Best of 2013

Thierry Strickler – Youmna OvazzaJanuary 2014

English version

1 2 3

4 5

A pivotal year

Social networks, between customer

relations and drive to store

Community commitment right at the heart of the

offer

The advent of cross-channel

Services for connecting

with the community

6

Mobile and payment, a wide

variety of experiments

1.A pivotal year

• Closures, shrinking markets, receiverships/administrations, cessation of trading

• An economic crisis in Europe since the mid-2000s, a drop in consumption

• Consumers' appetite for e-commerce and collaborative consumption, penalisation of brick & mortar retailers,which are not

sufficiently client-centric

• Nevertheless, physical retail remains the undisputed leader. In 2012, Amazon was the only company in the top 100 worldwide retailers not to

have a physical store (no. 16 and with profit of -€28.8 million)

> A new kind of retail, which is cross-channel and serving the customer's needs, is springing…

Difficult times for the retail sector 2013: a pivotal year

January 2013

The Virgin Megastore chain selling cultural and multimedia

products, with 1,000 employees in France, files for bankruptcy, following years of

financial difficulties.

April 2013

On Tuesday, The Phone House announced the phased closure of all its French stores in 2014. The economic model is no longer viable for the group's management. According to the unions,

900–1,200 jobs are at risk

The British company Dixons, the second largest European consumer household appliances and

electronics retailer, is not ruling out the possibility of closing the France-based e-commerce site, if it cannot find a buyer.

The e-merchant has drawn the curtains on its seven Spanish stores

The largest electronics retailer in the world leaves the Old Continent five years after its arrival. It is selling its shares in its

regional subsidiary to its partner the Carphone Warehouse Group for 775 million dollars.

June 2013

The French household goods retailer Cafom cuts 177 jobs, from a workforce of 802 people, at its subsidiary Habitat, which tipped it into the red during the first six months of its

non-calendar financial year. The group reports a loss of 4.7 million euros for the period between 1st October 2012

and 31st March 2013.

François-Henri Pinault provides a minor boost by fixing the company's valuation at 365 million. This equates to 15% less cash than it has. Despite this,

the stock loses 10% on its first day of trading. At this level, it is worth 100 million less than its cash...

December 2013

La Redoute is sold to its managers for the symbolic price of one euro

Kering re-injects several hundred million euros to recapitalise La Redoute and Relais Colis just before the sale. The new owners have a lot of work to do. La Redoute's turnover has actually been falling by 10% a year since 2010, and could come close to 1

billion euros this year. The company is losing several tens of millions of euros every year

Target Hackers Stole Encrypted Bank PINs On Top Of 40 Million Credit Cards

The hackers who attacked Target Corp and compromised up to 40 million credit cards and

debit cards also managed to steal encrypted personal identification numbers (PINs), according to a senior payments executive familiar with the

situation.

But also:Relaunches, recoveries and international development

Galeries Lafayette wants to buy the British House of Fraser chain

Bestbuy: analysis of a recovery.

"Embrace your customers and stop alienating them." Yes, retail

can survive in the face of e-commerce.

Casino, world-classCasino has taken sole control of its

Brazilian partner GPA. And, completed the acquisition of Monoprix for 1.175

billiion euros. 

Darty buys the Mistergooddeal

website G. Plassat believes that

Carrefour "is getting better" and "is on the right track"  

"We have eased the financial pressure that was weighing the

company down, because of its high level of debt, I believe that this has been the main cause of the group's

problems for the last decade. "

2.The advent of cross-channel

The advent of cross-channel

• Computers, tablets, smartphones, 8 times out of 10 consumers now sort out their purchases on-line before going to a store

• + 2,500 Drive concepts set up in France, an explosion in Click & Collect services: 85% of the French population have a real interest in reserving items on-line and collecting from a store (source Ifop)

• Stores and sales assistants are going digital to help their customers make choices, improve customer relations and sales promotion, be geolocated or be able to share on social networks

> The store is no longer the final destination for shopping, but a point of contact, experience and relations throughout the customer's

journey

Bouygues Telecom launches its Click and Collect service

Bouygues Telecom customers are able to reserve their phones on-line and collect them from a store, or request direct home

delivery.

"Our objective is twofold: it is a question of encouraging people to visit our points-

of-sale as well as giving our sales advisers more availability in order for

them to be able to promote and recommend other additional products."

A "Click and Mortar" shopping experience: the Bonobos Guideshop

This New York-based company was established on the internet in 2007 based on the concept of offering men the opportunity to

find and buy trousers that fit them perfectly (pants that really fit ).

In 2012, the company also opened guideshops in six major US cities.

These guideshops are physical stores, which allow internet users to try on clothes

before buying them. The customer makes an appointment with a store. This is exclusively

dedicated to him and he is placed in the hands of a guide, who will help and advise

him.

General Pants: a cross-channel and community experience in store

General Pants, a retailer specialising in

clothing, has recently set up interactive cross-channel devices in ten of its

stores. These use iPads and are designed to combine music,

fashion and social networks, with the aim of offering customers a fun,

memorable and, above all, collaborative

shopping experience!

"Community" spirit is strongly highlighted thanks to "Insta-Opinion", "Our People" and

"What’s happening".

Kate Spade Saturday The e-commerce shop window

This is the result of a collaboration between Kate Spade, PayPal and eBay.

Whatever the time of day, you can go shopping in this store thanks to the

touch screen that is integrated into the shop window.

It is a case of déjà vu! Yes, but the process differs from other interactive shop windows. To make a

purchase, you simply choose a product by “scrolling” using the touch screen. Once you have chosen one or more products, simply enter your

telephone number to receive a link allowing you to proceed with the purchase, choose a size or leave

your address, if you need to.

Uniqlo's amazing virtual mirror

 Uniqlo is testing an amazing virtual mirror in its San Francisco store.

This mirror is actually a screen connected to a touch

screen terminal.

On this terminal, the customer chooses a garment and it appears directly on him/her in the mirror/screen. He/she

can even e-mail his/her photo wearing this new garment.

Asda launches click and collect services at Tube stations

Asda has partnered with Transport for London to create a unique click and collect

grocery service.

Consumers who order items before noon will be able to collect

their shopping at one of the stations after 4pm.

The offer comes as Asda outlines its five year strategic priorities, which includes a

major push into the London and South East market.

The click and collect service is integral to this move. Asda claims it will be increasing consumers’ access to its service from 53% in 2013 to 70% by 2018, with over 1,000

new sites planned, including London Underground station car parks.

3.Social networks, between

customer relations and drive to store

Retailers are investing in social networks

• In 2013, 1/4 of marketing expenditure in retail was devoted to social media (according to research by Vanson Bourne)

• 53% of French people are influenced by their friends on Facebook before buying a product, 89% research opinions on the internet

before making a purchase (Reevoo/GMI Research study – June 2012)

• But the ROI from social networks is difficult to measure, favourite networks change and consumers dislike the excessive amount of

marketing on these sites

> Social networks are gradually becoming common practice and being incorporated into retailers' annual budgets,

like a completely fully-fledged channel

Hertz is now using Twitter to resolve customer complaints

Hertz is the first car rental company to integrate social customer service into its

business.

 Customers can now resolve service problems by tweeting at

the brand.

“It is time to get over this misconception that brands can ignore tweets about their brand

because social media is relatively inconsequential in comparison to other

channels like phone or email,” said Joshua March, CEO of Conversocial, the company

working with Hertz.

Urban Outfitters’ new social network offers members deals for data

Teenagers are a tricky bunch for marketers. While many have the desirable disposable income that

retailers target, they can be difficult to market to because they don’t like giving

out their data. 

Urban Outfitters, teenage hipster

retailer heaven, is integrating marketing and social media

with a new rewards system to revamp their Urban On app,

thereby killing two birds with one stone.

Tweets Party: Darty uses Twitter to reduce the price of its products

 In January 2013, Darty created the Tumblr blog "Merci, fallait pas..."

(Thank you, you shouldn't have ...") , which listed all the Twitter users who

shared their Christmas disappointments between 26th December and 15th January.

Then, between 15th and 25th January, these same

internet users were asked to use the hashtag

#TweetsParty for the purpose of obtaining 4

discounts with the publication of 800 tweets.

J.CREW puts its catalogueon Pinterest

In August 2013, 62,870 people were following the brand's Board.

This means that the images posted by J.Crew could be seen by ‘friends’ who follow these people on Pinterest. This

is the magic of Discovery Shopping.

Virality + a multiplier effect: the backing of a person you know.

Monoprix and Pinterestjoin forces to promote designers

For the launch of its 5 designer little black dresses, the Casino group brand and the photo-sharing social network launched a joint campaign on 27th November 2013.

Monoprix customers are invited to use Pinterest via flashcodes

provided in store on dresses designed by Anne Valérie Hash, Yiqing Yin, Giles

Deacon, Alexis Mabille and Hussein Chalayan.

Topshop transforms Pinterest into a searchable gift guide

In anticipation of the holiday season, Topshop has partnered

with Pinterest to create a campaign that will centre around customers creating and submitting inspirational boards for the

Holiday season. 

In addition to shopping and pinning items on the fashion brand’s website, giant touch screens and products with a Pinterest call to action in the

Flagship London and New York stores will allow customers to pin,

share and shop.

Other stores will have dedicated staff armed with iPads, who can walk customers through

all elements of the campaign.

The retailer Sport Chek enters the world of “Y-commerce”

The Canadian sports retailer has just released two new kind of video

advertisements on YouTube, Google's platform.

The various items worn by the athletes in the advert are

displayed on the right hand side of the video, in the form

of icons, along with the words “shop now”.

By clicking on them, the internet user is taken straight to Sport Chek's e-

commerce site and to the product that is of interest to him/her. 

4.Services for connecting

with the community

Engage with consum’actors

• The use of crowdsourcing or co-creation practices is a new challenge for retailers

• It is a response to consumers' new collaborative and participative behaviour

• Which also allows a brand to cultivate its image and its customer relations, to gather insights and feedback, to test its

products and services

• It is also an approach that encourages retailers to engage with their community locally

> Service retailing, which is re-focussing on its local environment and customer relations

Target creates the participative fashion show

Target has taken the plunge and launched the participative 3.0 fashion show.

All consumers needed to do was send a tweet to the brand,

mentioning the product they wanted to see paraded.

The brand collected all the tweets posted and chose the products that got the most

votes.

It then produced a hundred or so videos on its YouTube page, where a product is

highlighted by means of a young woman walking down a white catwalk.

Tesco open up retail space for community events

UK grocery retailer Tesco is planning to install a community room in its stores,

starting with the new Tesco Extra in Watford.

The 600 square-foot room will be available for locals to reserve for free, and can be used for events

like birthday parties, music lessons or yoga classes.

The Telegraph reports that this community room, which is similar to initiatives Tesco

runs in some of its Asia stores, is the first to be introduced to a UK store. It will include tea and coffee-making facilities for those

who reserve it.

In Denmark, supermarket crowdsources suggestions for local products

Co-operative grocery superstore SuperBrugsen is getting

customers to suggest local products they would like to see on the shelves of their nearest store.

Supermarkets are convenient, but often source their products from multinational

companies and farms in distant locations, racking up carbon emissions and squeezing

out local competition along the way.

Danish co-operative grocery superstore SuperBrugsen now aims to offer a popular alternative by getting customers to suggest local products they would like to see

on the shelves of their nearest store.

Walmart makes deliveries to its customers…using its customers

How can delivery costs be reduced while offering customers a participative incentive?

Walmart has the answer:

ask your in-store customers to deliver products ordered on-line in exchange for discount coupons (for shopping and fuel) or even direct discounts at

the checkout.

Obviously, only customers living near on-line shoppers will be asked, the idea being to easily

persuade them to make a short detour in exchange for a discount on their future

purchases.

Carrefour is launching a free product testing service

Attracting customers to stores and building up a database of

consumer opinions.

This is the aim of the website launched by Carrefour, Mon Avis Le Rend Gratuit.

The concept is fairly simple: just visit the website, register and choose your

hypermarket.

The user then receives a number of credits allowing him/her to obtain free

products in store.

Once in their possession, customers must fill in a questionnaire and give their opinion on the aforementioned products in order to

receive more coupons and so on…

Target is connecting its customers to the community

The retail group is using the creativity of its customers to

produce mobile applications that enhance the on-line and in-store

shopping experience.

And what better way of creating a community of individuals than open innovation and

crowdfunding? This is what is currently offered by the Target Cares application, the result of the Co.Labs & Target Retail Accelerator competition

launched by Target in collaboration with the magazine Fast Company.

Auchan has launched Quirky – the inventors' platform, in France

Auchan has further consolidated its partnership with Quirky. The website, where amateur inventors post their

ideas, has been launched in France. 

A concept that has come from the

United States, Quirky offers to produce the best ideas for inventions posted on the

website by anyone “for real”.

The chosen products are offered for sale in partner stores and the ideas' originators are paid a percentage on

sales.

5.Community commitment right at

the heart of the offer

From sustainable development to social commitment

• Numerous sustainable development initiatives identified in Europe and the USA in 2013

• "Generalist" retailers cultivate their image and their product transparency policy in order to meet consumers' needs for

knowledge/traceability

• Organic specialists are riding high in a dynamic economic sector, which has recorded growth of +50% in France since 2007

• Atypical business models are enjoying great success by offering short distribution circuits and high quality local products

> Retailers' community commitment is expanding and lies at the very heart of their offering

My “personal shopper” is a dietician

Hy Vee, the leading chain in this field, doubtless because it is based in Iowa, a

Midwestern state that is more greatly affected by obesity problem than others,

employs 190 dieticians in its 290 establishments and success appears

to be forthcoming.

A word of warning, this is not exactly a philanthropic operation (even though some of the services on offer are free), as it costs

the princely sum of 119 dollars for two coaching sessions.

In Sweden, buy screws and leave with a screwdriver!

The extremely environmentally friendly city of Malmö in Sweden is home to an unusual

hardware store, the Malmö Hardware Store: in addition to selling nails, screws, pots of

paint and other consumables, it provides its customers with small tools

allowing them to carry out some jobs.

In concrete terms, equipment is reserved via Facebook: users register and reserve the

tools they want to borrow… and each time a reservation is made, a status is displayed on the store's "wall", thereby generating a great

deal of activity on the social network.  

Supermarket for poor families offers surplus branded goods at cut prices

Community Shop is a supermarket that

sells discounted branded products that don’t meet high street chain standards only to families receiving government

welfare.

There are many items that are produced, but don’t make it onto the shelves of

supermarkets due to superficial damage, not meeting aesthetic standards or

falling past their sell by dates. 

Created by Company Shop, the project is supported by brands such as Marks and Spencer, Tesco, Asda and Tetley.

Tesco to sell ‘ugly’ misshapen fruit at discount to minimise food waste

Tesco has vowed to cease its practice of consigning old and misshapen fruit to the dustbin

by flogging it at specially discounted rates in order to cut down waste.

The move would see ‘old, ugly and misshapen’ fruit reprieved on specially discounted shelving in a bid to convince shoppers not to turn their noses

up at produce which is perfectly fine to eat.

The "socialist supermarket" in New York

Inexpensive, organic and smart: A New York supermarket managed by its customers has been thriving for forty years. The concept is to

be rolled out in Paris.

Future volunteers are flooding in, hoping to do their shopping for 20%

to 40% less than elsewhere.

At the Brooklyn Coop, the 16,200 members work for 2 hours and 45 minutes for free every four weeks to keep the store running – 75% of

the workforce are therefore volunteers. 

GMOs are now identified by Whole Foods Market

Following the decision for its stores to use 100% renewable energy, the 2008 ban on

products containing bisphenol A, and even bulk items available for numerous products (including wine), the brand is

upholding its reputation as a pioneer and,

over the next five years, wants to label all products containing GMOs,

with a view to ensuring complete transparency for the

consumer.

Whole Foods, when a retailer creates its own farm

Whole Foods, the grandfather of organic supermarkets is reinventing mass retailing with its new establishment and is leading

the consumer down a new path!

The eagerly anticipated store opened its doors on 17th December 2013, one week

before Christmas Eve.

 What makes it so original? It is the first one in the country to produce its own vegetables

using a hydroponic greenhouse installed on the roof of the

building.  

Walgreens:

a self-powered store

Equipped with solar panels, wind turbines and a geothermal system,

the new Walgreens drugstore, which will be opening in Illinois, will be self-sufficient in terms of

energy.

The leading American drugstore chain, Walgreens (with more than 8,000

branches across the United States), is about to open a completely new type of outlet.

The Directors of Walgreens are congratulating themselves on the fact that, “this will be the

first store that will produce a quantity of energy that is greater than or equal to the energy it

uses."

6.Mobile and payment,

a wide variety of experiments

Mobile & Payment

• With smartphones and tablets, the boundary between in-store and on-line payment is being broken down

• Mobile payments will amount to $707 billion in 2018 (according to Juniper Research)

• For years, mobile payment has been declared imminent: contactless payment (NFC), mobile wallets and even digital wallets,

there are numerous solutions

• Bankers, telecoms operators, retailers, Apple, Amazon and start-ups are aiming to have their solutions widely adopted as quickly as

possible and are seeking to create a genuine usage pattern for consumers

> Mobile payment > CRM > coupons > data > personalisation: an attractive equation, but not yet proven…

Starbucks is banking on mobile payment with Square

The coffee chain has invested 25 million dollars in Square, a specialist start-up. In the United States, 7,000 Starbucks outlets will

authorise payment via its mobile application.

For Starbucks' American customers with a smartphone and

the Square application, saying their name will soon be enough to pay

for their drink.

The application created by Jack Dorsey has concluded an agreement with the Starbucks food chain, which authorises this payment process within all the establishments on

American soil.

Biometric payment tested by Auchan

How can you pay using your fingerprint? In order to be able to pay for his/her shopping, the customer must be in

possession of a payment card that is able to store biometric data.

The card is then placed in a specific protective case that the customer keeps on

him/her.

 There is no need to get the card out and enter a code, the

customer places his/her finger in a fingerprint or biometric

recognition device, the terminal communicates with the card remotely, using

radio waves that pass between a radio frequency tag on the terminal and another incorporated into the smart card, compares

the data and confirms the payment.

Sephora launches its Passbook

Passbook allows you to keep all your loyalty cards, coupons and vouchers for Passbook partner

companies in one place.

With Sephora's Passbook application you

will be able to collect points, use them when shopping in store and

receive notifications about your “rewards”. 

The application only works in the United States at the moment.

Lidl rolls out contactless payment across its UK stores

Lidl has become the largest supermarket retailer to enable NFC payments for purchases

across all 600 of its UK stores. The systems were installed in July following

a successful pilot earlier on in the year.

Georgina O’Donnell said: “We decided to implement contactless in order to speed up

payments and reduce queuing time. We were also responding to consumer demand

to move with the times and offer a wider range of payment acceptance options.

Installing the technology across so many stores was a significant project.”

E.Leclerc enters the world of mobile payment

The company is testing a mobile application allowing customers to

pay at the checkout using their phones. 

Smartphone owners can download an application known as "Paiement Flash" for

Android (Google) and IOS (Apple) for free. 

When making a purchase, the customer will be able to tell the cashier that he/she wants to pay using his mobile phone. In this case, the cashier will provide him/her with a QR Code (a type of bar code) that will replace

the traditional till receipt. 

NFC (near field communication) and a mobile application are making it easier to shop at Casino

Casino is testing an application using integral NFC labelling on shelves.

This means that NFC tags are present for every product on every shelf.

By reading the tag, the mCasino NFC application (which differs from the

mCasino classical application) allows the purchase to be recorded, thereby speeding up the checkout process, as well as providing access to additional

information, including nutritional values.

Self-service at Walmart

Tested in 14 stores, a mobile Scan & Go

application, initially for iOS, is allowing customers to scan

the bar codes on their products, to transfer the total cost of purchases to a self-

service terminal and to pay, like the scanning process used in all major

retail chains, with the benefit for the customer of avoiding checkout queues

and, what is key for Walmart, a potential saving valued at several tens of millions

of dollars.

Thank you.

Thierry Strickler, t.strickler@altavia-group.comYoumna Ovazza, y.ovazza@altavia-group.com