Specialist outdoor retail group, Outdoor and Cycle Concepts Ltd (O&CC), has leveraged shelf-edge automation to improve operational efficiencies in-store, increase labour productivity and enhance customer service, partnering with Pricer, the leading in-store automation and communication solutions provider.
As the UK’s largest specialist outdoor, run and snow sports retailer, O&CC, which operates Cotswold Outdoor, Runners Need and Snow+Rock, wanted to put in-store customer service at the forefront of its retail offer across its group of brands. As well as offering a range of specialist sporting and outdoor goods, O&CC builds in ‘value adding’ services, such as 3D foot scanning and running gait analysis, and outdoor footwear, pack and ski-boot fitting, into its store offer, to help enhance customers’ enjoyment of the outdoors.
“Inspiring and supporting customers to get outside and enjoy the outdoors is our brand mission, and the services we build into our store offer are central to delivering this,” Chris Jones, Strategic Operations Director at Cotswold Outdoor, commented. “Our store associates – all passionate experts with a shared love of the outdoors – play a key role in delivering that customer experience, sharing their knowledge, expertise and passion to kit out customers with the equipment to make exploring the outdoors all the more enjoyable.”
O&CC wanted to enhance customer experience (CX) further, by improving store efficiencies to free up staff from time-consuming manual or purely operational tasks, allowing them to focus their time and attention to customer-facing activities. It partnered with Pricer to deploy a full chain rollout of cloud-based platform, Pricer Plaza, and a customised Electronic Shelf Labels (ESLs) solution, delivering automated, real-time digital pricing and promotions capabilities across its estate of 78 stores earlier this year.
Since implementation, O&CC has diverted upwards of 2,500 hours from retail tasking in maintaining the shelf-edge into customer service, which, in turn, has improved conversion rates across its ESL-enabled stores.
“Installing digital in-store pricing has helped drive efficiency, improve sustainability, and, ultimately, enriched our in-store teams’ roles by allowing them to dedicate more time to serving our customers,” Jones added. “Our colleagues have adapted quickly to the new technology and have appreciated the reduction in labelling, which takes them away from serving customers.”
Peter Ward, country manager for UK & Ireland at Pricer, commented: “Customer-centricity is the cornerstone for O&CC’s brand mission, ensuring shoppers get the dedicated customer service, underpinned by expert knowledge, they need to enhance their enjoyment of the great outdoors. By investing in store technology and digitalising the shelf-edge, O&CC has enhanced efficiency and improved labour productivity – diverting store staff’s time to the most valuable – and profitable – tasks that drive retail performance and grow customer lifetime value.”
Looking ahead past automated pricing, O&CC is considering using Pricer’s ESLs to create further efficiency gains, including picking of online orders for its Click & Collect service and enhanced replenishment to improve product availability and reduce shelf gaps.
