Retail

Qwikcilver Solutions in Australia, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Pine Labs Ltd, and a pioneer in SaaS based end-to-end gift card processing platform has partnered with Woolworths Group’s payments entity Wpay, to extend their gift card processing solutions and services in ANZ. This strategic partnership seeks to holistically enhance the Woolworths Group Gift card program and support its journey toward digital transformation with Qwikcilver’s state-of-the-art platform and comprehensive suite of solutions. With the Gift Card industry landscape shifting rapidly from physical to digital, this strategic partnership with Qwikcilver uniquely empowers Wpay to serve their customer needs in the growing digital gift card space.

In an effort to expand their commitment to sustainability, Specsavers Australia New Zealand has promoted Cathy Rennie Matos to the newly created role of Head of Sustainability ANZ. Cathy has been with Specsavers since 2017, bringing over 20 years of PR, Marketing and CSR experience from in-house roles at various retailers to her new Specsavers position.

SM Retail, one of the largest retail chain of stores in the Philippines has successfully implemented a new distributed Order Management System (OMS) from Fluent Commerce. SM Retail is the country’s leading retailer with a nationwide portfolio of department stores, supermarkets and specialty stores – including dedicated hardware, home and toy stores.

Globally, shopper interactions with self-serve solutions continue to rise, with nearly half of shoppers citing they have used self-checkouts, and almost 4 in 10 used cashless payment methods.

The first lockdown-free festive season we’ve had in years is upon us, with predictions that the retail industry is feeling the pressure. In the lead-up to the shopping hysteria, the mental health of retail workers is a high priority with fears of burnout amongst employees. Studies show that 62% of Aussies working in retail will suffer burnout this festive season. This is compounded due to the challenges of the labour shortage crisis, indicating the usually jolly festive season may not be so cheery this year. Burnout is common around this time of year. I’m sure we all felt the difficulty with the staff recruitment this year due to labour shortages.

Grant Thornton’s retail industry group reports predictions of strong consumer spending and a return to stores came true after the Black Friday weekend, although not to the extent retailers were expecting. Black Friday sales data shows Aussie consumers have spent $4.97b in global sales, well below the forecast $6.2b, representing a 17% increase on last year.

With 2022 set to be the first ‘back to normal’ Christmas after two years of lockdowns and restrictions, survey results from leading buy now, pay later provider Zip reveals Boxing Day shoppers will return to traditional roots, with nearly 1 in 2 visiting physical retail stores. According to Zip’s survey, just under half (45%) of those who plan to make purchases during Boxing Day sales will look for information by visiting physical retail stores with 41% searching brand/retailer websites and apps (41%). 41% plan to search online for offer release dates.

Australian Bamboo clothing brand Boody has taken out top spot in this year’s November sales campaign, seeing a 371% increase in online orders compared to November 2021. The new data from Australia’s largest eCommerce fulfilment provider, eStore Logistics, analyses online order and unit volumes across its e-commerce and SMB retail customers in Australia.

Slyp, the Aussie fintech transforming the post-purchase customer experience, announced that Aussie retail giants Kmart and Country Road, have joined the likes of JD Sports, General Pants, Tony Bianco, Cue, Converse and hundreds of national retailers in offering customers itemised Smart Receipts automatically sent to their bank app, just in time for the holidays.

Aussie supermarket giant Coles has digitalised its supply chain with Internet of Things (IoT) tech, deploying a solution from Loscam and Thinxtra to monitor the location of and measure shock for 4,500 smart food bins moving poultry between farms and its distribution centre. Coles last year announced a major digital transformation strategy, which includes increasing the resilience of its critical supply chains, such as the Protein Cold Chain, responsible for sourcing and stocking poultry. The main objective of this strategy was to reduce the number of food bins it loses, understand whether and where these assets are being damaged, improve pooling of equipment for transit, and ultimately increase stock turnaround.