The New Interface of Retail

Retail is in an interesting spot with technology. A great idea will struggle to get off the ground without great technology. And companies are ambitiously competing with each other to develop the most innovative technologies, first. The ability to reach customers depends on it.

The National Retail Federation conference ended recently. Retailers have been hit hard by the internet tsunami that washed over all industries. Brick and mortar stores found it difficult to compete with e-commerce. After all, there is no rent overhead, no need to keep a stock, no staff to hire (beyond a web team) and there are tailored images that show each item in their best light. The term “retail apocalypse” is not said lightly (here is a great article with data on the phenomenon). 

The great news is, people still want to shop in stores. They enjoy the ritual and social aspect of shopping. They want to inspect goods with their own eyes. The majority of shopping is still done in person. In a world of carbon-copied goods, there is an appreciation for attentive craftsmanship. The retail apocalypse need not take all casualties.

The takeaway from the NRF conference is that retail is far from finished, but there needs to be a shift. Retailers cannot be afraid to embrace data as their ally, make mobile moves and look at using technology as a tool to differentiate. The reality is, 2.5 billion people have a smartphone. Even your grandmother knows what an iphone is. App names become verbs in their own right-uber-ing, instagram-ing. People have a digital as well as a physical presence, and reaching that digital persona it is key to driving the sales retailers require.

At the opposite end of the spectrum from small businesses are Amazon and Alibaba. We can learn a lot from these giants; we must. Companies have become the new visionaries, and Alibaba envisions a whole “new retail”. To quote Deborah Weinswig for Forbes.com,

“Alibaba Founder and Chairman Jack Ma coined the term “New Retail” in a letter to Alibaba’s shareholders in October last year. Ma said, “Pure e-commerce will be reduced to a traditional business and replaced by the concept of New Retail―the integration of online, offline, logistics and data across a single value chain.” We believe that this is very much how next-generation commerce will look globally, with large retailers and niche category specialists leveraging technology to provide an integrated service with the consumer at its core.”

This coincides with the CMO panel at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show, where CMOs of Deloitte, Panasonic and Mastercard conversed about the intersection of burgeoning technologies and valued customers. The notion that businesses must be consumer-centric seems so obvious as to be silly, but it’s exactly that premise that has allowed disruptive startups such as Uber to overturn industries that have fallen down in that area.

CMOs of Deloitte and Panasonic were of the mind that companies owe it to their customers to turn them into fans. By providing the best experience possible from beginning to end, company employees receive the professional raison d’etre that turns a job into a vocation. Customers, on their part, are turned into fans for life.

Technology interconnects those who have it, and we can see how niche retail specialists have formed their niche by leveraging the right technology for them. Very often it is through influencer marketing, digital word-of-mouth and social sharing the companies earn their reputation. Retailers cannot afford to sleep on this-the online, mobile market is there for the taking and is a necessary part of the business equation in 2018.

Procuring a truly original business requires probing the limits of what hasn’t yet be done. Take for example Sweep, an Australian based company. Their mobile app uses augmented reality and geo-location to allow users within a vicinity to chat with each other. Imagine that, an app that makes you look up from your phone and meet people. It also allows retailers to ping users with messages and special offers.

This is a truly innovative idea. There are thousands of apps out there, but by planning and executing this one correctly, the idea took off as it deserved to.

To quote Proactive Investors Australia, in less than a month after the app was launched:

“Early statistics show over a 430% increase in user dwell time and over a 400% increase in daily active users of the Sweep app.

Importantly, 90% of users are engaging in Geochats, which is a unique new feature that allows users to unlock exclusive chats based on their location.

An 800% increase in private message usage has increased average messages sent per day per user to 11, which compares to Snapchat’s comparative stat of 4-5 in September 2016.

Preliminary rollout of Geochats has commenced with 14 venues in Sydney, three in Melbourne and one on the Gold Coast for Schoolies the following week.”

 These are remarkable numbers for a new business. This early success give an optimistic outlook on how technology can be thought of and used in creative ways. People want to come together, and technology can be an incredible tool for that. Retailers who put their customers first, ensure their technology is on point and can meet customers on all digital platforms will be well poised for an amazing 2018.

Mobile phones are simply tiny personal supercomputers. They are ubiquitous tools that can be put to some amazing uses. Businesses that want to stand out in a hyper-competitive market should ensure they are not only optimized for mobile, but leveraging mobile technology to it’s fullest extent. Retailers-the ball is in your court.