TheIndustry.fashion LIVE! Marks & Spencer on advancing connected stores through technology and experimentation

During TheIndustry.fashion LIVE! The Connected Store in partnership with Bleckmann, sponsored by Aptos Retail and True, a crowd of fashion industry professionals spent the day learning about how to deliver a true, seamless omnichannel retail experience.

For the first panel of the day, Liam Buswell, Innovation Director at retail and consumer investment and innovation advisory firm True spoke with Andy Redman, Senior Head of Product for Store Operations at Marks & Spencer and Cameron Worth, Founder of creative studio Sharpend about advancing connected stores through collaboration and technology.

Cameron Worth (left), Andy Redman (middle) and Liam Buswell (right)

A seamless omnichannel experience can help brands and retailers better serve customer needs anytime and anywhere. This is important as today’s consumers are looking for an elevated retail experience wherever they decide to shop.

Whether it’s online or offline, through social media or third-party partners, businesses need to consider all channels together – making them feel like an extension of one another whilst enticing customers with personalised experiences, flexible payment options, on demand delivery and more.

The store needs to be at the heart of this strategy – offering so much more than just a sales outlet, but a service centre and brand exploration hub creating hyper-relevant consumer connections through physical and digital retail.

Marks & Spencer is among a number of retail businesses on this omnichannel journey – hoping to better connect customers via its various channels.

"When I think about connected store, I think about connected customer. At M&S, we want customers to navigate our offer seamlessly across all channels. We hope to achieve this by creating a successful omnichannel experience, allowing customers to shop via any channel without noticing a difference," Redman said.

With customers at the heart of its omnichannel strategy, M&S places importance on using technology to create improved in-store experiences for its customers and staff - whether that's using RFID to reduce time to count stock or machine vision to better understand how its customers shop and what they want.

Whilst M&S still finds value in some of the technology it's been using for around 20 years, Redman believes it is also important to set up suitable platforms and open systems to explore new opportunities. "Developing a successful connected store and omnichannel strategy requires innovation and experimentation. However, you must access clear data to track whether something is working or not," he added.

Worth, who founded SharpEnd in 2015, also believes that experimentation plays an important role in creating seamless connected retail experiences.

SharpEnd is a creative studio that sits alongside brands and retailers to help create meaningful and insightful connected product experiences.

The business believes there is an opportunity to drive engagement and conversion using an experience-led approach, through technologies such as RFID, digital screens, sensors and more.

"The whole ethos behind the business is to make the real world a bit more interesting. We're a bit more innovative than bigger agencies or consulting partners. We occupy a special space for experimentation, an environment for brands and retailers to really try things out," finished Worth.

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