Asda wins RTIH bricks and mortar innovation award

Asda has emerged triumphant in the Bricks and Mortar Innovation category at the 2020 RTIH Innovation Awards.

The award celebrates retailers who are enabling physical spaces to thrive via innovative technology, even as online shopping continues to grow.

We were looking for examples of reducing friction in the customer journey, offering improved experiences, and blurring the lines between channels.

Asda beat out the likes of Walmart and JD.com to pick up the gong, impressing our judges with its Stevenage innovation store.

2020 highlights included the roll out of an electronic shelf edge labelling (eSEL) solution.

Louise Bagshaw, Senior Director of Retail Front End and Innovation at Asda, comments: “It’s great to receive recognition for the Tech Store team, our central stakeholders and of course the store; it really is a full team effort landing innovation in Stevenage.”

“With each initiative we have a really clear plan and have an open mindset. With innovation we start small, fail fast and move onto the next project.”

“This gives our colleagues and suppliers a really unique opportunity to try out technology in a live store environment – learning from our customers and store teams along the way.”

She adds: “Colleague and customer engagement is a big part of how we work; as a team we work closely with colleagues and customers to help them embrace the new technology in their store.”

“It’s important that our colleagues really believe in the technology and getting them excited about the massive part they play towards our strategy has been key to success for many of our projects.”

Here’s what our judging panel had to say…

Martin Newman, Founder, The Customer First Group: “Asda are using the store to test various initiatives that will, I believe, meet evolving customer needs as well as giving them more control over their own business.”

“On the latter, electronic shelf pricing helps them cut down on the cost of visual merchandising while adapting prices more readily. The personalised chocolate machine meets the need for customised/personalised products and along with the fragrance self-service machine drives gifting opportunities.”

Gerald Dawson, Finance Director, Forthglade Foods: “The innovation store has experiment after experiment and it’s good to see that these are ‘full’ experiments, such as eSEL for the entire store, rather than just a couple of bays.”

“Plenty of these experiments will fail, but Asda continues to invest to find the retail solutions of the future.”

Simon Curtis, Sales and Marketing Director, PMC Retail: “Innovation shops rarely live up to their promise, often the graveyard for new technologies.”

“Asda has succeeded where many have failed, showing us how to bring consumers exciting new shopping experiences with a wide variety of offers.”

“The Stevenage store is a great example of converting a physical store into ‘digital experience’. Electronic labelling helps the consumer but also brings labour savings and pricing accuracy.”

“Likewise the Cleveron Flex Machine, an automated parcel service for Click & Collect shoppers, removes the need for physical picking of orders and speeds up the collection process for consumers.”

“A wonderful blend of innovation, but my personal favourite is the personalised chocolate machine, now that would get me to their shop!”