Your retail software runs through oceans of discrete and inferred data at every moment.

• Point of sale transactional data
• E-commerce sales data
• Browsing behavior data

In its disconnected state, the data is useless – just a torrent of numbers, sales figures, totals, and percentages. It tells you very little about the people who shop with you.

Many retailers today are still using software that keeps their data segregated by channel, which means they can’t see how the same customer is interacting with your online store versus your physical store. It means they can’t see whether their promotions are reaching their targeted customer to increase their shopping frequency.

That is what we at Retail Pro International call retail chaos.

But when those various data points are unified, they create a single, 360° view of your customer – the numbers become an individual with actual likes, loves, and needs.

It also gives you a total, 360° view of your target customer base as a whole – which gives you a more complete understanding of how you can better meet and anticipate their needs with the products you sell.

Platform software like Retail Pro is different from your average retail tech.

A platform is a digital foundation that connects data from every point at which it’s generated, including:

• Your mobile and stationary POS software
• Your product planning, assortment, and merchandising software
• Your business intelligence, loyalty, marketing, digital receipts applications
• Your payments processor
• Emerging tech like beacons, RFID, and footfall
• Your e-commerce data
• Your in-store endless aisle kiosk
• And any other tools or applications you use

This means that:

• You can see where all of your inventory is (at the warehouse, in transit, across the globe, on the shelf, in the bin, out of stock)
• Your brick-and-mortar stores can see inventory availability at different locations
• Your e-commerce store can see and use inventory from your physical stores
• Your loyalty applications can tap into transactional data for initiatives targeted to a particular customer’s buying habits
• Your marketing team can send emails personalized with a customer’s likes and dislikes
• You can package slow and fast moving items for promotions across channels

…which means you get a complete picture of your customer’s interaction with you – and you retail smarter.

#stopretailchaos

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Thursday, April 7th, 2016 at 11:38 am .

E-commerce may only comprise 10% of the total retail market, but that’s a $341.7 billion slice. Quite a big piece, indeed.

With 90% of the retail space not engaged in e-commerce, there’s a huge amount of growth potential in the sector. Typically, local businesses have only a small e-commerce business, if any at all. In effect, those businesses are neglecting an excellent means of promoting their businesses and losing sales — both online and in-store — as a result.

Having even a small e-commerce site can help a small retailer promote its business.

Many local store owners believe having a storefront is enough visibility, and that opening an online store is, frankly, too much of a hassle. A boutique home furnishings store might, for example, have frequently changing inventory. But the ability for a customer to browse the shop’s offerings online may outweigh the potential any given item is not immediately available.

Of course, most shoppers understand that their local merchant might have to order an item or that a similar product might have to be substituted. But the way those shoppers are using the Internet is as a recognizance mission. It is a nuanced meaning of convenience shopping. Rather than ordering the product from the site, they simply want to see if the retailer offers it, or offers a style of the desired product. For example, they want to go to the local natural food store’s web site, see that in fact it does carry essential oils, and then stop in at a convenient time to peruse the offerings in person.

The advantage is not just to provide a means for shoppers buy online, although that certainly is a part of it. Rather, it’s to extend the local merchant’s appeal. Local businesses are far more adept at cultivating relationships that e-commerce merchants are, even those who have sizable brick and mortar presence. It’s far more likely that the neighborhood women’s apparel store will know your name, your children’s names and your shopping preference for your sister than Macy’s will.

And that is the key to small business success: Knowing thy customer. It’s something successful mom-and-pops excel at naturally. It’s an asset that neighborhood stores have naturally and that the big boys must work at constantly. That relationship between small business owner and customer is like gold.

That’s why an e-commerce site is a “thank you” to your loyal customers: “Here is something that will help you shop more efficiently. It’s a recognition of your busy schedule and a tool to assist you.” It keeps your store top of mind and, in combination with other customer relationship management tools, allows you to effectively compete against the behemoths at 1 am on a Wednesday morning.

This entry was posted by Jennifer Bosavage on Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016 at 7:26 am .

One of the top complaints retailers hear from customers is the lack of product, or “out of stocks.” Few things are more aggravating for a shopper than arriving at a store and finding that the desired product is unavailable. In response to sagging sales as a result of empty shelves, mega-retailer Target is aiming to take control of the supply-chain problems and shore up its customer satisfaction as well as sales.

Online retailers and brick-and-mortar shops alike depend on good inventory management to run an efficient business.

A study from IHL Group last year reported that overstocks and out-of-stocks cost retailers $1.1 trillion globally in lost revenue. Inventory management systems can help, because they inform managers what products are hot sellers. However, some products are must-haves for retailers to carry: For grocers, it might be ketchup, for an office supply store it could be reams of paper. Those are staples that have to be there no matter what. Barren shelves are an issue that, for instance, Wal-mart is criticized for frequently, and that Target has been under fire for recently as well.

But while Walmart’s woes seem to be related to being short-staffed and, therefore, unable to move inventory from the stockroom to the sales floor, Target’s stem from inventory management. There simply isn’t product in the stockroom to display. Last summer, during a conference call with investors, CEO Brian Cornell blamed the inventory problem on an antiquated supply chain strategy that didn’t account for a multi-channel approach to selling. The ability to buy online and pickup in store (BOPIS) had successfully depleted brick and mortar supplies. As a result, Cornell has since launched a strategy designed to take control of the supply chain — which previously had largely been outsourced — to get products onto shelves and into customer’s baskets.

The importance of customer satisfaction in this realm was not lost on the newly minted Chief Operating Officer John Mulligan, who was promoted from the role of Chief Financial Officer. ”Given the breadth and complexity of the business, it will always be a challenge to be in stock on every item in every store… but our guests need us to be consistent in delivering everyday essentials,” Mulligan told Business Advisor.

What Target is learning is that while those products need to be available, not every permutation of the product has to be stocked. For example, how many types of bottled water are needed to satisfy customers? How many bottles does each “case” have to have? Will a shopper walk out if the 16.9 oz. bottles are only available in a 24 pack?

Target is betting that narrowing those types of selections will be acceptable to customers and easier for the stores to manage. It seems to be working: Fortune reported that out-of-stocks were down a whopping 40% during the holiday shopping period. In addition, e-commerce sales rose 34% during the holiday shopping season, according to investorplace.com. Some of the resulting profit will likely fund Target’s expanding use of RFID for inventory, which will enable the retailer to wirelessly track products in stores, warehouses and en route to customers.

All of which shows just how interconnected multichannel commerce truly is: Keeping the shelves stocked on Main Street will keep shopping carts filled on the ground, as well as online.

This entry was posted by Jennifer Bosavage on Monday, March 21st, 2016 at 8:02 am .

At our 2016 Retail Pro Americas Summit, we asked retailers building their omnichannel strategy with Retail Pro why they’re doing it, what it takes to make it happen, and where they are in implementing their strategy. Here’s what they said.

Allow us to introduce…

Our retail panelists. See their bios way below!

What’s inside:

Going Omnichannel
Supply chain integration at Earthbound Trading Co.
Balancing D2C and wholesale at Burton Snowboards
Decreasing the cost of endless aisle at Mexicali Blues
Is omnichannel the end of brick and mortar retail?
Omnichannel generation: millennials’ habits impact retail strategies
Future directions for building omnichannel

Going omnichannel

Dan Jablons Our panel today is about omnichannel. Topher, you’ve done a lot of omnichannel work already, and Eric and Marcelo are starting to work out their omnichannel strategies for Burton Snowboards and Earthbound Trading Company, respectively.

Topher, you’ve done the most omnichannel work out of anyone in the room, apparently. What made you say, “You know what? We have to attack this thing. We have to go after it”?

Topher Mallory We thought about where we saw the largest opportunity and that was online. There’s a lot of overlap with the product lines but as far as the business goes, we’ve only got 6 stores plus our online store, and our warehouses are 2000 square feet.

We wanted to leverage our in-store inventory like we showed in the video and the biggest things was data architecture. That’s where UniteU came in.

The biggest challenge was really finding someone who would listen to somebody small like we are, see the opportunity we saw, and  create a data architecture that could go both ways.

Obviously the big picture of Omni is endless aisle and different channels that might not even be in the marketplace yet. Today, it is taking that store inventory and leveraging it to make our online offering larger.

We thought about where we saw the largest opportunity and that was online.

Topher Mallory

Check out their video here:

Topher Mallory of Mexicali Blues shares how he built his omnichannel strategy

Dan So for you, there was an online opportunity but it was also about leveraging existing inventories and getting better sales.

Topher Exactly. Then we started to see that we needed more transparency in the supply chain and all that’s how we came to all those challenges we’re dealing with today.

Dan Eric, what drove your decision to go after omnichannel?

Eric Bergstrom Actually, something quite similar. We have a real strong online business. We have 13 stores in the US. About this time every year, we sell out of products online but these same products are still sitting in stores. Our objective is to make that store inventory available on the web so that a customer can find it. That way we would really leverage the inventory and sell it.

Marcelo Fleitas We have 136 stores nationwide and we’re trying to accomplish something similar to Mexicali Blues. The customers of today’s world require a lot of maintenance. They request a lot of information so we need to provide it.

That’s what Earthbound is trying to do.

We’re trying to provide information from our vendors to the store for a particular item and create an experience for our customers through mobility. We have a segmented customer profile and tools to understand what the customer wants, and we deliver that.

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Supply chain integration at Earthbound Trading Co.

Earthbound Trading Company is a lifestyle shop for the nomadic spirit who embraces individuality and craves exploration.

I was amazed at how Retail Pro Prism® works, because the platform is exactly what we need. The last piece of the puzzle is to feed that information to Retail Pro® and because it’s based on APIs, everything can be integrated.

Marcelo Fleitas

Dan One of the things that I was told about the tools you’re using, Marcelo, is that you actually have been integrating various departments together. Overseas vendors and employer systems interact and talk to each other.

Marcelo That’s right. One of the biggest challenges that we have at Earthbound is collaboration. We have venders overseas and we deal with big vendors, small vendors, and various departments like accounting and the photographers who take inventory pictures for the online store.

We really had to create a collaboration tool, but not only that – we needed to create a flow between them.

For instance, in order to bring something from overseas, you have to follow a lot of customs codes and we need to make sure we capture product history for things we bring from China, from Brazil. We can’t lose that information.

So we created a portal where vendors can actually talk to us directly. All our internal departments can interact within the system, and the system enforces proper flow.

Dan I’ve got to believe that also helps you in terms of gaining more product knowledge, which helps you get more sales too.

Marcelo Exactly. I was amazed at how Retail Pro Prism® works, because the platform is exactly what we need. The last piece of the puzzle is to feed that information to Retail Pro® and because it’s based on APIs, everything can be integrated. I’m very happy that that’s the direction for Prism.

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Balancing D2C and wholesale at Burton Snowboards

In ’77, Jake Burton invented the Backhill – a narrow board with single strap bindings and a rope and handle attached to the nose. Life on shred begins.

Dan Eric, let me ask you a question. Burton has 13 stores but you also sell through dealerships. So now you have a situation that a lot of independent retailers get a little bit worried: Burton is going direct, and some retailers are panicking like, “That’s the end of the world. It’s over.” But there’s a lot of business to be made. So how have you had to balance the direct versus channel sales?

Eric Our primary business at Burton Snowboards in wholesaling to dealers across the globe. I have 13 stores and 1000 dealers or more. We are real careful about where we put stores. We want to put our stores where we see an opportunity to expose the brand but not step on our dealers’ toes. And then we look for other ways to try to incorporate our dealers into the exercise that we’re going through.

For example, we have a tool that we titled Send It, which allows our stores to drop-ship or custom order any product and ship it directly to the customer’s house.

We’ve opened that up to our retailers to allow them to do the same thing. They have access to all the Burton inventory, which they would have anyway because they can always reorder the product, but it’s a tool that allows them to do the same thing, use their own POS system, and ship directly.

So they’re getting the sale and they’re really in the sense just buying the one item, but it doesn’t ship to the store. It ships directly to the customer.

This functionality is something that we’ve offered out to retailers.

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Decreasing the cost of endless aisle at Mexicali Blues

A love of music, a passion for travel, and a mindful devotion to fun. That’s all it took to launch Mexicali Blues back in 1988.

Dan This leads into my next question, Topher, for you. You and I had a chance to talk about the concept of the endless aisle earlier a little bit.

People talk a lot about the endless aisle. I don’t think anyone knows what it really means. And you’ve mentioned to me before that the definition of endless aisle is still in motion and changing, so how do you see endless aisle right now?

Topher We did this in small, bite-sized pieces. I think it speaks to Retail Pro’s direction as to how they’re letting omnichannel unfold a little bit. We saw this ability to leverage the inventory, and we saw an increase in 50% of our orders. We were doing this all manually behind the scenes. UniteU created the architecture but we had all this in the POS and we said, “Ok, we’ll just figure this out.”

There was one employee, a woman named Lauren, whom you saw in the video. All she did was take an excel spreadsheet, dump all this data from UniteU and all our inventory data from Retail Pro. She would look for like, Monday, December 5th and then see how many of the 300 online orders have some item from the stores.

That was nuts but we saw a huge increase in number of orders and the number of items picked. We came back to UniteU after the holiday and said, “Here are all the variables,” which was great, because we could really define what online endless aisle meant.

We want to control this. We don’t want a truly endless aisle if it is going to be an unprofitable order. If they’re unprofitable, then these are the variables we should consider.

We needed a set that we could tweak by the minute, if it was needed. We needed to be able to turn store inventories on and off if there was a scheduling issue or delivery problem. We had 5 or 6 of those and we have a workflow where you can actually change those logistics.

So now we’re looking at what I need in stores and trying to think about the same thing – if we want it to be endless aisle, if we want to sell to zero. The first challenge was just seeing Lauren do all that work and saying, “Hey, this is great – we have increased revenue.” But we’ve also diminished what we’re making on every order and every product if we’re touching them 1000 times. How do we prevent that?

The first thing was an algorithm. That worked out very well and now we’re doing a lot of circling back with analytics go from that end.

We’re also working on transparency with vendors so that we can get these things in our warehouse. We’re going to roll it out in the store first with the idea of Ship-to-Store.

Then hopefully we’ll get some kind of mobile device that’s more functional. Right now we have this algorithm on an OS-based device that uses FoundryLogic technology so that when we get the order, we see what is needed for the order that’s in-store. We can see all that transparently on the UniteU level but the next step would be to take that FoundryLogic reference to UniteU or Retail Pro on some kind of mobile device.

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Is omnichannel the end of brick and mortar retail?

Photo courtesy of Forbes

People were very scared of brick and mortar stores dying but it all changed. It didn’t happen. We evolved.

Marcelo Fleitas

Dan There’s a lot of concern amongst the brick and mortar retailers about omnichannel. I’m often asked if there’s ever going to be an end to the world of brick and mortar and I think it’s an important question. What do you see omnichannel doing? Do you see it advancing or taking away from brick and mortar?

Marcelo Several years ago, people were talking about that. At the beginning of the summit today, Kerry Lemos mentioned that too. People were very scared of brick and mortar stores dying but it all changed. It didn’t happen.

We evolved.

We grew our communications and we’re using mobility to improve our brick and mortar. I don’t think brick and mortar will become extinct, and I think all of us are on the right track. We are improving our channels, improving our communications, using the devices, using social media to enhance our experience in-store. You guys are doing a fantastic job on doing exactly that and I’m happy that this is going to continue to happen. This is not the end of the brick and mortar store.

Omnichannel is the revival of brick and mortar.

Topher Mallory

Topher I want to add to that and say I think it’s the revival of the brick and mortar. For us, we’re enhancing a lot of the inventory-driven processes but we’re also doing the same thing with our customers.

We’re doing segmentation, which is key.

You can get your customer data and see who’s researching online but not converting there. If they come in the store, I have data about their buying history. So maybe I can bring some consumer confidence and have them looking across platforms, or maybe they’re just forever going to research online and come in-store to buy tangibly. They can try the product on and have that added value of the experience with one of our associates.

Eric It’s real similar for us. Step one working to leverage the inventory. We’re adding a customer focus as well.

Dan And Burton, specifically in terms of profiling, is looking for ways to segment the list based on the channel they came from, right? Is that part of your strategy?

Eric Yes. Today we already pull in our Retail Pro data from the stores and our e-commerce data, our customer data, our transaction history. We tie it all together in a giant database and then access that to segment customers when we send marketing emails and such. But it gets stuck there quite often so we need to get it beyond that. We need to have access to that data at the store level so we can open it on a dashboard and know what you’ve bought from us online or in the store

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Omnichannel generation: millennials’ habits impact  retail strategies

Photo courtesy of nanigans.com

This is bigger than just millennials. In today’s retail environment you need to be available to every customer however they want to shop. Millennial or not, you just have to let the customer choose. 

Eric Bergstrom

Dan It’s important to you to understand where those guys are coming from. There’s also a lot of talk about capturing the millennials. Is that a concern for you in terms of how to market to millennials?

Marcelo We have the data for it now and without that, we’re going to be behind. I think that’s a trend. I see it over and over again. We’ve adapted to this new generation of people who use smartphones. The average adult uses their device 150 times; millennials use it 1000 times a day for various things. That’s exactly the type of crowd that we need to start marketing to.

Dan Eric, are the millennials a key target for Burton?

Eric Yes, in that that age group is a big part of our key market demographically. But this is bigger than just millennials. In today’s retail environment you need to be available to every customer however they want to shop. Millennial or not, all of these options of Buy Online, Pickup In Store, etc., you just have to be available and let the customer choose.

Dan Topher, what’s your take on this? How are you marketing to millennials?

Topher With a message that’s catered to them. Hopefully. I feel like we’re trying our hardest to! And we’re trying to take the platforms they interact on and bridge them into our in-store experiences.

With non-millennials, similar to Marcelo, we communicate the story of product origins. We use words like responsibility, transparency.

We talk about how companies are producing items. Like knowing that process for this tie-dye that I’m wearing, for example. The company uses dental floss, of all things, to get this type of crazy design. There’s a video with this on our responsively designed mobile site, so they can bring up that video for a customer on the same mobile device the FoundryLogic is working on.

Dan So there are all these different channels and the key through it seems to be being able to collect data out of these channels, analyze it, leverage the inventory so you can get the most out of it, but also give your customer the option to pick this up here, there, or anywhere. They can find you and transact with you. Marcelo, where are you in all this omnichannel business?

Marcelo We have a team developing this right now. We’re hoping that in about 2 months we’ll be fully developed in that area.

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Future directions for building omnichannel 

See the strategy and future behind the Retail Pro retail management platform

Dan Topher, you’ve got omnichannel in place. What’s next for you now in the next 12 months? What’s the next evolution for Mexicali Blues to drive excitement for the customer?

Topher Pushing it the other way. It’s the endless aisle component in the stores but really trying to define the experience. Retailers are trying to solve the inventory problem with an experience – you come in store we’ll wine and dine you all you want. Well, all our customers are coming to us saying, “No, I want that in red, and I wanted it yesterday.” So our goal is to figure out how to meld those things together.

Dan Eric, you’re starting on omnichannel. What challenges are you running into right now and how are you going to overcome those?

Eric It starts with coming to this conference! My first step is going to be migration to the Retail Pro 9, and we’re going to get that done by June.

At the same time, we’re working on the first omnichannel step from there, which is test for getting store inventory available online. We want to do that by the fall. We’ll probably only make a limited selection of inventory categories available online, just to get it started.

Those are our first steps and then we’re going from there.

Dan And Marcelo?

Marcelo We will continue to improve our collaboration systems and bring the experience to the customer. We really deliver for our customers, because, like you said, Topher, they want our products yesterday. We want to continue to deliver on that, to improve our systems, to have more mobility involved on this.

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Meet the Panelists

Topher Mallory | Mexicali Blues | CEO 

In just 11 years, Topher’s “all in” approach to retail transformed a laid-back import store with three brick-and-mortar locations and no website into a vertically integrated omnichannel brand. With Mexicali Blues now making millions of dollars online and off, he simultaneously launched Maine’s first grain-to-glass organic distillery, Split Rock Distilling. Both businesses show his signature approach to retail sales: authentic passion, hands-on leadership, grassroots marketing and forward-thinking financial analysis. Topher turns loyal customers into a long-lasting community and loves every minute. 

You can talk retail (or rock climbing, tie dye, Maine and more) with @TopherMallory on Twitter.

Eric Bergstrom | Burton Snowboards | Director of Retail 

As Director of Retail for Burton’s US Direct to Consumer retail business, Eric Bergstrom manages the Flagship and Outlet channels, establishing the strategic direction for existing stores and identifying potential growth opportunities. For nearly 20 years, Eric has been creating and growing successful retail organizations, optimizing existing operations, and planning and designing new stores.

Marcelo Fleitas | Earthbound Trading Company | Director of Information Technology 

Marcelo Fleitas is the Director of Information Technology at Earthbound Trading Company, a Texas based company with more than 1000 employees. Marcelo has more than 10 years in the retail industry performing innovation and implementation of POS systems. He has a background in Electronic Engineering, Oracle Databases and Microsoft SQL Servers, currently pursuing his Masters of Science in IT Management.

Dan Jablons | Retail Smart Guys | Owner 

Dan Jablons is an expert retail consultant providing guidance to retailers across 15 countries. Dan helps retailers achieve their business goals through optimization of operations, merchandising, marketing and other key retail practices.

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This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Thursday, March 17th, 2016 at 8:53 am .

This January, retailers from all over the world participated in our survey to gauge what issues are priority for 2016. For those of you who participated, THANK YOU!

Check out the survey results here to see which hot issues retailers are tackling today, find out how you compare with what’s in the media today – omnichannel, mobile, emerging technology, Big Data, customer experience – and then BELOW, see which survey participant won the drawing for the Apple Watch!

Find out what’s happening behind retail doors today!

And the winner is…!

Kate Botelho | The Preservation Society of Newport County

Kate Botelho | The Preservation Society of Newport County | e-Commerce Manager 

The Breakers Mansion. See it on the Preservation Society’s Pinterest: http://bit.ly/1S6th6w

Kate currently works as the E-Commerce Manager and Systems Administrator for The Preservation Society of Newport County, which operates 5 Newport Mansions® stores.

The Preservation Society of Newport County is Rhode Island’s largest cultural organization dedicated to preserving and protecting 11 historic properties and landscapes, 7 of which are National Historic Landmarks.

Kate has been with the organization for 15 years and has worked in all facets of museum retail, including store management, inventory control, receiving and merchandising, buying, and product development and design.

Kate spearheaded the creation of NewportStyle.net®,the online home of the Newport Mansions Stores, in order to bring the Newport, Rhode Island based stores to a larger audience. Currently Kate serves as Secretary for the Museum Store Association’s North Atlantic Chapter.

Kate also led the charge for the update from Retail Pro version 8 to 9 and she built the foundation for a BETA program to build an e-Commerce bridge. Here’s a quick look at their awesome site!

newportstyle.net

When the opportunity presented itself for her to attend the Retail Pro Americas Summit in Las Vegas, Kate jumped at the chance. Here’s a word from Kate:

Being from the non-profit environment these opportunities don’t always come around and I was thankful my institution saw the benefits of my attending. Winning the Apple watch was such an added treat to an already valuable customer summit.

In museum retail we can sometimes be behind the curve with new technologies, but when we first heard about Retail Pro Prism® we wanted to learn all we could. I was not disappointed! My colleague and I left with an excitement for the future of Retail Pro that we brought back with us to Newport.

We are looking forward to utilizing Prism and seeing it benefit our stores.

Kate Botelho

And here’s Kate’s colleague, super impressed by the hardware he saw at our Retail Expo!

They’re always busy at the Preservation Society. Right now, their wholesale department is branching out with their first trade show next week on the Cape, redesigning the store at their Breakers mansions, and opening a new location at the Green Animals Topiary Garden this May.

The Preservation Society’s wholesale show booth was a big hit on the Cape!

Congratulations on your success and on winning the Apple Watch, Kate! 

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Tuesday, March 15th, 2016 at 4:27 pm .

Last month, drugstore chain Rite Aid became the most recent retailer to deploy beacons within their outlets. By doing so, Rite Aid became the largest retailer user of beacons in the United States, a distinction previously belonging to Macy’s. Rite Aid embarked on the strategy to provide more personalized service to customers, as well as to push various notifications. Bluetooth-based beacons can help retailers connect in practical and profitable ways, as long as the communication is welcome and provides clear advantages for the shopper. Remember, a shopper can opt out of receiving notifications at any time —  and no matter how many beacons a retailer has it won’t make a difference if no one is receiving their signals.

See the infographic below to learn how to make the most of your investment in beacon technology.

This entry was posted by Jennifer Bosavage on Wednesday, February 24th, 2016 at 7:31 am .

Only 10 days left til the 2016 Retail Pro Americas Summit!

February 19, 2016  *  Caesars Palace, Las Vegas  *  9am – 5pm + cocktails

Not yet registered? Save your spot today!

Retail Behind the Scenes: Measuring Performance in Marketing, Inventory, and Staffing

Every successful retail operation is built on 3 key components: effective and persuasive marketing, efficient inventory management, and stellar staffing. In this session, Dan Jablons of Retail Smart Guys will give you a consultant’s formula for optimizing these critical pieces in your retail stores, answering the following questions for each one:

• What is the basic goal?
• What are successful retailers doing?
• How do you measure the results?
• What are the keys to your success?

Speaker

Dan Jablons | Owner
Retail Smart Guys

Dan Jablons is an expert retail consultant providing guidance to retailers across 15 countries. Dan helps retailers achieve their business goals through optimization of operations, merchandising, marketing and other key retail practices.

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Wednesday, February 10th, 2016 at 11:20 am .

Reposted from Retail Customer Experience, by Bryan Pearson, President and CEO, LoyaltyOne, Inc.

A woman’s shopping cart carries more than goods; it carries stories about her and the many influencers in her life. If retailers better understood that journey, they could ensure the correct products are there for her and prolong the tale.

It can take gumshoe-like skills to discern just how the items in that cart fit into the woman’s life narrative. Her shopping cart is not merely a receptacle of goods; it is a reflection of who she is and of the many people in her life. Her choices tell tales not only of her day, but also of the days of her children, friends, extended family and work associates.

And while she is often happy with her cart’s contents, sometimes she does not feel good about them. And this, in particular, is where many women wish the retailers they shopped with most regularly knew them better.

Following are six common factors about a woman’s shopping cart that she wishes retailers knew about her, and what retailers can do to improve the story.

A loyalist’s basket is half-full: A supermarket’s most loyal customer typically spends only 50 percent to 70 percent of her monthly budget with that merchant, according to Precima, a global retail strategy and analytics company. Loyalty programs are essential to understanding shopper behavior in ways that can increase the basket size, and social media can assist in keeping in touch. Tesco, for example, has invested resources in its Twitter account to communicate with existing customers while also getting a cleaner read on customer needs and product requests. The one-to-one communications put a face on the company and strengthen shopper relations.

It has abandonment issues: The average shopping cart abandonment rate is 68.6 percent, according to an analysis by Baymard Institute. Among the leading reasons: Unexpected costs. Occasional reminders to shoppers can help increase the changes of purchase, but a more surefire way is to do the opposite of presenting unexpected costs — offer a small percentage off the items in the basket if they are purchased by midnight, or a free product or sample as a thank you.

A mobile basket is often unhappy: Nearly nine in 10 smartphone shoppers (88 percent) said they have had a negative experience when using their phones for mobile shopping, according to a report by Forbes. Among the leading problems are navigation difficulties and inconvenient checkout. Larger buttons and fewer steps would help, and loyalty program apps can feature ‘one-click’ purchasing options. Nordstrom’s mobile app, for example, enables users to browse products by department or brand, and the main functions (including the shopper’s“bag or cart) are listed clearly at the bottom of the home page.

It’s filled with regret: Three of four adults make impulse purchases, according a survey by CreditCards.com, but the female impulse buyers are more likely than men to regret iit — 52 percent compared with 46 percent of men. A fun campaign about preventing buyer’s remorse may remedy this proclivity (a retailer can send a thank you after a big purchase with a relevant message, ‘ABC Shoes, Preventing Buyer’s Remorse Since 1880’). Shoppers also might appreciate being let in on the action. Recent research shows customers are drawn to products in the middle of a shelf, so putting up a cute note saying so much could deepen brand trust — and generate happier associations with those orange stiletto heels.

It’s not hers: Women not only influence most of the purchase decisions in a household, they actually transact most of the purchases, and many are not for her. Women also buy for husbands, kids, friends, extended family and professional associates. They are the household member considering birthday presents and hostess gifts. Merchants can look to their loyalty program data to gain a sense of a woman’s influencers as well as to identify the messaging that would engage their female shoppers. Amazon may be the best example of a retailer crunching customer search and purchase data and parlaying that into helpful product suggestions.

It does not carry what she came for: A full basket does not imply it is a complete one. An estimated 13 percent of shoppers leave a store not having found what they came for, according to Aisle411. The first step to resolving this is to have every employee ask every customer if she found everything she came for. If not, the employee should have a means of recording that item so that it can be added to inventory, and ask the shopper if she’d like to be contacted once the product is in. A handy app might be able to manage such tasks.

Lastly, retailers should ensure that every basket carries a good experience. Shopping can be a chore, so injecting a bit of surprise and delight can turn a mundane task into something memorable. Free coffee at the grocery store, an inspirational message at the point of online checkout, or simply handing out thank you mints when the customer is leaving the store (to complement the welcome when she enters) can transform one-time shoppers to lifers.

If anything, such efforts can at least ensure each shopping trip has a happy ending.

This entry was posted by admin on Monday, February 8th, 2016 at 8:55 am .

2016 Retail Pro Americas Summit
A practical perspective on customer-centric retailing in the digital age

February 19, 2016  *  Caesars Palace, Las Vegas  *  9 – 5 + cocktails

Have you signed up yet for the 2016 Retail Pro Americas Summit? Take a sneak peek at what’s happening at the Summit and register today!

Session Sneak Peek
Retail How-To: Your Step-By-Step Guide to Doing More With Retail Pro®

Retail chaos erupts when new trends (mobility, omnichannel, etc.), high complexity (Big Data, multi-national expansion), and extreme pace disrupt operations and engagement – but there’s hope.

Proactive retailers who converge their data/team/resources to focus on a specific issue can transform chaos into efficiency and profitability with
Retail Pro.

See how Retail Pro Prism® can help retailers overcome retail chaos in their stores:

• Customer-centric operations
• Mobility and omnichannel
• Integration for complete data management
• Expansion and global retail
• Efficiency and process control

Speakers

Kevin Connor | Retail Pro International
Director of Product Strategy

Kevin Connor is the visionary strategist for the Retail Pro® product lines, advancing critical applications for the global Retail Pro customer community. Kevin brings over 20 years of experience in the retail software industry, serving in key application and product-related roles from user experience to product management and strategy. Kevin is driven by his passion for design and a deep understanding of global retail.

Ket Venethongkham | Retail Pro International
Director of Retail Pro University

Ket Venethongkham oversees the training and certification of Customers, Business Partners, and Development Partners, establishes educational standards, and teaches Retail Pro professionals worldwide to design, implement and support Retail Pro solutions in the marketplace. Ket has over 12 years of experience as a Trainer, Instructional Designer and Product Evangelist, earning him an impressive reputation as an enthusiastic and dedicated Retail Pro expert.

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2016 at 8:23 am .

For the love of retail…! Complete this survey for your chance to win a trip to the 2016 Retail Pro Americas Summit!

Got 2 minutes today to tell us what retail life is like in your business? We want to start 2016 off with a good feel for where retail is today and would love your input in our survey!

And, just for the love of retail, we’re giving two lucky participants a trip to Vegas for the 2016 Retail Pro Americas Summit or an Apple Watch!

But act fast – contest ends January 31st at midnight!

Contest rules

Survey and email submission required for contest entry. Only one submission per participant. One lucky winner will be awarded an Apple Watch (42mm Silver Aluminum Case with Blue Sport Band). Another lucky winner will win a trip to the 2016 Retail Pro Americas Summit (airfare + hotel cost for one night from anywhere in the continental US), at the discretion of Retail Pro International. Rules subject to change at any time. Contest ends Sunday, January 31st, 2016 at 11:59pm. Winners will be selected February 1st, 2016 and announced on Retail Pro International social media and via email, as well as at the 2016 Retail Pro Americas Summit.

This entry was posted by Ulyana Avetisov on Wednesday, January 27th, 2016 at 9:32 am .