- May 17, 2019
Updated: Feb 16, 2021
Having been announced as a finalist for the Digital Innovation Award at Drapers Digital this year, we were thrilled to attend the event held in London this week. Our In-Store work with Harvey Nichols received a lot of positive attention as we presented it to the Judging Panel made up of industry experts including Chioma Anokuru, Head of Digital Commerce at ASOS.
(Karoline Gross, Smartzer CEO and Founder, presenting to the judges)
Our presentation emphasised the importance of relevance and simplicity for retailers when facing dwindling footfall in store:
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Smartzer x Harvey Nichols - How retailers can embrace in-store innovation through relevancy and simplicity
By evaluating how customers interact in store, retailers have plenty of scope to embrace new approaches and technologies that can enhance the in-store experience. Apple has been leading the way with its successful ‘Town Squares’ approach which relies on providing further reasons/events for people to come into their shop and visit. However, not every shop has as much physical space to give up. Technology can offer a solution to this issue.
In late 2018, Smartzer and Harvey Nichols teamed up to create our own in-store innovation through the use of our Smartzer interactive player. Shoppers could use the touch screens to shop the promotional in-store videos. This solution provided a better way for the store to advertise to their consumers at POS and also inform shoppers about any particular product they were interested in in an engaging way. The technology used was un-intrusive, aesthetic and highly responsive. This met the needs of their customer base, providing product details and advice about desired, luxury items.
Smartzer's successful partnership with Harvey Nichols repurposed an existing piece of technological content into a completely new experience at minimal extra cost, simple to implement and relevant to their customer base.
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The Digital Innovation Award was won by Harrods for their in-store navigation tool. We pass our congratulations to the Harrods team and we hope to continue to be involved with Drapers Digital Awards for years to come.
Updated: Feb 16, 2021
(William Quigley, CEO Opskins and Worldwide Asset eXchange, speaking at Goldman Sachs 2019 Technology Symposium in London)
Last week, Smartzer attended Goldman Sachs’ Disruptive Technology Symposium 2019 in London. The event saw some of the worlds most cutting-edge tech firms come together to display their new innovations largely in the Blockchain, Micro Mobility, Fintech, and A.I. spaces. Our highlight of the event was a talk given by William Quigley, CEO Opskins and Worldwide Asset eXchange (WAX), who introduced the new way of trading collectible and luxury goods online. This was particularly interesting as it could supposedly transform the way consumers buy/sell products in the future and might pave the way for retailers to follow suit with blockchain too.
Here’s what we gathered from the presentation:
When it comes to trading highly desirable goods online, traditional market places are still facing a few inefficiencies. The nature of the market can mean that some items have to go between multiple different owners and locations who never actually even open the packaging, before it finally reaches the consumer. Not to mention that the commission on each transaction can be up to 20%. vIRLs (pronounced virals) solve these problems by separating ownership from possession.
vIRL is a virtual item linked to real-world merchandise that now can be bought and traded online through the use of blockchain platform WAX.io. Through digitally scanning products and verifying their authenticity using 3D laser scanning/weighing, digital versions of products can exist online and be traded securely through blockchain. This allows an item to remain in the same location, but be traded multiple times before it is redeemed and distributed to the final buyer. Because of this, the platform can provide a much cheaper commission price of a few percent, therefore dramatically out-pricing typical market places such as eBay. The platform can also host multiple transactions per item a day, 200x more than the speed of eBay.
Despite being in its early stages of release, luxury apparel owners are currently able to ship their items to WAX, where they are digitally scanned/verified and their digital twin or vIRL is made. From there the owner can trade their vIRL version of their shoes for a price on the vIRL marketplace. On the marketplace, users have access to detailed product specifications, complete trading history, and comprehensive ownership records. Thus, ensuring each purchase is highly informed. The customers are then able to either redeem their vIRL, trade it again for a potential profit or even use it as a virtual product for their avatars in virtual worlds such as the video game Fortnite.
It’s that last point that might be quite baffling to some, but the virtual/in-game product market is larger than you think with already over 100bn products traded in the virtual world already. vIRLs, therefore, enable the worlds of e-commerce, trading and video gaming to come together and exchange real-world items with a virtual counterpart. This would not be possible without the use of Blockchain enables a high level of security and authenticity with each product, by removing the opportunity to counterfeit the digitized products.
This latest innovation is definitely one to watch and is sure to become an evermore powerful player in shaping the world of luxury e-commerce in the future.
Updated: Feb 16, 2021
(Zalando’s Dr. Carsten Keller speaking at Retail Without Borders 2019.)
The Retail Without Borders 2019 summit saw some of the worlds largest marketplaces and retailers come together in London to discuss the state of retail on a global scale. The Smartzer team were lucky to catch Zalando’s Vice President of Direct to Consumer, Dr Carsten Keller as he kicked off the day with his talk on how online platforms are actually fuelling the high st.
Dr. Keller opened with the fascinating case study of John Mcpheters’ sneaker store Stadium Goods. Last year the sneaker company only had one store and yet it was selling over 40 million shoes. How you may ask? Stadium Sneakers also sells on some of the worlds biggest online marketplaces, and it sells a lot. Having snapped up by $250m to Farfetch last year, Sneaker Stadium is a great example of the power of mastering online in an evermore interconnected landscape.
ONLINE TO OFFLINE (O2O)
Tmall and Alibaba were also pulled upon as great examples of how to navigate online and offline retail effectively. In China, they have created a new ecosystem of connected ‘offline’ stores that sell on their platforms. Leveraging offline in partnership with online is part of the reason why Tmall and Alibaba have built such vast businesses. Keller also pointed out that the ‘offline’ retail landscape in Europe is not also a healthy one with 35,000 stores closing since 2008, which inevitably has raised a few eyebrows.
In particular, Fashion is positioned in Europe with 88% of sales coming through offline. Therefore, it could potentially be at risk to the growing online landscape. Furthermore, one of the big problems online Fashion is availability, with an estimated 8.6 million people per quarter unable to find the item they want online in 2018. The combination of established bricks and mortar and growing demand for online availability in fashion has really fuelled Zalando’s solution of ‘Connected Retail’.
Zalando’s Connected Retail solution realises that through connecting with physical stores you gain access to the biggest warehouse on earth. By integrating their system with stores, items can be shipped/collected/returned in store, thus creating a much more efficient and localised way of online shopping for customers. Stores majorly benefit not only from increased revenue but also from footfall and consumer data. Keller described it as a ‘3x win’ as Customers, Stores and Zalando all can make serious gains. With 700+ Stores connected to Zalando in 2018 it truly is a business model fit for online and offline retail.
(Cartoonist impression of the talk.)