NRF 2020: Retail’s Big Show Recap
The following is a recap of the NRF 2020 Vision show from SUMO Heavy’s eCommerce Minute podcast, your daily dose of eCommerce, Tech and Retail news. Listen below or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
The world’s largest gathering for the retail trade industry — NRF 2020 Vision: Retail’s Big Show, took place January 12–14, 2020 at the Javits Convention Center in New York. We’re here to give you a bite-sized recap.
This year the event saw roughly 40,000 people from 99 countries attending the first day of the Big Show.
The theme for this year’s event was vision 20/20 vision, and executives from the likes of Microsoft, Macy’s, Kohl’s, L’Oreal and Crate & Barrel, as well as numerous up-and-coming brands, took to the stage to share their thoughts on the future of retail.
The event kicked off highlighting Showfields, a new department store in New York City that has been called the “most interesting store in the world” for its innovative retail-as-a-platform concept. In the same breath, they talked about a Las Vegas department store called Area 15.
What do these two stores have in common? In addition to showcasing dozens of brands in their stores, they feature art exhibits, theatrical events and interactive experiences, which are constantly refreshed and open to the public.
The point here being that in a world run by Amazon, physical retail will thrive if it becomes fully experiential.
On the second day of the event, Starbucks CEO Kevin Johnson made a case for combining digital innovation and real-world human connection in his keynote presentation. One way this is happening at Starbucks is with “Deep Brew”, which is an internal program that uses artificial intelligence to automate tasks like counting inventory and ordering new stock.
This advancement will enable employees to spend more time interacting with customers making the transaction more personal and authentic.
This was followed by an interesting panel on customer service featuring some insight into how Chloe, Zappos and Gap put their customers first.
Alexa Geovanos, Chloe’s brand president for North and South America, said the luxury retailer benefits from a significant amount of brand equity. This means that their customers whom they affectionately refer to as ‘clients’ are already heavily invested in the experience when they walk into a store. The only way to surpass their expectations, she said, is to be obsessed with clients in reverse.
At Gap, Heidi Isern leads a cross-functional team focused on using technology to improve the customer experience. She says it’s important to test and learn from new ideas as early as possible to ensure they are having the intended effect. Meanwhile, Alex Genov, manager of research and user experience at Zappos said their customer service teams were run by ‘objectively happy people’.
Finally on Day 3, Target, Chipotle and Best Buy discussed the power of joint intelligence to fight cyber threats. Data security in the digital age has been a contentious topic over the past few years, but this panel led by Rich Agostino, senior vice president, and chief information security officer at Target, paints a darker picture. These hackers are dead serious.
He said “They’re an organization, a dozen or so people, maybe as many as 50 or 60. They have deep technical skills, so they can build a lot of their own tools, and they have access to a vast marketplace on the dark web where they can purchase just about anything they can’t build themselves.
So, what should the industry do? Collaborate. Agostino said “There are organizations, but a lot of it is very informal,” Best Buys Adam Mishler said. “We talk to our peers about what we’re doing, what we’re seeing, what the threats are, what works and what doesn’t.”
Another thing the industry should do is focus on recruiting talent. Cybersecurity is a relatively new job since 20 years ago, it didn’t exist, and at the moment there are hundreds of thousands of open jobs in retail information security. Fresh faces in cybersecurity bring expertise that seasoned vets don’t have.
A detailed breakdown and more NRF event news and articles can be found on the NRF website.
