NACDS Total Store Expo and Vision 2027 Preview

The Fung Global Retail & Technology team will attend the 2016 National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) Total Store Expo at the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, August 6–9. The annual trade show brings together retailers and suppliers for four days of interactive discussions, presentations and exhibits.

TSE claims to be the industry’s largest gathering and attracts more than 5,600 retailers, suppliers and attendees. The event also connects a wide-range of retailers, not only drug store retailers. This year’s attendees include Jet.com, Kroger, Costco, Ross Stores, Rite Aid, Kmart, Target, CVS and Bed Bath & Beyond, to name a few.

Some themes of the presentations and exhibits include: store/pharmacy technology, supply chain, store operations, digital marketing, inventory management and the Internet of Things (IoT).

 

VISION 2027

The NACDS Total Store Expo will feature an exhibit called Vision 2027 that will preview the future of chain and retail technology. Now in its third year, Vision 2027 will showcase the future of retailing by bringing together technology, interactivity and even celebrity. “Vision 2027 contributes powerfully to one of the most frequently asked questions, ‘What will be new this year at the NACDS Total Store Expo?’” NACDS President and CEO, Steven C. Anderson said.

I will participate in the Vision 2027 attraction by introducing 8 start-ups that will provide insights to company representatives who want to improve their customers’ shopping experience, engage patients through omni-channel strategies and take advantage of data analytics and cloud computing. Below are the participating companies.

 

esight

There are 285 million visually impaired people globally, including more than 3 million in the US. Conrad Lewis, founder of intelligent eyewear company, eSight, saw potential in providing a wearable technology that helps those who are visually impaired see again.

eSight is the first company to invent patented, assistive electronic glasses that allows people with vision loss to actually see. The non-surgical devices are wearable, hands-free and portable. Visually impaired individuals with many different eye conditions have improved their vision from a range of 20/200 to 20/20 with eSight.

The company gained critical appeal in 2015 thanks to a viral video showing a legally blind woman wearing eSight’s glasses that allowed her to see her newborn son. More than 700 people use the glasses, which retail for $15,000.

 

everfave

Everfave is a mobile, social-based customer acquisition and engagement platform for businesses, brands and retailers. The platform drives customer growth and sales uplift with full attribution and ROI measurement across offline and online. Everfave also provides real-time customer analytics and insights by brand, product, geography, Stock Keeping Units (SKU) and shopper demographics, behavior and journey.

According to a Nielson Consumer Study, 92% of consumers trust referrals from friends. Using Everfave’s platform which spans apps, Software Development Kits (SDKs), and the cloud, shoppers can use their smartphones to recommend products and brands that are in-store and online to their friends. This in turn creates a customer conversion rate of roughly 80%, because four of five customers convert mobile referrals into purchases.

If the friend of a shopper chooses to become a customer, they earn a reward and the shopper who referred them gets a reward when they purchase. Shoppers can use the Everfave platform to share their favorite products, brands, experiences, tips and specials offers across hundreds of brands, stores and businesses.

 

inturn

Inturn, founded in 2013, is the first online B2B platform built to enable brands and retailers to efficiently and confidentially buy and sell excess inventory at a global scale. It is a win-win solution for both brands and retailers to replace the existing time-consuming and error-prone liquidity process that drives the off-price industry.

Inturn’s first focus is apparel and accessories, although its methodologies apply to all verticals. The off-price market for apparel and accessories is $250 billion of excess inventory sold globally every year. This represents more than 20% of the $1.2 trillion global retail market for apparel and accessories that cannot be sold at full price.

Inturn allows global brands to optimize the off-price market by helping companies set prices in the currencies of their choice, curate targeted offers for specific markets, determine the best recovery of excess inventory and negotiate and manage order-entry efficiently.

 

trendalytics

Trendalytics is a market intelligence platform that surfaces what consumers want today and tomorrow. Unlike other solutions, Trendalytics aggregates and analyzes patterns across social media, online searches, and SKU data. Dynamic insights are gathered at the product category, classification and SKU level to support decisions on assortment planning, product pricing, and tracking promotional activity and marketing based on consumer shopping patterns. Well known by clients in the apparel and beauty spaces, Trendalytics’ core capabilities also bring new levels of consumer insights for food, health and wellness businesses.

Trendalytics’ clients include global brands and manufacturers, leading department stores, beauty brands, mass retailers and rapidly growing e-commerce sites that represent more than $90 billion in retail sales. The Trendalytics team has decades of experience in retail, technology and investing from companies such as Macy’s, Saks Fifth Avenue, Microsoft and Goldman Sachs.

 

shopic

Customers hate to waste time shopping. With the Shopic self-checkout app, customers can easily select any goods, pay, and exit the store, without waiting even a second for checkout, all with a click of a button.

Shopic’s solution integrates easily with any Point of Sale (POS)/Retail Management system, and is fully compliant with the official Payment Card Industry Date Security Standard (PCI-DSS). It is already operational with some reference customers. Shopic is also a smart shopping assistant that can answer many customer questions.

Checkout is a critical part of the shopping experience and no one likes to wait. Kroger, the largest supermarket chain in the US, installed infrared sensors to better monitor checkout lines in 2013. The average wait time was reduced to just 26 seconds, down from 4 minutes. Management said results were almost immediate–transactions and sales both climbed quickly since the technology was deployed. Kroger’s score on customer-satisfaction surveys also improved by 42% in regard to the speed of checkout.

 

WIGO

Founded in 2014, WIGO Analytics translates video surveillance into actionable business analytics. WIGO Analytics collects information during the customer’s shopping experience such as customer traffic, demographics, conversion rate, employee effectiveness, hot and cold areas of the store and more. Companies gain a quick view of everything happening in their stores with minimal integration costs.

Professional human operators collect all the relevant information via the retailer’s existing surveillance cameras. The data is sent to WIGO servers and analyzed by its analytics software. Reports are then sent back to the retailer’s webpage and management app in a smart and simple way. Retailers can also receive instant alerts for security, fraud and safety issues. The data helps improve sales and profitability by improving staff performance, operational effectiveness, store layout, product visibility, marketing effectiveness and loss prevention.

 

eventable

Eventable is a digital communication and marketing platform built for the calendar. Their platform enables brands to send targeted calendar events and notifications via existing calendars (Google Calendar, Outlook, iOS, etc).

Calendars by nature are highly engaging. In fact, behavioral studies show that the average consumer is 86% more likely to take action if an event is in their calendar. With over 2.5 billion calendar users worldwide, the potential reach is enormous. By engaging consumers through a medium they check an average of 10 times daily, brands can send timely promotions that drive action — whether it’s a retail sale or a reminder to refill medication.

Where many marketing strategies may fall short of getting users to attend or purchase, targeted calendars notifications help brands close the loop on their marketing efforts. Retailers like social shopping website ShopStyle have leveraged Eventable’s calendar marketing platform to drive sales and traffic with great success. To date, Eventable’s platform has served experiences for over 3 million consumers in over 48 countries. Eventable enables today’s most innovative brands and marketers to communicate with their customers through native calendar platforms.

 

retsku

Retsku is an analytics platform that collects retail store data to help manufacturers and retailers audit retail stores for pricing checks, shelf space, promotions, end caps and more. The platform collects in-store data in real-time and analyzes it to provide actionable insights.

Retsku is a Software as a Service (SaaS) platform that comes pre-configured with retail specific dashboards and reports. Retail store data gathered by Retsku can help identify in-store stock levels for individual products, when they were added or removed from the product assortment, how many stores the product is shelved, pricing information and more information on secondary displays.

Retsku also offers MAP Monitoring; Minimum Advertised Price is the practice of distributors agreeing to promote a manufacturer’s products at certain prices. Retsku lets its customers know which retailers violate the practice and exactly when they do.

Retsku’s differentiator is a workflow/rules engine and predictive analysis platform that provides brands with reports on fluctuations in business drivers, such as sales up/down, and the most important reasons for such changes, such as a competitor introduced a new product at Target or Walmart and ran a 15%-off promotion.

 

Read our full preview report of the event here.

 

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