2023 RTIH Innovation Awards: retailer of the year shortlist announced, including Studenac and Nordstrom
We’re pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2023 RTIH Innovation Awards Global Retailer of the Year category.
We received a record number of submissions this year and many fantastic examples of the continued resilience and dynamism of the retail space during hugely challenging times.
Our winners will be revealed at the 2023 RTIH Innovation Awards ceremony, which will take place at the Barbican Centre in central London.
The event will be held on Wednesday, 29th November, maintaining its popular evening format, with a drinks reception in the stunning Conservatory, followed by a Christmas themed three course meal, and awards presentations in the Garden Room.
Congratulations to all those who made the shortlist.
To book your place at the 2023 RTIH Innovation Awards ceremony on Wednesday, 29th November, click here.
Most Innovative Retailer shortlist as follows:
Who has been the most innovative, customer focused retailer (outside of the UK) this year?
Judges are asked to look at the shortlisted submissions and decide which one has been the most consistently forward thinking and customer centric in 2022/23.
Shortlist:
L'Occitane and Confer With
L'Occitane has embraced Confer With's live video shopping technology, becoming a trailblazer in the MENA retail landscape through the L'Occitane Accelerator programme.
This strategic move has reinvented the customer journey, merging in-shop personalisation with digital convenience.
Tailored for regional preferences, including Arabic language integration, Confer With's platform has elevated L'Occitane to the vanguard of omnichannel retail. L'Occitane's initiative showcases its dedication to innovation and superior customer engagement, making it a strong contender for most innovative retailer recognition.
Nordstrom and SML
Nordstrom, a fashion retailer, wanted to improve inventory accuracy across its 350+ stores nationwide.
The retailer was looking to better visibility into what items were in-store to fulfil customer orders faster and reduce cancellations.
Nordstrom partnered with SML RFID to roll out item-level RFID and its Clarity solution. This has now been deployed to 330+ Nordstrom stores, taking its inventory accuracy to 95% and above.
Puma and refive
Puma encountered challenges in engaging a younger, digital native customer base and understanding in-store customer behaviour.
With refive's innovative digital receipts, it has successfully bridged these gaps. Now, at the checkout, it engages customers digitally, understanding anonymous customer behaviour in detail, collecting feedback and thousands of marketing opt-ins.
Thanks to this, Puma is now able to interact with in-store customers post-purchase as easily as with online customers. The overall customer experience has been enhanced with the gathered insights into customer behaviour.
The refive partnership aptly aligns with Puma’s sustainability and customer centricity goals.
Studenac
Studenac is working to automate decision making along its supply chain, reducing the need for manual interventions to a minimum.
Its AI powered planning and analytics platform from Solvoyo uses machine learning to analyse inventory and sales data, automatically generating high quality recommendations for the products each of its store managers should order every day.
This project is in line with the retailer’s overall strategy of leveraging advanced analytics and automating decision making in supply chain planning, to support growth while improving efficiency and accuracy in inventory management.
Since the opening of its Studenac Digital Centre of Excellence in late 2022, Croatia’s largest retailer by number of stores has embarked on a range of advanced analytics projects to transform all aspects of its business.
Four of the most prominent areas were tools to manage pricing, promotions, back bonus calculations and the organic expansion of the store network.
The Location Analysis Tool (LAT) streamlines store expansion through data driven site selection and financial forecasting. It elevates Studenac's operational efficiency, accelerates decision making, and enhances strategic store placement, positioning the company for lasting growth.
Style Union and Nextail
Style Union, launched in 2022, is a fast growing Indian fashion retailer that has truly embraced innovation from day one.
From the start, the team behind Style Union adopted solutions like the Nextail merchandise planning platform, leveraging proven technologies used by fashion retailers around the world, to embed efficiency and automation into their core merchandising operations.
Using AI to automate and enhance inventory decisions has enabled efficient scaling at an aggressive pace.
Just 18 months after opening their first store, they have expanded to 57 of average 8,500 ft2, with plans to reach 175+ by 2025.
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