opinion
How to successfully scale your store of the future
with the right technology for the retail landscape
By Healey Cypher, CEO, Zivelo – www.zivelo.com
We’re at an inflexion point in physical
retail experiences, and 2019 may very
well be marked as a turning point. For the
first time in five years, same-store sales
are stable, versus declining, and breakout
e-commerce brands continue to solidify
their positions of growth by opening
physical stores as retailers turn to their
previously under-capitalised fleet of
stores. After all, they were investing in the
big growth of e-commerce even though
over 90% of their sales still happen in
physical stores.
Success stories like Target, which
invested $7BN in 2017 into capital
improvements, are encouraging other
retailers including Ulta, Home Depot
and more to follow suit. For any haters/
mathematicians, while the absolute
square footage of retail closures is still
closing at a notable pace because of
big brands like Bon Ton, Toys ’R’ Us and
others shuttering their doors – retail
formats are changing and actual store-
count is an important counter-argument.
So, now that it’s come to it, what
do you do? How do you revamp your
stores? Many times, when we sit down
with retail executive teams considering
building out the future of their store
fleets, the words on the board begin to
look like a TechCrunch word cloud: AR,
VR, chatbots, AI and drones, seriously!
But the reality should be, well, different.
When considering deploying retail
technology, your team’s decisions should
centre around one singular ideology:
human interactions must come first,
and technology should come second.
And that technology, by the way, should
beautifully integrate into authentic store
experiences. Consumer expectations
are still out-pacing a lot of the retail
experience of today. The retail market
itself is on the cusp of massive change
as it sprints to meet these demands.
So, we’re going to consider ways to
thoughtfully execute retail-technology
solutions that enable experiences that
delight customers, empower associates,
provide unprecedented analytics, and
measurable sales growth.
Competition has changed
If you look at an image of a department
store in 1910 versus a department store
today, not a whole lot has changed. In
the mid-20th century, retail growth was
booming. Top line revenue was driven
by opening more and more stores with
huge selections, huge square footage,
great prices, and relative proximity to the
customer. Proximity, selection and price
were the main currencies of the 20th
century retailer.
As a result, we now have anywhere
from 25-29 square feet of retail space
for every man, woman and child in the
United States. The next closest country is
the United Kingdom with nine square-feet
per capita. Today’s stores are competing
on a completely different set of principles;
according to MasterCard, over 40% of
soft-goods purchasing takes place at
boutique stores with 5-10 locations. As
such, today’s currency is now experience,
service, and urgency. And all of that retail
space built in the last century? We now
have an opportunity to use it in creative
ways with a small footprint and low
overheads. Spoiler alert: kiosks can play a
big part in this creativity!
KIOSK solutions 43