River Island links with Scandit to modernise store ops

By

Nigel TAYLOR

Published
Oct 13, 2022

River Island is deep-diving into tech for a new consumer-facing store support programme. The UK fashion retailer has announced a partnership with smart data capture firm Scandit as part of its plans to modernise store operations.

Across its 300 stores River Island has issued 3,500 store associates with a Scandit-enabled Samsung Galary XCover smartphone, equipped with Microsoft Teams, to replace shared hardware-based scanning devices.

The smartphones will allow staff to “instantly access information” to answer queries, retrieve product information, check stock availability and retrieve Click & Collect packages “as customers enter the store”. It also enables mobile point-of-sale “to reduce customer queuing times”.

Scandit enables the smartphones to capture data from barcodes, text, IDs and objects “with unmatched speed, accuracy and intelligence. For store associates, this leads to increased efficiencies and access to data to provide actionable insights”, it said. 

“River Island is focused on enhancing its day-to-day customer and employee experience by adopting the latest technology to differentiate in a highly competitive market.

“The new partnership… is a driver of River Island’s plans to evolve its stores nationwide as the brand looks to raise the bar of how it interacts with employees and customers”, it added.

Paul Cooper, Head of Technology at River Island, said, “We’re on a mission to digitally transform, modernise and evolve our retail stores nationwide. Working with Scandit, Samsung and Microsoft has unlocked a platform for innovation, which raises the bar of how we interact with both our employees and customers.

Scandit’s performance has been fundamental to winning the hearts and minds of our store associates to be confident in delivering a superior and speedy customer experience.” 

Samuel Mueller, CEO at Scandit, added: “Today’s shoppers enter stores armed with data in their pockets and expect a frictionless, convenient omnichannel experience. Working with River Island, we have equipped their store associates with the ability to access real-time information to provide a concierge-like service to customers while enhancing store operation processes. Deploying connected, user-friendly smartphones to all staff also helps to attract and retain employees in a competitive labour market.”