2020 Retail Innovation Week Conference Recap | Tyniece McKelvey

Retail Innovation week was all about what’s important in innovation and how to implement it in the day-to-day retail environment. Some of the experts on the day I attended were Judy Bersten from The Yes, Ben K from Camp, Megan Higgins from Avalara, Ranjan Roy from Adore Me, Ram Iyer from Microsoft and etc.
    
One of the speakers I really enjoyed was Ben K from Camp. I enjoyed it because prior to the pandemic, Scott took our Brand Experience class to visit Camp in Hudson Yards. We had such a good time just being adult kids in a playful environment. The thing I questioned the most is how does a retail store sustain that is heavily experience based like Camp, when stores can’t have people in them to intake those experiences. Ben had a fascinating and creative way he embraced this change. When covid-19 hit, he decided he would take the Camp experience online. They created online birthday parties for quarantine. They celebrated 10,000 kid’s birthdays. They did so with gifts and brand partnerships. It was all about keeping the engagement with the community up in the online space. One of their major partnerships was with Walmart where they participated in virtual gift giving. Which I thought was a great way to help people feel celebrated during a hard time. 

 


 

 Megan Higgins from Avalara had simple but profound advice for small retailers. She said that small retailers have to embrace technology so they can thrive in technology. They have to make sure they are leveraging every avenue. The main goal is to bring convenience even in the smallest ways, through value and experience. Value, making sure everything is priced right and competitive. Experience, brings loyalty and reduces touchpoints. Those are her core pillars. She also touched on making sure your checkout experience is seamless and frictionless and that e-commerce needs to be smooth for customers to engage.
    
Ram Iyer from Microsoft spoke about infusing the in-store feel into a URL feel. One example is 1 on 1 video consolidations where retail pros can offer consumers the ability to understand their needs better. One way to do this is live streaming. We’ve seen through the pandemic brands using live streams as a new way to connect with their audience. It made it easy for retailers to provide education and entertainment to consumers. Social platforms are becoming like retailers with instance store fronts. They can target and retarget customers based on purchase intent. It makes it really easy for customers to buy being that you can purchase directly from posts now on social media.

The main thing I took away from all of the guest speakers is that you have to constantly be adapting to your environment to survive as a traditional retailer. The pandemic was a huge wake up call for retailers to get with the times. There were plenty of stores who are out of business now because they did not embrace technology to meet consumers where they are, at home. Another key takeaway for me was planning ahead. If your storefront is heavily experience based it’s important to figure out ways to deliver that experience across multiple platforms. So, if that in-person experience is disrupted, you have other platforms to fall back on. Lastly, convenience. Being that e-commerce has picked up significantly it’s important for websites to be functional and convenient. If it is hard to navigate, you will miss out on important customers. Overall, I really enjoyed this conference because it was extremely relevant to what is happening right now and it was an amazing display of the tenacity many business owners possess. 

 

Panelist Linkedin: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-higgins-knislis/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kluster/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ramnarayaniyer/

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