The 2018
Retail Innovation Conference has come and gone, but not without showcasing its
fair share of content and insights from some of today’s greatest industry
minds. C-level execs from Walmart, 1-800-Flowers.com, TechStyle
Fashion Group, 99 Cents Only, Sleep Number, Boxed, West Elm, Overstock and Adore Me peeled back the curtain of their retail strategies to reveal
how to meet the customer at every turn.
The RTP editorial
team shares their biggest takeaways from RIC18 keynotes, breakout sessions, Retail
Innovator Award Winners and even mystery
shopping studies.
Debbie Hauss,
Editor-in-Chief: The Retail Innovation Conference confirms the importance
of bringing together retail executives with different titles and
responsibilities, representing different types of retail segments. It’s become clearer
every year that retailers must continue to break down their internal silos and work
together — across Merchandising, Marketing, IT, Finance, Store Operations — in
order to deliver the cohesive brand experience today’s digitally demanding
shoppers are looking for. Every RIC18 session featured influential retail
leaders sharing their insights with an audience of decision-makers across
business roles. That’s the key takeaway that RIC promises and delivers every
year.
Adam Blair, Executive
Editor: My biggest takeaway from RIC 2018 came during the Store Tours,
specifically the Williams Sonoma flagship at the Shops at
Columbus Circle. It was about all the elements, visible and hidden,
that go into creating a really inviting retail experience. Williams Sonoma
isn’t content to just show you
great products. The store stimulates all your senses: taste, with a
food or drink sample offered right at the entrance; smells that
are literally curated for each season; touch (in our case, how
to properly use a knife to chop vegetables, which apparently I’ve been doing
incorrectly for decades); and sounds (such as those coming
from the frequent cooking demonstrations in the back of the store). The
planning involved in calibrating these stimuli, and executing on them on a
daily basis, shows that there’s no such thing as a small detail in retail.
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Marie Griffin,
Managing Editor: To me, the best thing about RIC was the ability of the
speakers and panelists to take concepts we write about regularly and drive them
home in new ways. Take personalization. As Ernan Roman, President of ERDM
Corp., explained, consumers expect retailers to know them from their buying
habits and other behaviors, and they are willing to trade data for more
personalized experiences — but they rarely get them. Even online-first
retailers, most notably Amazon,
haven’t evolved in this area. “Customers who viewed this item also viewed” and
“Customers who bought this item also bought” seemed helpful in 2002, but they
waste too much precious time in 2018. In contrast, Traci Inglis, President of JustFab and Shoedazzle (divisions of the TechStyle
Fashion Group) said that her company produces emails that are unique to
each of its 2.5 million members based on their clicks, purchases and fashion preference
info they provide on their first site visit. With AI and machine learning, one-to-one
marketing at scale in possible, and consumers are coming to expect it. If
you’re not there — or not willing to partner with a company that can get you
there rapidly — you are more vulnerable than you probably realize.
Glenn Taylor, Senior
Editor: The theme that stood out to me throughout RIC was the need for retailers
to continue to seek out ways to adapt. Look no further than the story of 1-800-Flowers.com. Once most known for
its toll-free phone number and delivery service, the retailer always has
managed to stay ahead of the curve when it comes to disruption within the
industry. 1-800-Flowers.com actually partnered with AOL in 1994 to have a
presence on the platform. This was well before the Internet blew up in the late
1990s, giving the company one of the first mainstream e-Commerce presences. More
than a decade later, the retailer began making investments in mobile even as
most companies were losing money on the channel. CEO Chris McCann noted during
his closing keynote that even though the company took a near-term hit, it was
much more prepared for the proliferation of mobile shopping than just about
everyone else: more than half of
1-800-Flowers.com consumers purchase on mobile devices today. Retailers can
definitely take notes from what the leaders are doing to meet the consumer
where they shop, but it’s going to take an investment and a risk.
Bryan Wassel,
Associate Editor: As a relative newcomer to the retail industry, attending
RIC was a bit like jumping into the deep end of the pool for the first time:
frightening, yet exhilarating. More than anything, it was a glimpse into an
industry caught in a fascinating transition, from the continuing evolution
of Walmart discussed by CIO Clay Johnson, to the numerous
disruptors who showed how their up-and-coming companies are finding new ways to
sell old products. The one recurring theme throughout the conference was that
retailers need to be willing to take chances, fail fast and learn from their
mistakes. Behaviouralist Ken Hughes emphasized the importance of this process
in his breakout session, particularly how taking risks is one of the key inputs
in generating creativity and innovation. Even then, it’s never over: Erica
Yamamoto, Director of Lifecycle Marketing & Customer Experience at zulily, noted that it’s critical to
incorporate any innovations across the company rather than rest in the glow of
a job well down.
