The latest IMRG Connect event was held in London on May 2nd with a great line up of speakers and engaging content and here we summarise the key take-away points of the day.

One particularly interesting keynote presentation was delivered by Sean McKee, Head of Ecommerce and Customer Services at Schuh. Sean discussed Schuh’s approach of focusing on full price sales and limiting promotions as well as their single view of stock across their stores, which allows them to offer customers an attractive reserve and collect offer within 20 minutes.

Schuh have a single view of stock levels across their retail network

CEO of Clear Returns Vicky Brock kicked off the afternoon session with great insight into how you can transform returns to your advantage. By truly understanding your customer behaviour in terms of both sales and returns, this allows retailers to effectively segment and target much more appropriately. For instance not offering discounts and incentivising those who like to wear and return - Vicky pointed out that this group have cost one retailer £660,000 in a 5 month period.

Neil Ashworth, the new CEO of Collect+ also took to the stage in the afternoon to discuss exciting results from their latest survey, which proved the increasingly popularity of a click and collect scheme and the increasing inconvenience of collect in-store felt among customers. This led to some interesting forecasts for the future of retail delivery methods.

Wear and return cost one retailer £660,000 within 5 months

Towards the end of the day at IMRG Connect Shiran Liyanage, Head of Marketing at Metapack looked to the future of the industry. Metapack estimate that by 2017 there will be a 63% increase in UK deliveries, although up to 30% of volumes will be for international customers. The impact of cross-border growth was a key theme of the day, and many retailers showed great interest in hearing how they can develop a successful strategy in the international marketplace.