C A Design Services boosts StoreSpace retail planning software

C A Design Services has announced the new 1.10 version of its StoreSpace offering.

This is a macro space management platform based on AutoCAD and used by store planning teams to improve productivity, standards and profitability.

It includes the ability to integrate with Nielsen's micro-space software. By connecting micro and macro space management data and processes, planners are able to manage their planograms directly from their floorplans.

Last year, UK-based C A Design Services celebrated its 35th anniversary. The company began life during the early days of computer aided design (CAD). It focused on enabling clients to succeed in capturing, understanding and optimising their spaces and won business from big players in the offshore industry, hence its head office being situated in Great Yarmouth.

“Back then we were basically offering CAD engineering services,” Director Guy Moates said in a recent interview with RTIH.

“We attended a CAD conference and our then technical director bumped into a retailer (Boots) and we started to do some surveys for them. This was around 25 years ago. We then thought, hey, there’s a market in retail for our services and the skills we have. They translated very well from an offshore industry to the retail space.”

Moates spearheaded a drive to investigate the marketplace and the company slowly moved out of the engineering sector and into retail. At that time, some retailers’ architects were toying with CAD, using it for basic purposes, such as laying out floorplans. But pen and paper and stencils were still very much the order of the day.

“The strategy of the business has been to continually push forward with that and develop, grow and widen our service offering,” Moates observed.

“We had software developers inhouse, which we used for the likes of productivity improvements, so we could then clearly see there was a marketplace to develop those tools to help retailers plan their shops, report on how many fixtures there were, how their space was being used. We eventually packaged that into StoreSpace, around 14 years ago. And that is a key part of the business today.”

Check out the full interview with Moates here.

And get more information on StoreSpace here.