THE SOURCE: companies and experts take stock of retail innovation
17/11/2022
THE SOURCE, the Experience Room that introduces a new way of thinking about omnichannel, opens its doors to the Digital Retail Innovation Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano to take stock of retail innovation.
The Experience Room set up in Mion’s home offers a response to the most current retail issues:
Torreglia (PD), 16 november 2022 – Omnichannel, enhancement of the management of the entire supply chain, innovation in the end-customer experience and effectiveness in sales and pre-sales activities were the topics discussed during the presentation event at ‘THE SOURCE’, the Experience Room set up at Mion, which saw the participation of researchers from the Digital Retail Innovation Observatory of the Politecnico di Milano and technology partners Aton and Axon Micrelec.
The unequivocal answer to these important issues lies in the smart labels produced by Mion: labels that integrate RFID and QR code technology, making it possible to trace the entire lifecycle of garments, from production to sale, including the movements that take place in the shop.
An innovation that starts with Aton’s .onTag solution, the link between physical and digital that puts the product at the centre of a journey that starts from its production, passes through the point of sale and reaches the consumer. Consumers who, thanks to the interaction between smart labels and Axon Micrelec’s Smart Kiosk touch screen totems, can access a world of multimedia content such as endless shelving, in-store e-commerce, product customisation, information, gaming activities and much more.
This type of solution has an all-round impact on retail management. On the one hand, the speed of tracking makes it possible to know at any time, and practically in real time, which and how many articles are present in a given shop or warehouse, thus supporting logistics. For pre-sales activities, this type of monitoring allows detailed knowledge of the movements of each individual garment within the shop. Valuable information, of fundamental importance for implementing and improving display and sales strategies, but also able to give feedback on the actual enjoyment of the goods on display, e.g. on the fit of a garment.
Interaction with multimedia kiosks also supports the consumer’s experience, opening up a potentially infinite world related to each individual item, but it is also an engagement tool for salespeople, who can benefit from a tool that performs the more ‘boring’ functions such as giving information, while at the same time helping to build a valuable relationship with the customer.
The Source is also an example of how the market dynamics of designing and supplying hardware and software for the retail world are changing. It is a project that brings together different skills and professionalism, a new way of creating innovation that starts with the ability to connect the potential of each technology partner with a project approach rather than focusing on the offer of a single product or service.
“Omnichannel is an increasingly central paradigm in Retail” comments Elisabetta Puglielli, Senior Researcher at the Observatory. “In order to support retailers in the omnichannel transformation process,’ continues Puglielli, ‘it is essential that service providers focus not only on the technological aspect such as the integration of front-end solutions, such as smart labels and interactive kiosks, and back-end solutions, such as RFID tags, but also on design capacity and the creation of innovation ecosystems with other players in order to present themselves to the market with complete, turnkey solutions.”
