Cut costs and boost sales by selling your full range no matter your store footprint.
It used to be that what you sold was limited by the size of your shop floor. The bigger the catalogue, the bigger, and more expensive, the store needed to be.
The move to cross-channel retailing means that no longer has to be the case. Your floor can now act as a showroom for a vastly larger catalogue, allowing you to cut rental costs while selling a fuller range.
But truly taking advantage of cross-channel retail means implementing an ‘endless aisle’ approach to inventory. Only then can you enjoy the full benefits of melding bricks-and-mortar and online offerings.
Here we take a look at what it means to offer an endless aisle, the benefits it can offer your business and what it takes to get all the building blocks in place.
What is endless aisle?
Put simply, endless aisle is a retail strategy that lets customers buy products even if they aren’t available instore, through order and delivery or store pick-up. It could be that your floor space can’t accommodate every item, or that an item is currently out of stock at one location but available at another, or on order but not yet in the inventory.
It might also be the case that customers view your full range online, come instore to see a sample and then complete the purchase via an instore kiosk or with the help of a store team member who checks stock availability on a tablet.
The benefits of an endless aisle approach
The benefits of endless aisle are many and varied, from cost savings to boosted sales and increased customer satisfaction.
In the case of stock-outs, adopting an endless aisle approach means you can easily ship the item to the customer from wherever it’s available. And given that two-thirds of consumers will simply leave if an item is out of stock, that can mean the difference between capturing the sale at the moment of interest and losing it altogether.
For bricks-and-mortar retailers looking to implement fully ‘phygital’ shopping experiences, endless aisle can be a gamechanger. As well as allowing you to cut rental costs, it can empower you to ‘sell more with less’ and open stores in smaller, high-value locations that could never carry the full range.
For furniture and homewares retailers, in particular, endless aisle can supercharge showrooms by letting you stock sample products on the floor and then allowing customers to see and choose from all available options via kiosks, tablets or mobile.
Perhaps endless aisle’s greatest impact comes from freeing shoppers to buy anywhere, anytime from any channel. With a ‘buy anywhere, fulfil anywhere’ strategy in place, retailers can give customers and staff real-time visibility of inventory and order data across the business. Staff can even see stock that isn’t currently in the inventory but which is on order and then assign it to a customer order. Customers can shop whenever they feel like it, at any time, using their most convenient channel. And endless aisle access to inventory lets customers order any product and get it delivered to any address.
The rewards to be reaped
Implementing endless aisle has the potential to deliver measurable results and rewards. According to Aisle Stock, it can lead to a 20% total sales uplift because customers who cannot find an item instore can still purchase it from the broader catalogue and an 18% reduction in cart abandonment because customers who would have left empty-handed complete their purchase digitally.
Some of the world’s largest retailers are realising the benefits of an endless aisle approach. In the US, Target’s TargetExpress outlets have a footprint of 20,000 square feet, instead of 116,000+ square feet, while keeping the full catalogue accessible through the store’s app.
Meanwhile, Nordstrom allows it sales team to sell from any Nordstrom location’s inventory or the online catalogue while on the sales floor.
What it takes
Endless aisle isn’t a single machine that gets installed or a switch that gets flipped. It requires a system that knows what’s on every shelf, in every warehouse and often at every supplier, in real time, so orders can be routed to whichever location can fulfil them fastest and most profitably.
Your sales team needs to trust the number on the screen is accurate, and your customers need the promised delivery date to actually hold.
The components that go into building that unified system include:
- Real-time stock visibility across all locations and channels.
- Order management that can fulfil from the nearest or most profitable location (store, DC or supplier), and that can see what’s on order not just what’s already on the shelf.
- A point of sale that is an integrated part of an ecosystem, so it can access the same inventory data as online channels and warehouses.
- Trained staff who know how to sell the full range, not just what’s on the shelf.
Our Infinity unified commerce platform gives you the building blocks you need, through robust order processing, including an available-to-promise function for stock still on order, integrated POS and near real-time stock visibility, all able to connect to third-party solutions via APIs.
With endless aisle and Infinity, the floor stays small. The range doesn’t.
Want help to modernise your stores for unified retailing?
If you’re experiencing technology challenges that prevent you from unifying store and digital experiences, get in touch or email sales@triquestra.com. We’d love to help you build an endless aisle strategy.
Infinity unified commerce is powered by Triquestra, an Auckland-based retail software company.
