On Feb 16-20 four companies supported by EIT ICT Labs showcased recent innovations for Smart Retail* at EuroShop - world's No. 1 trade fair for retail.
The companies; Bluemark Innovations (The Netherlands), Cliris (France), Innorange (Finland) and U-Hopper (Italy) presented their retail technology solutions for in-store analytics and retail business intelligence.
EIT ICT Labs is working in the smart retail area via Smart Spaces action line. The four companies belong to the Business Development Accelerator programme of EIT ICT Labs where they get strategic coaching, access to the local ecosystem and the European network of EIT ICT Labs' partners. A high level of interest and large number of new contacts were generated from all over the world during EuroShop. It really indicated the great interest retail industry shows in innovative ICT solutions.
This was the biggest EuroShop ever and the numbers were impressive. A total of 109,000 visitors from 110 countries participated at the event in Düsseldorf, Germany. 73% of all EuroShop visitors were executives, two thirds of all visitors stated they were involved in their companies' decision-making processes. The show gathered altogether 2226 exhibitors from 57 countries. They represented different sectors of retail investments - shop fitting, store design, lighting, store furniture, visual marketing and merchandising, point-of-sales marketing, and retail technology.
"Two aspects, above all others, were centre stage at EuroShop 2014: the staging and emotionalisation of the shopping experience through spectacular shop fittings, innovative lighting concepts, creative design ideas and extraordinary materials that bricks-and-mortar retail can use to stand its ground versus clicks-and-mortar shopping. In addition to this, the multi-channel theme - i.e. integrating and linking the various different channels like the offline, web and mobile businesses with latest technologies - was omnipresent at EuroShop", it was reported in the EuroShop press release after the event.
"EuroShop provided us with the pulse of the retailing sector. This will allow us in the coming months to better tailor RetailerIN to the market needs. EuroShop is a worldwide event: the perfect place to benchmark your product against different markets and different countries," explained Iacopo Carreras, CEO U-Hopper. "At Euroshop our business expectations have really grown. We do believe that this event is perfectly tailored for products like and services like RetailerIN," continued Diego Taglioni, President U-Hopper.
“The opportunity to present Innorange with live demos in EuroShop generated interest in hundreds of customers, including world leading brands and retail chains. We received dozens of distributor requests from all over the globe. This provides great acceleration to our internationalization plans,” pointed out Markku Siikala, CEO Innorange.
“Changed behaviour of consumers being constantly online is forcing retailers to look for new multi-channel concepts. The concepts of combination of offline/online, targeted advertising, digital signage, interactive touch-screens, sensor technology and tracking systems are the keywords in retail technology, shown also at EuroShop. The companies presented at EuroShop by EIT ICT Labs with their solutions for tracking and analysing in-store customer routes and behaviour are part of the growing trend to understand the digital customer better,” said Jaana Horttanainen, Business Developer EIT ICT Labs.
Find out more - check out the videos from the EuroShop Retail Trade Fair:
