The latest episode of The Retail Tea Break podcast is a little different. Recorded live at the Olympia in London, I’m joined by a whole host of guests from The Retail Technology Show.
The magic of retail could be seen and heard on every stage and at every booth! With key themes of creating meaningful experiences for the retailer, the customer and the employee, this was retail at its best.
The latest episode of the Retail Tee Brit podcast is a little different. Recorded live at the Olympia in London. I'm joined by a whole host of guests from the Retail Technology Show. The magic of retail could definitely be seen and heard on every stage and at every booth with key themes of creating meaningful experiences for the retailer, the customer, and the employee.
This was definitely retail at its best. So this episode features retail media experts with intelligent digital signage, generating new sales opportunities and enhancing retail profitability, technology that helps merchandising teams forecast and make data driven decisions, integrated 3d holographic displays that provide an immersive experience.
Technology that gives every single customer that VIP treatment both in store or at home. Communication solutions that improve customer experience by combining wireless headsets with AI features. Technology that empowers retailers and brands to design and launch omni channel second hand offers. And then there are great insights from Craig Ash, Managing Director of Swarovski UK and Ireland.
Amazing advice from Holly Tucker MBE, founder and CEO of Holly & Co. And we've got top retail expert and author Oliver Banks who discusses his latest book, Driving Retail Transformation. But kicking us off, well there could only be one person, Matt Bradley. Event director and founder of the Retail Technology Show.
And of course I had to start by congratulating him on a brilliant show.
So I'm here at the Retail Technology Show in London with the Retail Technology Show extraordinaire, Matt Bradley. Congratulations on an epic show. Very, very kind of you. Thank you. So tell us about this year's show. Who've we got? What is everyone seeing? And the people coming through the doors.
It's just huge. I mean, it's, I've always wanted to get away from that trade show philosophy because although trading is really important, actually, it's more about building this community. And I think one of the best parts about the show is just wandering around and seeing so many people high fiving, hugs, handshakes, smiles, laughs. And it just really feels like this is a united community because I think so often with retail. You do feel very alone. You are, you know, you feel like you're facing these problems alone and it's just so good now and again, just the lovely part. I really enjoy watching that. There's huge amount of themes around the obvious stuff of AI. We were obviously still trying to look at logistics, supply chain returns are not getting any easier. They're still costing retailers fortunes. So there's so many little elements that we're sort of trying to cover here. And, hopefully give a bit of a roadmap for some of these retailers for a brighter future.
No, I completely agree. And actually walking around, as you say, tech, I think a retail tech especially can be seen as quite hard, something that sits in a silo on its own. But actually, we've heard lots today about customer experience, the employee experience, obviously, the customer being a heart of everything. So it's great to hear that actually none of that traditional retail has been lost. We're just layering the tech on top.
And that's it. Tech is to enhance that experience. And when I focus back on when I first started this show, maybe 10 years ago, It was very techy. It was very techy and I would walk around, I wouldn't understand any of the signage and I was thinking, God, I'm way out of my league. It then sort of drifted into marketing and there was a lot more sort of end user type print. And now they sort of really cleverly merged the tech element and how it's going to benefit you as a business. So it's vital in today's retail.
l take us through the rest of:
Yeah. Well, I haven't had the chance to sit down in many seminars, I'd like to be able to, so I'm gonna have to look back on those over the next few weeks, but I think what was really, really key is when we do our pre show research to try and build the conference program, because this isn't built by myself and my team. It is built by retailers who are saying, here's the issues we're facing. Can you find some resolution for us? So AI came up a lot, as I said, previously, logistics, e commerce, retail media, I think we spoke about it off camera a minute ago. That's really, really interesting. I think you'll start seeing a lot more of that over the next year, and it'll be really interesting to see how much influence that has on next year's conference program.
I've got Darren Cremins from Scala with me. Darren, tell us a little bit about Scala. Yeah, hi. Scala is historically a digital signage company, been around for over 30 years now. Basically putting content on screens across the retail environment. And more so in the last number of years, we've been focused on retail media networks. Scala's part of a bigger group called StrataCash. And as part of that group, we have Scala, Walkbase and PRN that can offer the complete turnkey solution for retail media networks.
It's a fascinating product. I'm obviously here on the stand, lots of different types of screens doing different things with the consumer, whether it's giving them recipes for their dinner tonight, whether it's giving them advice about their wine, it's covering everything, but I suppose for the retail media or for the retailer, how are they able to then track metrics or pull data from this?
Yeah, that's a great question. I'd say putting the content on the screens is the easy bit. It's measuring whether those screens are being effective. Providing value, not only for the customer, but for the retailer and the brand as well. So with the introduction of our sister company WalkBase, who developed a number of different sensor technology, we can now track what you would do online, offline, and in the store. So whether that's tagging a basket and understand the movement of that basket and where it's dwelled or hasn't inside that environment, or we've got a new technology, which measures water where, as a human, we're we've got water in our body, obviously, so we'll understand that movement without going into camera technology with GDPR we can now do it safely using different technologies. So that's really key to what we're trying to achieve, is yes we can put the content on the screens, but also we can do that measurement and they can the retailers and the brands To use that data to throw that through and in addition to that We'll then tag our unique IDs with the loyalty card ID and then we can start using that information to start putting advertising out onto streaming media, you know, such as Netflix and so on.
It's a fascinating point that you make there about tagging the baskets, you're tagging everything but the customer themselves, which I know, as you said, GDPR the last few years is something we all have to be so mindful of. Are you finding then that not only the consumer is more willing to interact with products like this, but also the retailer feels a little safer maybe because it's, it's pulling away from any sort of GDPR issues.
Yeah, that's a really good point. And obviously we, we do it in a couple of different ways, but cause we're not touching on GDPR, there isn't that issue at all. So it's not even a conversation. Yes, the data is clean. Obviously, you know, that's, that's one thing is that it's protected. Obviously if you're using a loyalty card, you're opting in anyway, or using a scan and go, you're opting in. So at that point, we know who you are when you enter the store. So as long as we're allowed to be opted, we're opted in, then obviously that covers that off. It's for those that want their privacy to remain, we're doing it as a persona, which is actually a basket. It's the move of that basket or a trolley rather than the individual themselves. So it covers everything off really.
I'm with Oliver Banks. Congratulations on the new book, Driving Retail Transformation. I, of course, I'm going to put a link to the new book in the show notes here. Oliver, tell me a little bit about it.
Well, thanks, Melissa. It's very kind of you. So Driving Retail Transformation, How to Navigate Disruption and Change is a book for retail leaders to be able to, as, as the name suggests, be able to successfully take on the, the, the tough journey of change in our ever evolving world, you know, we talk a lot about the what of change, but actually if we don't deliver on the how, all of that what discussion is useless. So actually this is really about how do you go about making these tough changes in the dynamic retail environment.
Sounds so interesting. So for you then, and I suppose with the research you've had to do for the book, what are some of those kinds of issues or challenges that you've come across?
Well, one of the big challenges is that we're naturally set up, as people, and as companies as well, actually, we're naturally set up to reject change. I'm sure we've all come across the phrase, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And I'd add on to that phrase that culture unfortunately detests the taste of change. So it's not a recipe that's set up for success. And actually, when you look into our human psyche, we are set up, again, to fear change, the unknown, we are set up to fear change and between those two elements, we're, we're, we're, we're going to struggle, unfortunately. So we need to be really intentional and we need to think about how can we set up a, a robust way of approaching change. And one of the really interesting things that, as I was starting to research the book and planning out the ideas was, Thinking about the phrase, what gets measured, gets managed. And then I recognize that when we're talking about transformation, what gets measured and when we're talking about change, yeah, there are aspects, but we certainly never look at the whole gambit, the whole aspect of all these different things that are going on in our change journey and our change initiative. And so how, how on earth can we hope to manage it? If we're not, if we're not measuring it effectively. So that's one of the core concepts that I wanted to introduce to the book, which I called the retail transformation steering wheel, which is a, an easy and dynamic way without adding lots of bureaucracy to start measuring change and transformation.
So I'm here at the retail technology show in London with Rebecca Carrington from Spotbox AI. Rebecca, tell us a little bit about Sparkbox.
So we at Sparkbox AI, we take, data from retailers and we can do a line demand forecast. So we can take people's sales and we can forecast out what they're going to sell week by week. And in doing that, we can then use that for many things to help merchandisers and buyers plan and trade their stock. So if you've got a good sales forecast on stock, that's due to come in, you can plan your inventory better. You can decide whether you need to rebuy, how to allocate things like that, how you're going to buy your range plan. Then when stock is in, you can choose whether it needs to have a pricing change, whether it needs to be re bought again, whether the sizing needs to be updated, you know, we can do like a plethora of things with the data. And our main tools are price optimization, allocation and replenishment. We do a rebuy tool and we've got many, many more things being developed at the moment.
It sounds so interesting in that merchandising and planning, and I suppose even buyer space, But for them to be moving into tech is really different. How are you finding bringing people from that merchandising aspect towards more software and tech side of things? Well, I think, any merchandisers or buyers that currently work in most UK or international retailers mainly use Excel as their tool. And that's what we've been relying on for years. And we obviously haven't had like the access to forecast so easily. At Sparkbox, what we try and do is we try and make all our tools as very merchandiser facing. So we like them to have elements like you have in Excel. So they're easy to use and they have all the information that we know merchandisers would need. And the reason we know this is because within our team, we have a lot of people that are ex merchandisers that know how merchandisers plan and do their, their planning for buys and markdown and things like that. So we design everything with that in mind because we have in house people who've worked in retail.
So I'm with Chris Smith, UK, sales Director for Hypervsn. Chris, tell us a little bit about what Hypervsn does.
Yeah, hi. Thank you for stopping by. Hypervsn is a holographic effect display, so what we are doing here today is hopefully you can see by looking around us, we are capturing everyone's attention with our holographic experiences.
So, we make displays that can then be merged together to make large walls, or we can create digital avatars, or we can create interactive experiences for brands and organizations.
It's certainly that wow experience. Everyone, everyone's coming over. Everyone's been here over the last kind of day, day and a half. You can see so many. What I love though, is you've got it interacting with the physical product. So on the stand here, you've got bottles of perfume. And if you pick one of them up on the screen, you start to display the notes, what it's made of. How does that work in retail?
It's, it's quite good because I think at the minute retail is struggling to actually connect with people in store, you know? We are more familiar than we ever have been with screen technology. So just putting a screen up to actually connect with someone and display a product, get information out there. It doesn't work anymore because most of the younger generations are actually looking at the screen in their hand at that moment. So we find by firstly showing something in a 3d holographic form, we capture people's attentions. We stop them. Then once they realize that if I lift this product up, I now start getting more information, I find out what's in the product, I find out what the product's for. It creates, not only does it create dwell time, but it actually stops people for a moment and they actually start to enjoy playing around with the technology and finding out more about the product. Which, for a brand, bringing a new product to market or trying to find out is absolutely perfect.
So I'm joined by Craig Ash from Swarovski, just given a fantastic presentation here at the Retail Technology Show. Craig, tell us a little bit about you and joining Swarovski a few years ago.
Yeah, so I've been with Swarovski for six years now. I joined as the director of sales and I've been managing director and general manager for the UK and Ireland business for the last two years. Before that, my background was fashion retail. So I worked for New Look, I worked for Top Shop and Top Man and started on the shop floor, 24 years ago, which is actually quite scary. It makes me feel very old.
Oh, you and me both. And it's funny, you started off your presentation today about talking about, you realized quite quickly that, you know, yes, you were able to help the store make money, but it also put money in your back pocket as well, which I think for young retailers starting out is, it's just a key message. Everyone wins when you do your job, right? But look, to bring us back to your presentation today, which was fantastic. I might add, what are your key takeaways on, I suppose, when it comes to customer experience and Omnichannel?
I guess my key takeaways is that it's always tough for business leaders to select the right technology to enable their business. And, you know, it's great to come to an event like this, which is really a melting pot of options and ideas. But ultimately you've got to start and end with the customer journey. You've got to think through a customer's eyes. What are their requirements? What are their expectations? And how can you then use technology to fulfill that? And I think there's so many exciting innovations out there, you know, right from AI through to the metaverse, through to augmented reality. But we've really got to be quick to evaluate what are things that's truly lines up with your customer vision as a brand. And how can you use those then to enable it and bring it to life for your customer? If it elevates the customer journey, if it elevates the customer experience, it's ultimately gonna get them to ultimately spend more. And selecting the right, the right technology at the right time. I think also then future proofs you against your competition.
So I'm here with Sarah Friswell from Red Ant. Sarah, tell us a bit about Red Ant.
Hi, thank you for asking. So we're here at the Retail Tech Show, really busy today, which is great. Red Ant is a product that's been designed for store associates to help them sell more and deliver enhanced customer experience. The app was founded about 12 years ago now based on the fact that consumers actually had more research at their fingertips and store associates. So what we do is we surface on a very basic level, we surface the customer information along with the product information and allow the store associates to really amplify what they do with customers. One of the interesting things I've seen today and heard quite a lot of people talk about is around a lot of the markets and regions are tough right now and focusing on the customer you already have. Yes, most brands need to build more customers, but how do we look after those customers so that when you come back to a brand, you know what they bought last time, you know when their birthday is on a much more personalized level than that email we all get. So come back in, and how do we make sure we're taking care of those customers when they're in that store, whether that's cutting down the time to get that shoe they've been looking for, coming back when they've had something on their wishlist for six months, happens quite typically in beauty, like, products are so popular that when they do come back in stock, like, you might miss that drop when they're all back, so using the messaging part of the application to say, Hey, this is back in stock. I've got one behind the counter for you. When can you come back in?
Do you think this is the newer or maybe tech savvy way of driving loyalty? Because as you said, everyone's looking for that customer to stay with them and they want to retain them. But do you think this is the better way now? I suppose it's the more realistic way of driving those sales, but also keeping that customer happy.
Yeah. So actually an interesting point. I think like we all, you know, in our like content discussions, we talk a lot about. Well, where does clienteling sit within loyalty? And I think that's a really key point. There's loyalty on a whole, and everyone's used to the loyalty programs that are running. But how do you layer on top clienteling on top of the fact that you're a gold member? What does that mean in terms of how do people talk to you? How often they talk to you? Do you always talk to the same person? Do they make sure you have, in some of our clients, like a VVIP service in that the driver will bring it to your house? Like, etc. So how do you, like, it really is almost the opposite of one size fits all. Like, how do you, per brand, look at those really valuable customers and ensure That how they're treated is reflected in that brand ethos as well. So, really good example is some luxury brands that the training, the store associates receive in terms of the product is amazing. They're like no head and shoulders above anyone else about that. How do you make sure that their technology enhances that rather than just is the iPad they've got to get out of the drawer. And that's really what we focus on making sure through training, through behavioral change, that it becomes, actually the store associate becomes the champion of the product because it just makes their life so much easier. And, you know, on a financial sense, often it's tied to conversion, that they're confident that's being tracked and they're being rewarded, whether that be the in store sale, or the help you gave them in store, they go on to buy online and that attribution still comes back to them. So that you don't get this trade off between like, I don't like, I don't want to do that because that's Econ. How do you make sure that all ties together?
I'm here with Ian Rowan, CEO of X-Hoppers. Ian, tell us a bit about the company.
So X-Hoppers is a technology company that specializes in addressing the needs of retailers. So we use a headset that's wearable in store and a mobile app to connect the workers in stores, brick and mortar stores, to our technology that we do in the back end that's AI driven to really resolve the issues that retailers are seeing today.
And it seems like obviously loads of issues in store, whether it's theft, whether it's customers looking around, almost needing support, but maybe colleagues haven't noticed that. How do you think X-Hoppers then is bringing all the technology that some retailers may have together in one system to make it more efficient, both for the colleague, but also of course, to support the customer?
Yeah, there's, there's lots of things that we do that retailers are using already, such as security systems, but they're, they're siloed independent. You maybe have a security guard that then has to alert somebody. We're connecting those alerts directly with the people in the shop floor so that they can act on those instantly. But we're also doing that same gesture recognition that we're looking for on a CCTV to look for positive because it's great that we're resolving that negative. We want to be giving a positive message as well and making sure that everybody that walks into the shop has the possibility to be engaged by somebody in the store and maximize the sales, the revenue from those people that are entering the shop.
And I love the fact as well, this really seems to enhance the customer experience. So again, it's not just about the negative. It's not just about the theft. You were saying there, you can even go as so much as, you know, remembering that if I came in last week to buy a brown jacket, a colleague may come over to me then and ask me how that jacket is and what else I might need to go with that.
Yeah. Well, you think about the online experience, the moment you hit the landing page, the retailer knows every single thing about you. In a typical brick and mortar store, they don't know anything about you until you've reached the end of that journey and you present maybe your loyalty card or you get asked for an email address. What we're able to do is access all that, the 360 data on the customer at the moment they enter the shop floor and deliver a subset of that information to the people on the shop floor so they can go and greet the customers very personalized, giving them a much more personalized and a unique experience.
So I'm here with Guatier Feld from CircularX and I'm fascinated They say launch your own Omnichannel pre owned program. Gautier, tell us a bit about CircularX.
Hello. So, CircularX is providing technology to retailers and brands, allowing them to launch buyback, refurbishing and resell programs. The idea is very basically for a retailer to offer an option for their consumer, for their customers to sell back any item to them. In a few seconds, very easily with an instant buy back price and very easy process either online or in store. And we are providing all the tech to do that at scale.
What are you finding are the benefits for the retailer when they take you on board like this?
Yeah, all the retailers are thinking about ways to capture the value of the second hand market and they see great initiatives such as Vinted, eBay, all those players very active in this market for years. And they say, Oh, I'm the brand selling the products to customers. How can I get value from that market? So, brands are really interested in finding ways to offer an alternative for their customers. And there is an easy alternative is really to offer very efficient and very straightforward process. I've sold you a product three years ago, you are not using it anymore. Come to my store, I will buy it back in a few seconds. You get a voucher or cash. That's it. That's not more complicated than that.
It sounds then like the brand stays with the brand while doing something really good, obviously for the environment, it's very sustainable, it's obviously circular. How do you think this is then supporting the customer, the shopper?
All the shoppers are now used to sell products on different websites such as Vinted, Ebay, all those websites. And we know that, It's not the majority yet. A lot of customers are not using products anymore, but are keeping them at home somewhere. So we want to help those customers to find a very simple way to sell back their product without the hassle of negotiating with, with other people, taking pictures, having hours of, chat with people. So it's removing that hassle. You want to get rid of a product for any kind of reason and you get a value for that. So it's, it's really giving value to a product the easiest way.
I'm here with Holly Tucker, MBE, founder of Holly & Co. and Not On The High Street. I've just watched the most amazing presentation that Holly gave, using innovation to scale an e commerce brand, the lessons I know to be true, and doing it all again differently. Holly, what a fantastic presentation. So you said at the beginning of that presentation, my mission is to help everyone start a business doing what they love. How incredible. How do you start with that from all your experience in the industry?
Well, I think that doing what you love in life, isn't it? If you actually think about it is incredibly important. If we have 29, 000 days on this planet, we need to try and spend as much time in love with what we do and how we spend our time a commodity that is most precious. So my mission in life is to help people find what they love to do, and give them the confidence to go for it.
I love that. I really do. And then the lessons from the last few years, what are your key lessons and takeaways? Well, number one would be that you're the Duracell battery of your business that without you, nothing is possible. I think founders, certainly women, but actually all founders have the imposter syndrome, which is a very good thing. You should be naive into what you create. So, but you shouldn't be so worried about it that actually you think your business doesn't need you. You are the driving force of your company. So number one would be you're the Duracell battery of your company. Number two is to absolutely work out what the USP is of your business, but work out what the USP of you is. If you run your company and it is the 360 of your life, You need to work out how you're going to make your mark on the world through your business rather than thinking it's going to be your business that's going to make a mark on the world. And the third would be to absolutely run your business and we can call them SMEs and we can call them founders and entrepreneurs. I like to call them good life businesses. Good life businesses is actually a term that we created at Holly & Co., which means that you value your ambition and your profits and your growth and all of those things, but you also value how you can spend your time, how you can enjoy your time. Can you take three weeks off for summer? Can you pick up the children on a Friday and no one raises their eyes? All these sorts of things. How do you balance the good life? And I like to call people, well, entrepreneurs, they run the good life companies of the world.
If you've enjoyed today's special Retail Technology Show episode, please, please, please, will you like and share it? Remember you can listen back to all 70 past Retail Tea Break episodes on your favourite podcast platform, or of course on YouTube. Follow myself and all of today's guests on LinkedIn, or of course, connect with them via their websites that are in the show notes.
Remember, you can find those show notes and the transcript for today's episode on theretaleadvisor.ie.
