How Shopholix will enable over 15 bn USD of sales in offline stores by 2020

Starting from automation, process & cost optimization, improving customer service, and providing wide spread business scalability, technology has helped businesses in numerous ways. The brick and mortar retail landscape has been gradually evolving for a while now. The steep evolution in the e-commerce channel has changed the shopper dynamics, and retailers are adapting to the evolved landscape at their own pace.

Right from hyper-local delivery, improving in-store shopper experience, connecting stores to minimize lost sales due to missing size, smart sales prediction techniques to minimize stock outs and much more. The retail landscape is diverse and deep – thus thereare many touch points where technology could and is enabling retail business.

Technology from automation to user relevance

It’s not a surprising fact that Uber is valued at 69bn USD today. Obviously, its not because they make lot of money on cab rides. It’s because they know where you are, they know where you want to go, they know how often you go there. They know your home, they know where you shop, they know where you party, they know where you work – the definitions of privacy are evolving and as users seek more convenience, they are accepting and adapting to the newer norms. Keeping the “creepy” perspective on the backburner for a while, this information is and would be used to create splendid user experience. 

The shopper behavioral & lifestyle landscape is shifting, user expectations are high. Gone those days when personalized, relevant content was exclusivity, it’s basic hygiene now. In the world of “cognitive computing” innovators are continuously working on drawing more parallels to extract newer algorithms in an attempt to be more relevant to the new age shopper. Cognitive computing involves self-learning systems that use data mining, and pattern recognition to create automated IT systems.

Shopholix enabling brick & mortar with its POM – Point of Marketing

In order to merge the shopper experience at the brick and mortar store, it is very important for the store to be empowered with an interface where they could communicate with the shopper. Irrespective of the influence channel, a Shopholix POM (Point of Marketing) Solution facilitates shopper interaction at the store smoother. The Shopholix retail marketing solution comes in 4 broad buckets:

1. Contextual Re-Targeting

The shoe you looked up, but didn't buy on an e-commerce website follows you across the world wide web - this is called re-targeting. It improves your conversion over 26% and is a must for an e-commerce business. Shopholix pioneers in enabling brick and mortar stores to re-target. The social media, google, e-commerce portals along with traditional advertising mediums have strong influencing capabilities. They need to be synced with effective re-targeting for improved results.

Shopholix pioneers re-targeting in offline space. The following are broad re-targeting buckets

a) Non Shopping Mode / Top of Mind Re-targeting

Targeted content & collection driven push notifications, emails and extended FB ads keeping your brand top of mind.

b)Shopping Mode Re-targeting (Location Notification)

Targeted push notification based on user location - upon entry inside mall, upon entry inside store, upon entry inside airport, entry at a key event in town etc.

c) Event Based Re-targeting

Automated, birthday, anniversary exclusive communication - Personalized, delivering strong brand connect.

d) Intent Based Re-targeting

Window shop feature on Shopholix user interface enables strong intent based re-targeting. User looking for shoes within a particular location receives an automated shoe collection update from your store nearby.

2. Customer Service Assistant

Unlike premium retailing, luxury retailers emphasize and rely a lot on one-on-one shop floor interactions with their shoppers. A luxury retail brand CEO specified how a change in manager leads to over 30% impact in sales - concluding the importance of service orientation of the floor operations. Shopholix Shopper Check-in Alerts empowers the floor associates to have shopper profiling, style preferences, and intent predictions.

3. Shopholix mCoupons

Shopholix has redefined the couponing landscape. The traditional paper couponing & e-couponing processes deliver upto 2.5% of in-store conversion, Shopholix mCouponing packed with smart re-targeting and profiling ensures a delivery of over 25%.

4. End-to-End CRM

The current CRM landscape in retail marketing is mostly reactive. Shopholix transforms the traditional loyalty point system to a proactive marketing strategy.Giving an access to shoppers by integrating with Shopholix wallet, it empowers the shopper at the end of the day.Shopholixseamless product integrations with various contextual services provider enables brick & mortar retailers to extend 360 degree benefits to shoppers, like cab rides, movie tickets, food vouchers, salon services etc. 

The immediate future - 2020

Currently the Indian fashion and lifestyle retail is at 116bn USD per annum, less than 20% of total retail at 650bn USD per annum. As per a forecast, over 50,000 new brick and mortar stores would open by 2020, out of which over 20,000 would be fashion and lifestyle. The growth in new stores, consolidation in existing base, growing lifestyle habits, are going to take the total fashion & lifestyle category to 230bn USD per annum by 2020. 

Forrester research, Facebook & BCG joint study, and Statista studies have been talking about the impact of internet on brick and mortar sales. In particular for fashion and lifestyle category over 75% of sales would be digitally influenced summing upto 170bn USD by 2020.

Shopholix started its journey of enabling brick and mortar stores in October, 2015. Currently consolidating their process and flows with select leading retailers Shopholix would reach 1000 stores by the end of 2018 and 5000 stores by 2020 - enabling brick & mortar sales of over 15bn USD. 

The article has been penned down by Chinmay Bhatt, Chief Marketing Officer, Shopholix