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Take me to PSFK iQThis flagship PSFK guide is a trends-led playbook for retail resilience.
Without a doubt, 2020 was a year of unprecedented retail reckoning. While many businesses were forced to temporarily or permanently close shop, there were some who found opportunities within the challenges of the year’s circumstances. The most successful retailers and brands of 2020 were those who invested well ahead to build resilience, focusing on securing the infrastructure, supply chains and culture to pivot at a moment’s notice and respond to changes affecting consumers and the market.
This Future of Retail 2021 trends report is designed not only to help brands and retailers respond to the events of 2020, but also to build their business for 2021 and beyond. In this report, you’ll be asked to honestly assess where you are as a company today and identify where your next key investments should be (for more details, check out our Retail Resilience Rubric at the back of this report). If you commit to organizational introspection and infrastructure redevelopment now, your company will be better equipped to weather, meet customer expectations and thrive within the unknown and unexpected.
The 2022 version of the PSFK Future of Retail 2022 can be found here.
Through its partnership with cloud-based software provider Salesforce, luxury department store Saks Fifth Avenue is offering a more personalized shopping experience to its e-commerce shoppers. After re-platforming saks.com with Salesforce Commerce Cloud, the retailer now has greater access to a range of customer data points, including returns they've made or items that have been added to their carts or wishlists. This level of intel is providing Saks a more complete view of its shoppers' behaviors, both in-store and online, which in turn is facilitating more tailored recommendations and messages they share with each of their shoppers.
Microsoft Powershelf ecosystem links shelves, stockrooms, checkout and distributionTo create a complete ecosystem that connects shelves to stockrooms, checkout and distribution in real-time, retail technology solutions provider Powershelf partnered with Microsoft, in turn creating a platform that provides second-by-second sales, stock, and logistics that can all be seen, analyzed, and controlled from anywhere in the organization. Each in-store Powershelf product continually communicates critical data through the Microsoft Azure cloud. Microsoft Power Platform then helps Powershelf compile the data, analyze it, and communicate it back to consumer products companies in real time. By providing decision makers with real-time visibility of when and where stock is low, enterprises are able to efficiently anticipate restocking needs at scale, communicate with stockrooms and distributors in a timely manner, and ensure customer happiness.
New Balance shares user data across channels for seamless customer experienceTo improve its overall customer experience, footwear manufacturer New Balance partnered with retail industry tech provider Aptos to deploy a new cloud data management system across its North American and European retail brick-and-mortar stores and offices.