Ever so often, industries go through an evolutionary cycle which disrupts the well regarded best practices of the time, bringing the  David & Goliath onto a sort of equalised platform, providing an opportunity for a shift in the balance of power. The key skill that defines the champions from the survivors & the survivors from the extinct is their ability to adapt to change. Retail today is amidst just such a revolutionary whirlwind.

Retail; is no stranger to overhauls!!!

Being the oldest legal profession its no surprise that it’s seen its share of ups, down and turn arounds. From the street bazaars, to the super markets and clothes shop to departmental chains, retail has only grown with the growth of technology and while the new way made waves, the older formats adapted and created their own niche.
While super market chains became synonymous with a large choice, the smaller stores took up the role of providing convenience and adapting to their specific neighbourhoods to survive and even thrive. Where departmental chains created serve them all sort of sales formats the smaller retail shops started converting into brands with specific attributes and targeted a set of personality types and created a chain of EBO that came closer to their consumer in contrast to the consumer going to the larger departmental store which by their nature of business had to be fewer and far apart, providing a complete new retail environment, the ones that adapted quickly grew to new heights and we also saw the giants fall into obscurity to make way for new market leaders.

Today, E-commerce, has once again disrupted status quo & have sent both the departmental stores & brands into an adapt or extinct mode. Brands today have been opened up to a multi channel sales opportunity but on the flip side, their current points of distinction are no longer as relevant as they were a few years back, they’ve  have been neutralised by etailing, their chain of national and even global stores are both dipping in profit and suffering the dilemma of relevance. While the Departmental store, that prides itself on the ability to provide a wide gambit of products under one roof finds itself marginalised by the near unlimited ability of e-retailing business models for product cataloguing and creating a integrated supply chain.

This is now seemingly converging into a model that would bring to gather the strengths of both online and offline retail models called OMNI CHANNEL retail. Where the role of physical stores is to create brand loyalty and induce impulse buy for more profitable products, providing knowledge and information & creating brand distinction rather than pushing sales, which can be done through the online medium. The physical stores are to be used to create experiences that provide them an edge while battling in the cyber market place.

We as service providers to the retail industries had to adapt to this changing landscape and did so by addressing the need of bringing digital capability to physical racks, empowering retailers with the opportunity to collect customer data, provide them a more personalised experience based on their own choice and preferences, bringing the unlimited catalogue space into the physical space and allow buying online through the store itself while the customer is most engaged.

By integrating the power supply for digital screens and tablets into the shop fitting system itself to empower retailers to use digital content, shopping apps & data collection software, to allow a seamless integration of their online & offline content & provide  a consistent experience globally with relative ease.

The FIT N LIGHT is now a SMART SHOP FITTING system and is ready to empower retailers looking to move into the OMNI CHANNEL space & be the first movers and possibly the new champions of the digital retail game.