Retail Tech: J.Crew, Crate & Barrel Debut New Virtual Stores, Bolt Partners with Saks Off 5th, Filson

The weekly Retail Tech Roundup compiles technology news across the supply chain, manufacturing, retail, e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment sectors.

Virtual store

J.Crew/Obsess

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With the holiday season kicking into gear, J.Crew has launched the holiday edition of its immersive virtual store, The World of J.Crew, powered by experiential e-commerce platform Obsess. J.Crew first launched the 3D, shoppable experience in June to mark its 40th anniversary, with the original virtual offering taking the form of a oceanside beach house.

The holiday edition of the virtual store offers multiple destinations, including a snow lodge where users can browse and shop winter-themed women’s apparel and accessories, as well as a ski chalet showcasing shoppable winter-themed men’s apparel.

The virtual experience now includes an AI-based holiday card generator that allows visitors to answer a set of “this or that” questions, which will then generate a holiday greeting card based on their responses. The store also features a ski game inspired by a vintage computer game that has the player move the skier through a series of red flags to avoid trees on the path.

Visitors can interact with content highlighting the brand’s heritage, participate in a scavenger hunt for a chance to win a cashmere giveaway, and shop J.Crew’s curated edit of winter and holiday styles.

Crate & Barrel/Obsess

Crate & Barrel unveiled its first immersive virtual store, also with Obsess. The fully shoppable virtual environment takes the form of Crate & Barrel’s new flagship in New York City’s Flatiron neighborhood, which opened at 881 Broadway.

The virtual store features engaging animations and interactive personalization tools that enable customers to visualize their own sofa and living room set and build their own bouquet using the brand’s selection of vases and botanicals.

The virtual store is among the largest fully 3D-rendered spaces that Obsess has created to date, offering more than 450 products and eight interactive room environments, including separate dining, kitchen, living room, botanical shop and Crate & Kids areas.

“Our virtual store in partnership with Obsess is a first-of-its-kind for us as a brand, and we’re looking forward to helping our online global customers envision and experience our new physical flagship in NYC,” said Sebastian Brauer, senior vice president of product design, visual and head of web 3.0, Crate & Barrel, in a statement. “We want to help our customers dream up their perfect space wherever they are, and this interactive tour allows them to find everything from tableware to furniture, lighting, décor and more.”

Visitors to the virtual store will be immersed in a photorealistic, 360-degree re-creation of the flagship, which was originally built in 1868 and once known as the Palace of Trade. The space features preserved neoclassical columns and an original volcanic ash tile wall that pays homage to the energy and dynamics of the city.

At the virtual store’s design desk, customers will find free design and trade services with Crate & Barrel’s design experts to bring their vision to life through collaborative conversations and technology. Customers can schedule a free appointment in-store, virtually or in their home to get service as they explore walls of swatches, light fixtures, tableware, botanicals and more.

E-commerce

ESW/Adobe

ESW, a global direct-to-consumer (DTC) e-commerce company, is now a Gold Partner in Adobe’s Technology Partner Program. This partnership will help Adobe Commerce merchants to scale their DTC businesses to more than 200 countries.

According to Martim Oliveira Avillez, chief revenue officer of ESW, the partnership gives Adobe Commerce merchants easier access to its international DTC e-commerce solutions, particularly as they look to expand their global consumer base and grow top line revenue while improving margins through an asset-light strategy.

By leveraging an understanding of local markets, ESW’s platform is built to scale DTC selling capabilities that can drive enhanced customer lifetime value. ESW says that brands using its platform maintain control over every aspect of their experience, from their data to the look and feel of their e-commerce sites to their content, catalog, payments, fulfillment and delivery and returns experience.

This expanded partnership helps Adobe Commerce merchants to benefit from ESW’s cross-border solution and offer a fully localized experience simply by plugging ESW’s digital checkout solution into Adobe Commerce.

Fulfillment

Psycho Bunny/Deposco

Men’s apparel brand Psycho Bunny deployed the Bright Suite omnichannel platform from Deposco across more than 60 stores in only six months.

Prior to the implementation, Psycho Bunny faced challenges due to a fragmented fulfillment system that did not provide real-time inventory visibility, resulting in stock-outs and lost sales from both online and in-store channels.

“We needed a system that would enable us to implement a ship-from-store functionality and fulfill orders directly from our 60+ store locations without inventory complications or delays,” said Monica Provenza, director, omnichannel and experience, Psycho Bunny, in a statement. “After our first store went live in only three months, we were shipping more than 62,000 orders alongside a reduction from two-to-five days of processing time for orders sourced from the distribution center to under 48 hours out of the stores with Deposco.”

Deposco’s Bright Suite omnichannel platform is designed to to unite order orchestration, warehouse management, demand planning, supply planning and omnichannel fulfillment through a single view of demand against real-time physical inventory execution everywhere.

Bright Suite offers Psycho Bunny accurate, real-time data and automated back-of-house fulfillment processes to improve in-store operations like BOPIS (buy online, pickup in-store), that can help retailers get more orders out the door with speed, accuracy, operational savings and an improved customer experience.

Beyond the implementation at Psycho Bunny, Deposco launched a “Peak Season Performance Quiz” in October to provide retailers with mid-season benchmarks and best practices for improving the performance of their supply chains this holiday season and beyond.

Checkout

Bolt

One-click checkout technology company Bolt has launched partnerships new clients including Saks Off 5th, Shinola, Filson, Lafayette 148 and Toys “R” Us.

This will help these retailers recognize more shoppers, increase conversion, boost store account registrations and drive repeat purchases to build lifetime customer relationships.

This milestone builds on Bolt’s headless commerce solution for checkout. By offering these brands the opportunity to pick and choose aspects of the company’s technology suite, Bolt aims to deliver more flexibility to enterprise retailers.

Luxury off-price fashion retailer Saks Off 5th recently implemented Bolt to support its efforts to recognize and convert new customers.

“At Saks Off 5th we’re focused on building customer loyalty through an exceptional customer journey, including a seamless checkout experience,” said Julie Mares, senior vice president, e-commerce, Saks Off 5th, in a statement. “By integrating Bolt into our checkout flow, we’ve been able to elevate our buying journey for our guest customers leading to significant conversion for new customers and enhanced relationships with formerly unknown shoppers.”

Shinola and Filson, lifestyle brands owned by Bedrock Manufacturing, say they are using Bolt’s checkout so their shoppers can complete purchases with more speed and security.

“Our commitment to raising the e-commerce experience bar is driven by our pursuit of brand loyalty. Delivering a best-in-class experience is paramount and that starts with a seamless and exceptional online shopping journey,” said Robert Sayre, chief information officer, Bedrock Manufacturing.

Lafayette 148, a modern luxury women’s wear brand, is leveraging a headless Bolt offering to create a one-stop-shop for customer needs.

“We want to eliminate any barriers between our customers and their fashion aspirations. To do that, we’ve implemented Bolt’s one-click checkout to make every online shopping journey as seamless and enjoyable as our in-store experience.” said Carol Schuster, senior vice president of marketing, Lafayette 148. “One-click checkout will allow us to bridge the gap between physical and digital experiences, ensuring that shoppers can easily find the wardrobe pieces they desire, even with time constraints.”

Toys “R” Us is accelerating its e-commerce capabilities with Bolt with the checkout implementation.

“We have partnered with Bolt to implement its best-in-class checkout solution—ensuring a frictionless purchase experience on our website for customers,” said Gary Haas, vice president of e-commerce at Toys “R” Us.

Order management

Perry Ellis International/HotWax Commerce

Perry Ellis International, Inc., a designer and distributor of men’s and women’s apparel, accessories, fragrances and children’s apparel, has deployed omnichannel order management system HotWax Commerce’s buy online pickup in-store (BOPIS) and ship from store solutions to launch its omnichannel fulfillment initiatives.

With approximately 70 stores, Perry Ellis uses Shopify and XStore as its e-commerce and point of sale (POS) systems, and uses its stores as fulfillment centers to offer same-day BOPIS.

HotWax Commerce’s BOPIS solution includes features such as the BOPIS PDP Shopify App, which shows real-time inventory availability at stores on the product detail page of the Shopify e-commerce platform.

The My Store feature enables shoppers to choose their preferred store as the pickup location and save it, eliminating the need to select a pickup location again and again. With Store Mode, shoppers can select a store and view merchandise specific to that store on Shopify’s product listing page.

The solution also includes Location-Based Store Lookup, which lets shoppers search for pickup locations by zip code or city.

Perry Ellis also partnered with Target-owned delivery provider Shipt to offer same-day delivery.

Meanwhile, HotWax Commerce’s ship from store solution shows if items can be delivered same-day in the shopping cart based on parameters like a customer’s zip code, store operating hours, time taken by store to prepare the order and store pickup deadlines.

The ship from store solution automatically applies an expected delivery date to the order based on the selected fulfillment method. Shipt can confirm the delivery date of the order, enabling Perry Ellis to notify customers of the actual expected ship date if it differs from what they requested. Additionally, it updates customers about order fulfillment status from store pick-up to delivery by getting information from Shipt’s system. The store fulfillment app for store associates can be embedded in XStore for accurate and fast order fulfillment.

Robotics

Exotec/Bastian

Exotec, a global warehouse robotics provider, said that material handling solutions provider Bastian Solutions is now an integrator of the Exotec technology in the North American market. The agreement will enable Bastian Solutions to sell and install Exotec’s signature Skypod system in the U.S. and Canada.

Bastian Solutions and Exotec are already working on a robotic installation for a leading sports equipment company. The site is currently expected to be delivered in 2024.

Since joining the North American market in 2020, Exotec already delivered over 20 customer sites across the U.S. and Canada for brands including Gap Inc., Ariat and Decathlon. This agreement will enable Exotec to further build its presence in the North American market while enabling Bastian Solutions to offer its suite of solutions to the warehouse robotics provider’s customers.

Advertising

Rokt/Afterpay

Rokt, an e-commerce technology company using machine learning and AI to make transactions more relevant to each shopper, has partnered with buy now, pay later (BNPL) provider Afterpay.

The partnership is aimed at enabling Afterpay to offer its e-commerce shoppers more relevant offers at checkout, whichs offers a more engaging shopping experience while driving new revenue and deepening customer lifetime value.

Leveraging Rokt’s e-commerce solution, Afterpay and its thousands of retail partners are empowered to deliver targeted advertising experiences to customers during the checkout flow.

Textile manufacturing

Pacific Textiles/Rimini Street

Textile manufacturer Pacific Textiles has selected Rimini Support to assist the company with its customized, S/4HANA implementation, which is designed to be the backbone of its manufacturing operations. Rimini Support is an offering from Rimini Street, Inc., a global provider of end-to-end enterprise software support, products and services, and a third-party support provider for Oracle and SAP software, and a Salesforce and AWS partner.

Rimini Street’s faster, more comprehensive software support has enabled Pacific Textiles to significantly reduce IT costs, freeing resources to focus on projects and investments for competitive growth and advantage, including the move to a new data lake architecture.

Pacific Textiles is a global manufacturer of customized knitted fabric, and its products are used in the production of over 1 billion garments each year. The company collaborates closely with apparel brands to design fabrics that meet customized orders, delivering more than 3,000 new samples for its customers each month.

The company relies on SAP software to run its business including sales order entry, production planning, material procurement and many other critical ERP functions.

“When we purchased SAP, the closest product we were offered to fit our needs was the Mill Products industry solution, traditionally used for paper products and steel manufacturing. Obviously, textiles didn’t fit quite well into that, so we required an extensive number of customizations,” said Hubert Tsang, chief information officer, Pacific Textiles.

“SAP support was helpful during our initial implementation. But the service quality deteriorated after that. It became a slow, cumbersome process,” said Tsang. “With standard SAP support, we’d submit a ticket, wait a while for them to process it, go back and forth, then wait endlessly for a resolution. Ultimately, we were only able to solve most of our problems by spending more on SAP professional services.”

Frustrated with the quality, speed and cost of vendor support for S/4HANA, Pacific Textiles began searching for a third-party support provider and quickly chose Rimini Street because of the company’s size, scalability and rich enterprise-grade capabilities. In addition, Rimini Street was the only option that offered Pacific Textiles the multi-language support they required as a global business.

In collaborating with Rimini Support, Pacific Textiles is benefitting from maximum 10-minute response time instead of 4 hours with SAP, a 96 percent reduction in response time commitment, and now gives users direct access to a named, dedicated Primary Support Engineer (PSE).

“With the money that we’ve saved by moving to Rimini Street, Pacific Textiles is now able to work on key, strategic projects that we’ve been wanting to do for years,” said Tsang. “In manufacturing, we collect and analyze tons of data so we can understand and optimize the performance of our machines. We had wanted to move to a new data lake architecture, but too much budget was wrapped up in IT support. Rimini Street helped us free up the funds to take on this important project which will support our AI innovation roadmap.”