Startup Stories interview: XY Retail CEO and Founder Susan Jeffers
RTIH gets the lowdown on PoS and omnichannel commerce solution startup XY Retail, which recently closed a $4 million seed round led by Monta Vista Capital with participation from Stage 1 Ventures.
RTIH: Tell us about XY Retail
Susan Jeffers: XY Retail is a unified PoS and commerce platform that enables global retail brands to streamline omnichannel operations and foster the strongest, most meaningful, and profitable relationships with customers.
Luxury brands worldwide have adopted our platform to digitise their enterprises and manage their entire global retail operations— from data decisioning, supply chain management, and order fulfilment, to hyper-personalising clienteling and merchandising experiences.
The platform also boosts commerce by enabling retailers to fulfil online orders up to 300% faster. XY Retail is headquartered in New York and Milan and operates in over 23 countries.
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?
SJ: My husband, Puneet Arora and I were long time retail and technology leaders.
Puneet has more than 20 years of experience architecting enterprise products and solutions for banking, retail, telecommunications, media, airlines and hospitality.
He was the CTO of TIBCO Software, one of the largest integration companies.
I have over a decade of experience founding and advising consumer retail startups and fashion brands and helped found two retail startups responsible for digital marketing and consumer experience, one of which was acquired by theFind.
We both saw how the retail industry was rapidly changing with the rise of e-commerce, yet we knew the in-store experience would never disappear altogether.
In order to marry in-store and off-line experiences, retailers have been forced to adopt a plethora of fragmented tools and point "solutions" and as a result, are faced with integrating multiple tools from multiple vendors.
We believed the solution to this challenge was a modular, microservices-based platform that could help global retailers take control of their data and streamline all their operations within one place to create a cohesive, easy and secure customer experience, regardless of the channel.
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
SJ: The retail industry is excited by what the XY Retail platform can deliver.
Fashion brands in 35 countries are already using us to manage their stores, e-commerce, customers, products, inventory, orders and more.
Investors, CROs, and CFOs love XY Retail because of its efficiency and ability to boost commerce.
Brand leaders and in-store teams love it because it allows them to see, be with, and serve their customers in ways they never could in the past.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
SJ: In the wake of the tremendous digital transformation retailers saw in the last two years, our conviction that a focus on the needs of physical retail storefronts would continue to be successful seemed counterintuitive and initially faced headwinds.
We remained firm in our convictions that experiential, luxury retail would always have a core in-person component.
Now, most retailers have embraced our "physigal" approach unifying physical and digital retail channels to meet the expectations of consumers in today's environment.
RTIH: What is the biggest issue facing the omnichannel retail space right now?
SJ: Omnichannel retailers are tasked with managing PoS, e-commerce, ERP, clienteling, and CRM across disparate platforms and solutions.
At the same time, consumers have high expectations for seamless, secure, convenient, and personalised shopping experiences no matter where they engage with a brand (web, mobile, social media, or in-store).
Retailers also need a way to capture, manage and understand consumer data in order to understand their customers’ shopping behaviours, purchasing decisions, and trends in order to drive better experiences and more revenue.
Getting a complete picture of customers' buying preferences and habits will require retailers to combine all their data across all possible channels. This is crucial for inventory management and store performance goals.
RTIH: What can we expect to see from you over the next 12 months?
SJ: We are just beginning! We will use our funding to continue to onboard more clients and roll-out the XY platform in more countries across the globe.
