UK retailers were today expected to rake in £2.44bn as shoppers hit the Black Friday sales. While the annual marketing frenzy may result in a sparkling top line, there’s a growing view it can have a damaging long term impact on a retailer’s profits and brand. Here we examine the dark side of Black Friday, and share[…]
Changing rooms are an essential part of the fashion retail customer experience, Here are our top five tips to convert fitting room visits to sales.
5G will transform retail 5G ‘fifth generation mobile networks’ is set to launch in the UK as soon as 2019. The retail industry needs to prepare if it is to gain from a world where users can connect no matter where they are and with the exact performance they need. 5G’s promise to deliver ubiquitous[…]
‘What size are you looking for?’ is a question that is losing your fashion retail chain sales. Don’t get us wrong, size is important, but it is second to body shape in the factors that will result in a customer visiting the cash register and keeping their online purchase.
Retail personalisation technology is supposed to be the magic bullet for the problem of online fashion returns. But does asking shoppers to guess their own body shape provide accurate data or a good customer experience? […]
Retail news? Barely a week goes by without another chain parading its woes: announcing profit warnings, negotiations with creditors and store closures. BBC News today reported that 22,000 retail jobs are at risk in 2018 alone. The finger of blame is frequently pointed at the growth of e-commerce and Amazon in particular, but is it really that simple? After all, Amazon has been around since the mid 1990’s so it is hardly a new challenger.
A previous HOLM blog post discussed the importance of empowering retail sales staff with technology to put them on an equal footing with today’s ‘mobile first’ consumer. Yet there remains a reluctance among retailers to roll out in-store technology. They have their e-commerce platform for that sort of stuff after all. Then there is the risk of getting it wrong – an expensive mistake for any ambitious retail director.
But the problem is that customers simply do not silo your retail business into ‘stores’ and ‘e-commerce’; they view you as a single brand and expect a seamless transition between their online and in-store activities. In-store technology is the only way to provide this true omnichannel experience. Here we share five ways to make your in-store tech a success: […]
Which fashion retail head office positions didn’t exist 30 years ago? Head of Multichannel; social media manager; customer experience analyst… to name but a few. Yet on the shop floor we still have ‘shop assistants’ and that’s pretty much it.
In this post I’m going talk about how the role of the shop floor workforce has evolved dramatically in the past three decades. Next I will share four simple changes fashion retailers can make to ensure today’s sales staff feel relevant, valued and productive. […]
Closures and portfolio consolidation are sure bets in the game of fashion retail results bingo, right up there with unseasonable weather. While the e-commerce boom has admittedly left the sector with too much space on its hands, bricks and mortar has been unfairly dismissed as a dying channel. This has resulted in customers feeling short changed when their local store gets the axe or, worse, watching it slowly decay due to under investment.
Here are five reasons it’s more important than ever to invest in stores and make sure the baby doesn’t disappear with the bathwater. […]