Hardware Retailing The Industry's Source for Insights and Information
Hardware Retailing recently landed in Las Vegas to attend GlobalShop to give home improvement retailers a broader perspective of retail trends and innovations that span every industry across the globe.
GlobalShop attendees are retail designers, store planners, consumer product companies, retailers and architects that are looking for the latest in retail design, shopper marketing, visual merchandising, retail architecture and innovation in the retail environment. The show was split into five sections; Store Fixtures, Visual Merchandising, Store Design and Operations, Digital and At-Retail.
This year, a brand new centerpiece exhibit called “Path to Purchase” was added, focusing on the creation of a new shopping experience that uses smartphones and other technologies. Now more than ever, customers not only want, but demand the ability to use smartphones in stores whether it’s to price compare, find coupons, get additional information or simply pay for products. This area featured more than a dozen vendors and displayed several ways that technology can and is being used in a retail environment to allow consumers to seamlessly move between brick-and-mortar and digital realms all within the confines of a store.
Some of the technology featured included interactive floor mats that could drive traffic to different parts of a store or keep kids busy giving parents extra time to shop, beacons that recognize consumer shopping habits just by reading customers smartphones upon entering a store and even the ability to look at sales floor heat maps to determine where and when the busiest store traffic occurs or what people are looking at, all in realtime.
These were just a few of the things Hardware Retailing spotted while at the show. For more insights and images from the show, stay-tuned for the May issue of Hardware Retailing.
