New VM and operations tool to boost store efficiency, revenues

ReStore for Retail, a Hilco Global Company, has introduced its new mobile visual merchandising and operations platform to leading global brand executives and investors at the Consensus Great Brands Show in New York. The innovative platform optimizes a retailer's merchandising and operations activities, creating outstanding in-store experiences for both shoppers and frontline teams, resulting in measurable increases in revenues and profits, informs the company.

ReStore for Retail is a state-of-the-art, modern SaaS platform built on a highly scalable, flexible microservices engine. Fully enabled to take advantage of rapidly emerging retailer AI technologies, the platform offers a unique set of visual collaboration capabilities promoting the easy execution and sharing of best practices across a fleet of stores. The technology empowers retail operations leaders and frontline teams to collaboratively create, execute, and optimize immersive experiences for customers while maintaining consistent store and brand standards. For retail executives, ReStore for Retail allows real time visual monitoring of a campaign roll-out, seasonal changeover, and standardized day-to-day store activity, including loss prevention.

ReStore for Retail is currently being used by over 40 retailers in stores across three continents and several countries with ZERO customer attrition, shares the company. 

Empowering the Sales Team to Deliver Great Store Experiences…

"With ReStore for Retail, retailers can deliver immersive in-store experiences for the shopper by enabling store associates and managers to improve the look and feel of each store, expand the breadth and depth of the inventory on the rack, highlight and feature sale products just as they are intended to be merchandised," said Ian Fredericks, President of Hilco Consumer-Retail. "Store associates and managers become 1) more actively engaged in merchandising and branding via the platform, 2) better equipped with real-time data and visual information to make well-informed decisions, and 3) better able to perform tasks more efficiently, freeing them to spend more time with customers converting foot traffic into sales."

A team of experts within Hilco Global's retail and consumer group conceived ReStore for Retail to meet the growing needs of retailers challenged by rising customer expectations in the face of high associate turnover. The group has deep retail credentials, operating thousands of stores right alongside retailer store teams and management for over 40 years, witnessing – firsthand – the 'good, bad and ugly' of retail operations. "Leveraging our extensive retail and consumer experience, we identified opportunities to dramatically improve customer and frontline employee experiences to drive higher sales and profit," added Fredericks. "When retail leaders have the tech to collaborate with associates directly and transparently, they're empowered to execute more efficiently with a real sense of ownership and create a better customer experience. That's when retail magic happens."

Today's retailers are faced with countless challenges, are pulled in many different and sometimes conflicting directions, must address ever-evolving customer wants and needs, and are capital constrained. ReStore for Retail puts the primary focus back into the stores, where retail and brand ambassadors interact with customers many times per day, by delivering a unique in-store execution platform that has been proven over time to improve customer and retail/brand ambassador experiences while delivering measurable results. "The capabilities we've designed into this offering reflect both our real-world experience and our clients' direct feedback and input," continued Fredericks. "As a result, the platform (1) converts store traffic into profitable sales by creating exceptional merchandising consistency, (2) optimizes day-to-day performance and enforces loss prevention and other retail best practices by creating user-friendly analytical solutions and dashboards, and (3) empowers store-level retail and brand ambassadors, allowing their voices to be heard and thereby reducing costly turnover, all with no added IT integration expense."

A Proven Platform, Tested in Market with Thousands of Stores…

The ReStore for Retail mobile platform has been built specifically for retailers with active input from retail operations, management and sales teams who truly understand the current retail environment. "It's been so refreshing to work with an external team that's genuinely invested in delivering a tailor made, turnkey solution to improve retail delivery and performance for us," said Lynsey Rae, Head of Retail ANZ at JD Sports Fashion PLC. "Our associates are happier and more engaged, retention is much improved, and our store performance numbers reflect that."