Upgrading functionality and customer experience with AI Businesses must work harder than ever to maintain excellence in the experience for their customers. With the resurgence of brick and mortar stores, retailers are challenged with providing a streamlined and personalized customer experience that consumers have come to expect. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) enters the…
Read More
Are you keeping up with how consumers see you and want you to see them? Forbes predicts that 2019 will be the “year of the final shakeout” for retailers, saying that the losers have sealed their fate because they failed to invest in the future. How do retailers know which future they should have invested…
Read More
By Kim Terry, Sr. Consultant Most companies new to providing subscription-based offerings have two areas of focus: their product and their marketing. Certainly, without a great product and a way to create demand, your retail subscription business will not get off the ground. Managing subscription operations is complex enough when you have an intangible Netflix-type…
Read More
Sophelle celebrates its 23rd birthday today, August 22nd, and while we have made dramatic strides since our founding, the world around us has changed quite a lot, too. At the time of our founding in 1995, the President was Bill Clinton, the quarterback of the New England Patriots was not Tom Brady, and Amazon…
Read More
Earlier this summer, STORES Magazine published their list of the Top 100 retailers of 2018. As has been the case in the past few years, there was little movement among the best of the best. Why is that? How are these companies able to consistently stand out every year? In looking through the list…
Read More
In our role as retail consultants for hundreds of companies we have noticed that for the most forward thinking retailers, innovation is not any single idea or action. It’s an approach, a process that must be repeated day in and day out. Preparation is a major part of this process, and the most highly innovative…
Read More
Omnichannel Personalization Will Create Compelling Store Experiences The retail apocalypse is overstated. All stores won’t disappear, but many of the bad ones will, and should. The in-store shopping experience at many failing retailers is the reason for their demise. But every survey shows that most people like shopping in some stores – those that give…
Read More
Dating back to October of 2015, the US EMV migration has been set to occur in several stages across multiple industries. And while EMV compliance for gas stations was initially set for this year, that deadline has since been pushed out an additional 3 years to 2020. From the massive costs associated with both software…
Read More
“May I scan your badge?” If this is your least favorite phrase, then perhaps you are not having the most engaging tradeshow experience. What if it were easier to maneuver the show floor, to connect with the solutions and providers that were most suited to your company and upcoming strategies? The truth is, there are…
Read More
The news of Amazon’s purchase of Whole Foods rocked both the financial and retail industry and I believe it lends to what should be a healthy discussion about this retail giant. While it seems easy to place Amazon as public enemy number one for the retailers who directly compete, it is not fair to take…
Read More