On this episode of the MarketScale retail podcast, host Tyler Kern is joined by Ed Crowley, Harbor Retail Senior Director, Technology Development & Engineering, to discuss the desire for engaging in-store digital experiences and the roadblocks still standing in between retailers and achieving those experiences.

Crowley highlighted the “Four Modes of Failure” that account for many an experience going off the rails – power, hardware, content and software.

Retail also faces a unique connectivity challenge, Crowley said.

“In retail, the majority of the fixtures are typically offline because of the challenges with wireless or cellular in a store,” Crowley said. “If you go into a big-box store and you work toward the back where the appliances are, a lot of times, you can’t make a phone call.”

Uptime, Crowley said, is perhaps the most critical element of any digital experience – you can design the most interesting and unique installation in the world, but if no one can experience it because it isn’t working properly, it can’t do its job.

“The last thing you want to have when you’re designing an interactive experience for a major brand, whether it’s an appliance brand or a consumer electronics brand … is, when somebody walks up to learn about your project, to have it not working,” he said.

Kern and Crowley also touched on self-healing technology, a philosophy on being proactive in managing the four “villains” inhibiting experience success, not leveraging technology simply for technology’s sake, and more.

MarketScale recently attended NRF 2020, otherwise known as Retail’s Big Show, and sat down with some of the retail industry’s most prominent figures to get their insight into where the industry is headed as 2020 dawns.

On this episode of the MarketScale Retail Podcast, Roadie Founder and CEO Marc Gorlin, Pensa Systems President and CEO Richard Schwartz and Kantar Consulting Senior Vice President Americas David Marcotte shared their thoughts on retail’s direction with MarketScale’s Geoffrey Short.

It’s clear that, nearly across the board, mom-and-pop shops and massive retailers will have different experiences in addressing consumer needs and developing strategies to exceed expectations.

One of the key areas these two vastly different retailers differ in, Gorlin said, is the challenges they face regarding shipping.

Gorlin and Short also dove into the overall shipping landscape entering the new decade and discussed the state of innovation in shipping and logistics.

Schwartz and Short address the current inventory fulfillment problems faced by retailers, offering up a unique and very-21st-century solution – drones.

With drones, Schwartz said, retailers can leverage the automated nature of the devices to better address the inventory obstacles that plague them.

It’s more than automation – drones can also help capture additional data that retailers can leverage to spring into action with further improvements.

Short and Marcotte discussed one of the new decade’s hottest topics – the so-called “retail apocalypse.”

Marcotte shared his thoughts regarding whether or not the situation for retailers is as drastic as some forecast, then joined Short in a discussion of how to improve profit in the retail industry.

In particular, Marcotte discussed automation and its dual nature of being able to boost profits, but also having a serious effect on workers.

MarketScale recently attended NRF 2020, otherwise known as Retail’s Big Show, and sat down with some of the retail industry’s most prominent figures to get their insight into where the industry is headed as 2020 dawns.

On this episode of MarketScale's Retail Podcast, Infovista Senior Director of Global Enterprise Marketing Ricardo Belmar, Sr., Impinj Senior Manager of Retail Solutions Ashley Burkle and RightHand Robotics Head of Product and Marketing Vince Martinelli shared their thoughts on retail’s direction with MarketScale’s Geoffrey Short.

Belmar joined Short to discuss the importance of consistency and scale regarding new technology for retailers. In particular, retailers need to keep in mind how breakdowns can eliminate the benefits of cutting-edge technology. In short, technology can’t just work once – it needs to function across enormous supply and retail chains, and it has to fulfill its role at all times to be worth the investment. Otherwise, retailers will have a costly error on their hands that extends far beyond monetary loss.

Burkle and Short discussed the ever-changing world of inventory management. In today’s data-driven world, retailers have more information regarding this critical function than ever.

However, without proper management and conversion of that data into action, retailers will be left behind.

Burkle and Short also examined RFID’s impact on retailer data.

As part of the Innovation Lab at NRF 2020, RightHand Robotics was a part of the show’s hub for exciting, tech-oriented start-ups.

Martinelli touched on warehouse automation, a hot topic is today’s ever-more-automated world, and highlighted the challenges all retailers face when trying to exceed consumer expectations while taking into account shipping and monetary hurdles.

Another critical piece of adopting modern technology, Martinelli said, will be retailers’ willingness to adapt older warehouse spaces not originally designed for these solutions to accommodate them.

DeAnn Campbell, director of retail strategy and development at Harbor Retail, spoke about the evolution of omnichannel on this episode of MarketScale's Retail Podcast. Harmonic Retail™️ is a concept developed by Harbor Retail to address the changes retailers face in today’s marketplace.

“Harmonic Retail is all about flexibility and staying in tune with the customer,” Campbell said. “It’s responsive to the customer. It asks all those channels to adapt and flex to stay in tune with the customer as they move along that path to purchase.”

Creating unexpected shopping experiences are a way companies are using Harmonic Retail. Campbell cited a recent IKEA example where they set up a popup store inside a subway station in Asia to introduce their brand to a new set of potential customers.

“Our country’s annual growth rate is at an all-time low,” she said.

This low birth-rate means a dearth in tomorrow’s shoppers. Retailers need to extend their brand to all generations, including nontraditional markets. One of the essential tools for retailers is stores.

“E-Commerce needs stores,” Campbell said.

But the role of the traditional brick & mortar store has evolved. Campbell said stores should be used in conjunction with online ordering, and that process must be fluid. People may order online and pick up at the store. People may browse the store and then shop that same store online.

“The truth is, in harmonic retail, you may never sell an item in the store,” she said. “However, that store is integral to that eventual online store purchase.”

One example of Harmonic Retail changing a traditional shopping experience was Nordstrom’s, which Campbell said recently rolled out a new fitting room in a newly opened New York store. These modular, portable, fitting rooms include smart mirror technology, with adjustable lighting, call buttons to engage with a sales clerk, and iPads to check out different colors and sizes.

Every company has resources to allocate, but not every company allocates them efficiently. On this episode of the MarketScale Retail Podcast, Mike Murphy, Chief Financial Officer for Personiv, sat down with host Sean Heath to break down a few ins and outs of intelligent resource allocation.

There are three primary areas in which a company generally spends its resources: customer acquisition, product/service delivery, and G&A (General and Administrative). They are not of equal importance, explained Murphy.

“When you’re looking at the G&A function of the business, that’s generally where I want to spend the least amount of my money. If I can spend more money acquiring customers and more money delighting my customers, the better off overall I’m going to be, in terms of the value I’m returning to my shareholders," he said.

The size and development stage of a company is, generally speaking, a contributing factor to the functional efficiency of its allocation practices, said Murphy.

“It’s the companies that are smaller or kind of earlier stage, where they’re starting to win customers, they’re starting to get growth. That’s an area where you can just imagine, they’re throwing money at different initiatives to try to grow the business. They continue to put money in areas that may not be producing the ROI," he said.

Murphy also described that the way to leverage the most valuable resource any company has, good employees, is by using resources to free them for other tasks.

“What you’re basically doing is kind of flipping the switch a little bit. You’re trying to empower that person by providing some less expensive resources, that can do the transactional work so that he or she can be spending their time focusing more from a strategic perspective,” Murphy said. “That’s what a good CEO, and that’s what a good board is going to be looking for: somebody who is able to deliver that.”

Every day, new products are transported around the world on flatbed trucks, railways, and ships. They pass through a constantly-changing environment of both environmental and scenic materials. But according to Matt Peat, U.S. Director for Transhield, the majority of manufacturers don’t protect their cargo from those factors, and that can be costly.

“Most manufacturing companies, most items that ship down the road, they just choose to do nothing and that nothing leads to a dissatisfied customer,” Peat said. “It can also lead to the need to clean it up when it arrives at the customer.”

The extra time and resources needed to clean an item after shipping, but before delivery, creates an extra cost for the distributor, which is not simply financial.

“If the user is ready to receive that boat, and the dealer receives that boat, but has to do extra cleanup or repair, now you’ve got fatigue in that relationship,” Peat said. “There’s an issue that’s started, especially if you’re talking around, let’s say, Memorial Day or the Fourth of July, when it’s time to start boating.”

The old saying: an ounce of protection is better than a pound of cure, definitely applies here, with Transhield’s custom-designed coverings and protective products. With a scalable range from cars to HVAC units to locomotives to windmill blades, Peat sees a constantly flexible list of items that can (and should) be covered in transit.

“We can do, virtually, anything. We’re customizing the ‘garment’ for this machine. We’re customizing the cover that can accept anything that can be sewn onto it,” he said. “The thing is, you don’t notice what it is, because it’s big and white and covered. We do. We notice that, and we want other people to know more about it.”

Global waste and recycling initiatives are a hot topic and pressing issue for a country as large and influential as the USA. Though your average consumer is more aware of buying and participating in earth-conscious commerce, larger habits remain for retailers that can leave a significant carbon footprint. Many retail companies use PVC-based signage for one-time-use seasonal displays and fail to recycle their temporary furnishings properly.

Today's guests said this waste is harmful to the environment and the economy; On this episode of the Retail podcast, we sat down to talk how retail companies can make better signage choices with Bob O'Neill, owner of Competitive EDGE, and Tim Bennett, Chairman & Co-founder of Image Options Companies.

Since Image Options Companies' formation in 1999, its approach to sustainability has been holistic. Though many companies opt for recyclable signage, it often fails to finish the full recycling process.

"People will say that their product is recyclable and it probably is, but it doesn't get to the waste stream," O'Neill said.

Most malls and the communities they reside in have ineffective recycling methods. In this regard, Bennett said, "this is a bigger problem that needs to be in Washington."

But even without federal intervention, O'Neill and Bennett explained how there are choices companies can make that will help the environment and their bottom line. With Millennials becoming the biggest buyers in the country, this generation is making ethically inspired choices and shopping at companies that make sustainable choices.

"The ROI...the return on any sustainable investment you do usually comes back in multiple folds," Bennett said to businesses and manufacturers.

Bennett and O'Neill divulged a treasure trove of resources for the sustainably-minded in this retail podcast, while reinforcing the importance of sustainability knowledge and awareness.

"If someone can listen to this, and if we create one person...in the retail design display side of the business to just think about their overall impact, then we've done our job," O'Neill said.