Countdown to NRF 2017

There’s just 11 days to go until NRF’s BIG Show and Expo in New York, taking place from Sunday 15th January – Tuesday 17th January 2017 at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in NYC. The Show brings great opportunities for us to experience the latest developments in retail technology, and network with faces old and new. We’ve already heard from some of our partners and customers who are attending NRF Expo, but if you’d like to schedule some time to meet up with the Retail Assist team whilst in New York please contact us. Borys Krywyj, Head of Business Development, Roger Bannister, Head of Account Development, and Alex Broxson, Head of Marketing, will be in attendance for the duration of the Show.

Last year, Alex recorded vlogs live from the Expo Hall featuring some of the most eye catching innovations and technology highlights:

You can check out our other retail technology videos on our YouTube channel. We’ll be recording similar vlogs this year, as well as posting live feeds from our Twitter account and Facebook page via the Facebook Live function. So, what can we expect to see?

• Last year at NRF 2016 the Retail Assist team was very impressed with IBM’s Watson, a good example of cognitive computing: a system that learns from and builds a high-powered database, enabling it to respond to questions and situations with a learned set of responses. The retail example we saw, in collaboration with specialist outdoor wear retailer The North Face, is featured in the video below from 1 minute 10 seconds onwards. The customer is taking a holiday to Jackson Hole in February, and Watson showcases the most appropriate jackets for the forecasted weather conditions, without having been asked to.It will be interesting to see if customer data in the form of social media is also leveraged to power personalised interactions such as the one above. Wouldn’t it be impressive if a retailer knew your social calendar, and could also make recommendations based on previous like history, as well as future event plans? This is the next step that we’d like to see.
• The fitting room is a physical space in store that can be used more effectively to increase conversion. Customers who use a fitting room are 71% more likely to buy (InovRetail statistics, 2016) but what about the possibilities of upselling? This is a concept we explored at our pop-up event Nexpo, with fitting room technology that allowed the retailer to know what was in the fitting room, and push notifications of other products on an in-booth tablet. New ways of maximising fitting room potential might be demonstrated in this year’s NRF innovations.

What are you hoping to see at NRF Expo this month? We look forward to speaking about retail technology and its possibilities to enhance the customer experience with you in New York.