Is digital technology killing high street shopping for all products, including furniture? Perhaps not, says Down Your High Street’s Daniel Whytock – Amazon’s investment in bricks-and-mortar stores, among others, suggests that the high street will be part of our retailing future. Yet technology will almost certainly play its part, no matter the size of your business …
Modern consumers want the best of both on- and offline shopping, particularly for something as personal as the furniture for their homes or as important as furniture for their offices. This means they want convenience, choice, and a diverse range of shops and businesses.
Omnichannel retail that seamlessly integrates digital technology is the key to high street survival. However, retail tech is moving so quickly that high street furniture retailers must move fast, or be left behind. This can often leave many high street businesses feeling that the future is bleak – particularly smaller independent retailers who cannot afford to take the same risks as larger brands.
However, the technological future of the high street will not just be about large companies with expensive robot devices and AI – it is rooted in a change of approach and understanding, in low-cost technology and data, and a unified approach to online and offline high street shopping.
Data-driven future
The number one investment furniture retailers need to make to navigate the changing retail landscape is in data collection and management.
In your furniture business, you’ll already have databases, spreadsheets, social media page analytics, customer service call logs and emails – the challenge lies in unifying data silos. New technology is giving a more complete picture of customers’ (and potential customers’) behaviour, meaning we can track patterns and understand how behaviours are evolving.
There are already legacy data management solutions and customer data platforms (CDPs) available to retailers to unify the data and make it available to users in a way that is easily digestible. While these tools are usually adopted by larger retailers with IT teams, there are cloud providers offering CDPs that can work for smaller businesses.
In addition, the advance of the Internet of Things (IoT) will give easier, deeper insight into products and customer behaviour. For example, shelves and storage units that can tell us how often products are picked up/viewed and put down again will help establish the products that are drawing interest but are not being purchased due to cost or lack of further information.
The blockchain also has the potential to transform retail data. A digital record of data and transactions chronologically linked provides complete transparency for both retailers and consumers right across the supply chain.
Emotional responses – with robots
As with the notion that internet shopping is replacing high street, we also hear how robots will eventually replace people in customer service.
This is unlikely to be the case. Robotics will certainly take over some roles in the retail industry, but this will only serve to enable more quality interaction with customers.
For consumers, the internet has opened up more options in how we shop, but one thing that will not change is what motivates our purchases. Customers need to have an emotional response to prompt them to buy, and interaction with another person is vital to create an emotional connection. This is particularly important when the customers are deciding how to spend a substantial sum on furniture.
AI and robotic devices can help customer service staff be more responsive to customers, by freeing them from the less interactive aspects of their roles. In-store robotics are already able to scan the store for pricing corrections and tidy up shelves and floors, freeing up sales staff to concentrate on the customer interaction and experience in order to make a sale.
Much like robotic household devices such as the Roomba vacuum cleaner, these robot store assistants are likely to become more commonplace in shops of all sizes as the technology advances and becomes more accessible.
Behind the scenes
New technology will not only be a foreground feature of the customer experience, it will also play an increasingly big role in the logistics and stock storage side of the business. For furniture retailers this will be especially helpful in saving money on space rental and provide fast, reactive supply chain management to complement more engaging customer service.
Furniture retailers will need to be more agile to survive difficult trading conditions and ensure they have enough stock for busy seasonal trading periods. New tech-led models of service can help cut warehouse costs with short-term and pay-as-you-go pay models for storage space, resulting in mobile storage which can easily be scaled up or down in response to changing stock levels and location requirements.
Robots will transform warehouses. As we are beginning to see in the large ecommerce storage spaces owned by Alibaba and Amazon, robotic arms and interconnected automated conveyor belts can pack and sort hundreds of goods for deliveries at high speed. Employment in high street retail warehouses will be transformed from often-dangerous, low-skill work to highly technical skill requirements for maintenance and monitoring of technology – entry-level retail training is going to look very different in years to come.
A future for all
Government and large corporations realise the value of keeping the high street alive in the digital age, and are investing in more initiatives to support the UK high street and ensure that a diverse range of business can continue to open and thrive across the country.
And, for all the blame that online marketplaces can take for the demise of the high street, their forward-thinking and entrepreneurial spirit have gone some way to reducing the barriers for furniture and other retailers to help grow their digital arm and feed in-store sales. As taxes for online-only sellers are imposed, they lose their cost advantage over bricks-and-mortar sellers, making it easier for high street shops to compete. More specialised marketplaces created for bricks-and-mortar independents offer incentives and technical support tailored to their needs.
Technology means the high street of the future will look different, but it is driving a return to our retailing roots – individual customer service and an experience to remember.
Dan Whytock is the MD of DownYourHighStreet.com, a free-to-join, low-commission online marketplace that is on a mission to save the UK’s high streets. DownYourHighStreet.com hosts millions of products that were previously unavailable online, with managed services for UK independent high street shops, allowing sellers to create or integrate their online presence easily and seamlessly with total service support, saving retailers time and money.
