City Furniture teams with IBM for in-store apps

US retailer, City Furniture, has worked with IBM to launch three MobileFirst for iOS apps for iPad Pro – Sales Assist, Payment, and Finance, built using Swift. It is rolling out the apps to 400 store associates across 15 City Furniture showrooms and 12 Ashley Furniture HomeStore showrooms in south Florida. 

They now have access to the more than 8,000 SKUs complete with images, product information, colours, styles, and unique customer profiles. "City Furniture's roots are to provide top-notch customer service and convenience to Floridians looking to make furniture purchases, so mobility was a logical next step for us,” says Keith Koenig, President, City Furniture. "By developing these customised apps in collaboration with IBM and Apple, employees have the right tools to personalise recommendations, make payments, and schedule delivery all from the showroom floor. Equipped with the right information, a store associate can ensure a smooth, continuous path to purchase without leaving a customer's side and they often come into our stores asking for the store associate by name."

"Today's savvy consumer is doing product research before even stepping foot inside a store, driving retailers to bring the same excitement, engagement, and interactive technologies into their stores," says Laurence Haziot, IBM's Global Managing Director and General Manager for the Consumer Industry. "Armed with iOS apps, City Furniture associates can now immediately tap into the right relevant product and customer data in near real-time, without disrupting customer engagement, to bring the highest level of personalisation and service to shoppers while in the physical store for a more interactive, efficient shopping experience. “

The retailer is using Bluemix, IBM's cloud platform, to link these new applications with its existing applications and data. IBM plans to work with City Furniture to further connect the apps with its CRM system and analytics so store associates can more easily follow up with direct marketing for prospective customers based on data from prior purchases and interactions.