The rise of technology is not something that the bricks-and-mortar world should fear. This was the recurring theme at this year’s Wired Retail conference, held at the British Museum in London.
This rhetoric was to be expected from a tech-based conference, but there were plenty of messages for the retail property industry and speakers drew on some particularly interesting examples.
Nick Brackenbury took to the stage to introduce an app which he believes can help save the British high street. His Deliveroo-style platform, NearSt, lets customers order items from high street shops which can then be delivered to them within the hour or be collected in store.
He said: “We do not think it is about getting products from a warehouse faster and faster, but putting products where people are, where they want to buy them. It involves the shop. The next big innovation is having products where customers are already, the moment they actually want them.”
He added that Amazon’s recent commitment to grocery shops was further testimony to the strength of our high streets, and should not be seen as a threat.
Anthony Ritch, head of Westfield’s digital development arm Westfield Labs, told delegates that the future of retail will be neither online or offline, but a combination of the two.
He said: “Shoppers call it ‘shopping’ and do not think in online and offline terms. People are social beings that enjoy connecting with family and friends, as well as brands and experiences.”
Westfield Labs, set up four years ago and spearheaded by Ritch, is looking to merge physical and digital shopping, boosting the overall experience, rather than trying to distinguish what has been an online or an offline sale.
Westfield’s White City mall, W12, is being used as a global litmus test for the Labs. Initial pilots include receiving personalised shopping lists on your phone as well as deals and notifications from nearby retailers. Eventually it will look to expand this technology across all of its properties.
Ritch said some shoppers may buy online from a Westfield Labs app and then collect in store, or use new kiosk hubs in the shopping centre to buy items online. Either way, it is still a sale.
“It is about creating a platform that connects our retailers, brands and customers across all of our properties,” he said.
Help for landlords
On the start-up stage, tech entrepreneur and former data scientist Owen McCormack presented his vision for using tech to help retail landlords. His platform, Hoxton Analytics, uses data from camera footage designed to record shoppers’ footwear to help landlords and retailers monitor footfall demographics.
The system uses a tiny camera embedded at around knee height at the entrance to shops and in shopping centres to calculate footfall and shopper demographics. This is a useful tool for both retailers and landlords.
McCormack and his team are looking to bolster their landlord relationships, as the platform can help landlords lease empty space by helping them to establish which retailers would be suited to a certain space depending on the data collated by the cameras.
Lessons for logistics
There were lessons for the logistics world too. Supply chains of the future could rely less on distribution warehouses by using data to calculate how to get items directly to shops and consumers.
Freight company Flexport is looking to make deliveries faster and cheaper for logistics firms, suppliers and retailers. Its vast data capability means that its customers can track shipments from the supplier to the customer’s door in real time.
Data can also be used to calculate the most efficient way of getting goods along the supply chain, and Flexport has shown that in some instances it may be more efficient to bypass distribution centres, sending products directly to consumers and retailers.
However, this does not
mean that distribution warehouses would become void. Jan Van Casteren, Flexport’s European vice president, suggested that surplus warehouse space could be used to hold further stock.
Whether or not it works in the UK remains to be seen, but with current supply levels as low as they are, a bit of extra space in the pipeline might be a welcome addition.
Virtual reality
But not everyone on the day embraced the worlds of bricks and mortar and tech coming together. Tim Fleming, founder of virtual reality company Future Visual, told the audience that it might as well forget the high street, as we could all be buying everything in virtual reality in the next 15 years.
“The high street has not changed in 100 years,” he said. After online shopping and mobile payments, Fleming said that VR would be the next seismic shift in retail and that it would be “bonkers” if we were not all using it by then.
However, he did admit that the headsets can make people feel queasy, so hopefully the high street will have enough time to fight back while VR companies fine tune the details of their imagined worlds.
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