- Apr 7, 2017
Updated: Feb 17, 2021
From 4th-6th April 2017, Miles (Head of Business Development) attended World Retail Congress in Dubai. Here's his summary about his time at the event:
Held annually, World Retail Congress brings together world leaders in retail to share expertise and research in an international extravaganza. This year marked the 10th anniversary of the event and the theme was “Reimagining the customer experience”, an aim which is top priority for so many retailers at the moment.
In exploring this theme, I kept myself busy attending talks and showcasing Smartzer. We had been delighted to be selected to by the Department for International Trade to represent the UK as part of their “Best of British Brands at World Retail Congress” group. This gave us the opportunity to network with a range of retail experts and company representatives and share Smartzer’s shoppable video technology and vision for interactive videos. Of course, our work is especially pertinent to this year’s theme as we are able to utilise our unique technology to transform the customer experience. Demonstrating the potential for a seamless shopping experience directly from a company’s existing video content.
Beyond sharing the exciting potential for Smartzer’s video content marketing technology, there were over 130 speakers including retail leaders, innovators and entrepreneurs, giving a range of interesting, educational and current talks. Highlights from the talks that we attended include Karen Katz (CEO, President and Director, Neiman Marcus) speaking on “Retaining Relevance: The Rejuvenation of Brand”. We also had the chance to hear a panel discussion about value retailing as the next retail revolution from Sander van der Laan (CEO, Action), Nicholas Dreyfus (Co-Founder & CEO, The Kooples), and Karl Heinz-Holland (Former CEO, LIDL). These talks, amongst others, provided valuable insights into the opinions of industry experts about the future of retail and I'm looking forward to sharing these with the rest of the Smartzer team.
As always, it was great to catch up with previous and existing clients as well as making new connections, and I had plenty of exciting conversations where positive feedback about Smartzer’s work was given!
Smartzer would like to say a massive thank you to World Retail Congress for putting on such an engaging and relevant few days in a wonderful location!
- Mar 3, 2017
Updated: Feb 17, 2021
This week, Karoline (Smartzer Founder and CEO) and Miles (Head of Business Development), headed to Barcelona to attend 4 Years From Now (4YFN) at Mobile World Congress (MWC).
MWC is the world’s largest gathering of mobile and digital industry experts, with over 108,000 attendees this year. 4YFN is MWC’s programme tailored specifically towards innovative technology startups. So, this was the perfect place for Smartzer to discuss our innovative approach to interactive videos with investors, corporations and fellow entrepreneurs and enjoy talks from inspirational speakers. We especially enjoyed a number of meetings we set up to share our concept with potential investors in preparation for the exciting funding round we have coming up.
Not only did we take advantage of these valuable networking opportunities but we were selected by industry experts to pitch Smartzer at the 4YFN platform, explaining our work and speaking about what defines us as a company. With representatives at 4YFN from over 200 countries, this was a great chance to spread the word about our interactive videos, previous successful and upcoming Smartzer projects on a truly global platform.
We were pleased to heard some positive feedback from members of the audience. It was great to find out that they’d found our pitch engaging and loved our concept. The scope for applying Smartzer’s technology to produce interactive videos in sectors beyond retail is especially exciting. Yesterday, we left Barcelona yesterday with some new ideas for the future...
Thank you to MWC 2017 for arranging such an enjoyable and interesting few days at 4YFN!
- Mar 3, 2017
Updated: Feb 17, 2021
On the 8th and 9th of March, Smartzer will be attending and pitching at the 23rd annual Retail Week Live at The O2 in London.
Run by the UK-based website and data service Retail Week, this annual event brings together world-leaders in retail to share compelling content via speeches, interviews, workshops and boardroom discussions.
One of the five stages at Retail Week Live, Launchpad, is entirely dedicated to bringing together startups and retail experts. It’s here that Smartzer will be pitching to a panel of influential judges and audience. We’re so excited to have the opportunity to share our ideas about how brands can utilise their interactive video content to engage their customers and drive sales. We really believe that our in-house technology is the ideal way for brands to embrace technology and incorporate it into their existing, often underutilised, promotional content.
Not only will we be pitching at Retail Week Live, but we will also be running a stand at Demo Pod 28. We’re really keen to make the most of the opportunity to speak to industry experts on an individual basis, hear their thoughts on our concept and show them some examples of our recent shoppable video projects. Even better, some of the brands we’ve worked with before, such as John Lewis, Marks & Spencer, QVC and Whistles, will also be attending. We’re looking forward to hopefully catching up with them.