Holiday demand is continuing to surge In-store and online, with in-store sales forecasted to rise 4.4% year-on-year and online sales estimated to grow by 16.6%.
In order for retailers to capture and maintain consumer attention they will need to design sharable experiences with an abundance of personalized products.
Trevor Sumner, CEO of Perch Interactive sat down with Retail Touch Points to outline the top three simple tips that will help retailers thrive this Holiday season!
When you look at the fashion and tech industries, both continue to be a breeding ground for innovation. In both worlds, change is constant, and today it’s hard to ignore how technology is transforming the apparel retail space. Shoppers have shifted from browsing racks in clothing stores to browsing AI-powered recommendation engines in e-commerce sites to find their next outfit, forcing traditional apparel retailers to rethink their business strategies and adapt next-level technologies to create differentiated shopping experiences in-store.
"As an investor, adviser, and operator in spearheading tech for almost twenty years, Trevor Sumner is no stranger to tackling disruption and coming out alive. His current company, PERCH, has managed to innovate the in-store experience in a way that truly integrates digital. The omnichannel approach that Trevor and his team implement is the kind that takes consumers’ steps towards, touches of, and interactions with a product and transforms them into content- and data-driven experiences that fuel further discovery – and, of course, purchase. In fact, the resulting sales lifts land anywhere between 30% and 80%, a range that retailers such as Neiman Marcus, Kate Spade, and Estee Lauder are willing to bet on.”
Are brick and mortars failing because they can’t compete against online merchants, or is it that they can’t adapt to the needs of evolved shoppers? The long, loud boom of e-commerce continues to rattle brick and mortar sales, but it’s not likely to ultimately kill retail.
Consumers are still predominantly shopping in stores, where, according to Bloomberg Intelligence analysts, 90 percent of U.S. retail sales take place. The real threat is that online merchants want to win over the physical shopping masses, too. That’s why Amazon purchased Whole Foods supermarkets, installs gadget kiosks in malls and is building a chain of bookstores and university outposts and experimenting with convenience stores. Debunking the myths of the retail apocalypse can help explain just where the state of retail lies today.
Technology that can give shoppers a shot of dopamine– that’s the shopping experience that’s now possible with today’s technology, said Trevor Sumner on today’s podcast, CEO of New York-based Perch Interactive. In this episode of the Retail Podcast, Trevor shares how Perch’s technology is bringing digital concepts into physical stores and creating unique customer experiences where shoppers are free to touch and pickup products that evoke a feeling.
