On the 27th of November, international law firm Bird & Bird hosted Creative Disruption on the High Street, a panel of entrepreneurs debating the intersection of retail and technology and the future of shopping channels. The panel was held at the Design Museum in London along the complimentary backdrop of the museum’s Women Fashion Power exhibition.
The panel discussions touched on topics of how technology is shaping the way consumers shop, why attention toward omnichannel is important, and how retail technology businesses, like Clear Returns, are helping retailers improve their customers’ experiences while shopping online and through mobile. Vicky Brock, CEO of Clear Returns, spoke alongside companies represented by leading entrepreneurs Elizabetta Camilleri, Stuart Marks and William Shu from SalesGossip, JLAB and Deliveroo.
At the Bird & Bird event, technology entrepreneur, Stuart Marks said that one of the biggest problems today’s corporations are facing is that ‘the world is moving very fast’, too fast for the skill sets within big corporations to keep up with the changing retail landscape and its quick shift into omnichannel. This is why it is important for big corporations to work with tech startups who know how to face not only the benefits that advancements in technology have brought into retail, but also its challenges.
Among the many challenges of this massive shift in retail, Clear Returns tackles a problem that costs retailers millions, but often gets ignored: customer returns. A growing customer returns rate is one of the symptoms of quickly growing retail technologies, as more customers turn to online platforms to purchase products, platforms that may have not yet been adjusted to ensure that customers have the best possible online experience.
One in three fashion items sold online in the UK are returned, and in Germany it can be as much as 50 per cent.
What Clear Returns does is provide an early warning system that helps retailers spot the products that are most likely to be returned and spot the customers that are most likely to return products, which gives retailers the data they need to take fast action in preventing returns. We do this with sophisticated data software that can locate the source of a returns problem after only five returns. We provide a solution to a problem that was originally propelled by retail technology with retail technology itself.
Watch the video below to learn more about Clear Returns and our Bird & Bird’s Creative Disruption on the High Street as well as other companies that took part in the event. If you would like to learn more about the work we do, you can look at our recent holiday returns analysis or watch our brief video on how we tackle retail returns.
Posted by Lisa Monozlai