyone is used to email order confirmations and shipping confirmations when shopping online, and many organisations have also implemented SMS in recent years. What about automating other types of communication?
However, as business volumes increase, it becomes more challenging to give each sale the personal attention it needs. Small retailers might have the time and resource to apply an 80/20 rule, where systems deal with most day-to-day scenarios, but manual intervention is used for the remainder, to ensure the customer gets the best possible service. With a larger customer base, and daily order volumes measured in thousands,
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For example, regarding returns and refunds, or in the event that shipments are delayed. What if orders are dispatched in multiple parcels, or if some of your assortment is drop-shipped from a supplier’s warehouse, directly to your customer? What if there is a problem, for example, with a credit card payment, or some other reason to put an order on hold.
An efficient order management system can automate all forms of communication, by email, SMS, and traditional post, so that customers are never left in doubt about the status of their transactions. And can also manage and track inbound customer queries, by phone or email, for example, using technologies such as number recognition and automatic email parsing to make the process efficient for merchant and customer alike. Cash collection is key to any business, and order management systems play a vital role in processing card and cheque
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59 payments as well as PayPal, Google, Amazon and other payment methods, offering a choice of different payment service providers. PCI compliance is a key consideration, and the best approach is normally to keep card data well away from a merchant’s own computers and networks as much as possible.
In small businesses, fraud detection occurs almost as a natural process but as you expand, sales can’t be given the same personal attention, making you an easier target for fraud. Having a system that automatically detects potentially fraudulent transactions based on how the order has been made, where it is being delivered to, and how it has been paid for etc., can significantly reduce your exposure to chargebacks on fraudulent transactions. As well as customer communications and payment processing, an order management system can also combine sophisticated warehouse management functions, tuned to the needs of a homedelivery operation. Warehouse space isn’t cheap, and as your business expands, it should look to maximise the use of the space at its disposal. This means having efficient algorithms to locate stock in the most appropriate place, and to control the flow of goods through receiving, putaway, bulk storage, picking, packing and despatch areas.
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The work involved in physically picking stock from warehouse shelves and packing it for despatch represents one of the highest labour costs in the business. An efficient OMS should provide a range of methods for doing this, tuned to the type of goods, the layout of the space, automatically dealing with products that may be experiencing high sales volumes due to promotional activity. The key is normally to minimise double handling of products and data, whilst avoiding costly mistakes. Parcel carriers offer a myriad of services and selecting the most suitable one isn’t easy. Whilst some specialist solutions are available that automatically choose the best-priced service across a multitude of options on a parcel-by-parcel basis, the best bet for most merchants is to fix on two or three providers and negotiate volume deals. An order management system can then choose the service to use based on whether it’s standard, next day or weekend delivery, for example, as well as on the delivery address and the size and weight of the goods. Online parcel tracking should be easily available, both for customers directly, and a merchant’s own customer–service representatives.
customer loyalty. In the fashion sector, customers are often encouraged to order more than one size of a garment, to see which one fits. Systems must be able to cope with returns in a slick way, both for the customer and the merchant. This includes the ability to accurately calculate the amount of any refund due, even in complex situations. For example, what if a customer orders 3 items and used a coupon which gave them £10 off for spending over £50. They then return two items, but exchange one of them for something else. An efficient OMS should eat this sort of scenario for breakfast.
As retailers gear up for growth, they can no longer depend on sub-standard order systems. If you are to offer a premium service – a necessity as customers become ever more demanding, a system which automates as many processes as possible whilst enabling tailored customer experience, efficient stock and warehouse management, an increasing array of options, as well as providing premium data security, is vital. It can make the difference between boom and bust.
Consumers expect to be able to return products quickly and easily, and efficient, customer-friendly returns processing can make a huge different in terms of
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Pos-ecommerce The retail industry and technology are strongly linked to one another and any changes and advancements in technology have a strong and immediate impact on the retail industry; be it in sales, marketing, customer engagement or payment methods. Technology has transformed the way retail operates and reaches customers.
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61 Point of Sale (POS) has been an integral part of the retail business, from the very simple stand-alone and manual cash registers with basic functionalities to today’s very advanced, computerbased, online-connected, peripheralintegrated (barcode scanners, scales, payment terminals, displays, etc.) solutions. They come in various shapes and forms, such as dedicated hardware, the typical PC or a mobile device, with the latter having gained an increased presence in recent years. As business and customer requirements changed over the years, vendors gradually and consistently added new modules year after year to satisfy those requirements.
systems are expected to have the corresponding terminals making it possible to accept payments where a mobile phone serves as a wallet. There are many functionalities and services that retailers need to include in a typical POS solution. Some of those functionalities include customer loyalty programmes, credit/debit payment facilitating terminals, price lookup, etc. As a result of this evolution, POS has become the standard store systems platform, which makes it a growing force in the retail world.
inventory, CRM, financials and warehousing, all built into the POS software. Prior to the modern POS terminals, all these functions were performed independently and required information to be re-keyed manually, which was prone to error and time consuming. Multi-store retailers have their POS terminals connected to the Internet or a local back office server so inventory, sales and other information can be captured, stored and further processed in one location.
Depending on the type and size of the retailer, a POS terminal will be customised to suit different industries and cater for different needs.
Today’s POS gives a business a bird’seye view of all its operations, facilitating sound and well-informed decisionmaking, and capturing and storing detailed information that is very useful for helping management to identify problems, better manage personnel, recognise trends, etc.
We expect POS solutions to incorporate new features such as social media integration for gathering more information about customers and more customer loyalty programmes offering discounts, rewards, etc. We expect also advanced mobile options to be introduced in order to reduce customer waiting time in long queues. With mobile wallets gaining ground, POS
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For example, a greengrocer’s will require a scale at the point of sale, while bars and restaurants will need to customise the sold item when a customer has a special food or drink request. The modern point of sale will also include advanced functionalities to cater to different requirements, such as
The prevalence of the Internet has seen an increase in web-based POS solutions as an alternative to traditionally locally installed POS software. This approach allows any modifications or additions to be made immediately available to all connected POS terminals without the need to install software in each of them individually. E-commerce has benefited enormously from the fast moving world of technology. Over the past 10-15 years, the Internet has changed the way we buy and sell goods and services.
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62 Most retailers have seized the opportunity the Internet has to offer and have created e-commerce websites to sell goods and services and this is a key growth element in most retail businesses. The ever-growing number of smart phones and their capabilities of browsing the web and running various applications presents another new opportunity. Mobile applications are another sales channel which retailers cannot ignore. They help create a more personal and direct relationship with customers, taking the shopping experience to another level.
The trend for online shopping suggests that we can only expect more and more people shopping online, be it in search for better deals or just because of the comfort of shopping at home and the absence of time restrictions of a typical store. In order to better serve customers, be more efficient and maximise profits, e-commerce websites have come a long way from when they just facilitated sales and have turned into feature-rich applications that enhance the shopping experience by presenting offers and loyalty schemes and by being highly customisable to suit different customers, whether they are located locally or internationally. Because most retailers have both brickand-mortar stores and virtual online stores they have to manage both instore POS and online e-commerce solutions. Some retailers treat and manage these solutions as separate
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entities, but the trends is towards a growing number of retailers who have integrated and manage them as one.
lookups, support customer loyalty schemes, capture and store various information, etc. The cloud is the latest “new thing� that the retail industry has to consider after weighing carefully the pros and the cons of this technology. This technology can narrow the differences between the instore POS solution and its online counterpart even further
Since both solutions rely on the same data sources, they have gone towards being more similar to one another rather than taking different paths. Having one integrated solution means no extra technical effort is required to maintain two systems, offering a seamless service for both online and in-store customers.
In-store POS and online e-commerce websites generate large amounts of data each day, and sales data can also be obtained through loyalty cards and discount coupons. Most low- and medium-level retailers do not have the necessary resources to capture or utilise such enormous amounts of data. Cloud providers in retail can collect such data from sophisticated server networks connected to the supply chain to independent cash registers at familyowned, small retail outlets and store it for the retailer. Such stored data may be accessed from anywhere, provided there is an Internet connection.
From the point of view of businesses, a POS solution and an e-commerce solution are not so different: they record sales, manage inventory, allow price
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