Catalin Pozdarie, CEO of the sports and fashion retail company Hervis Romania, brought forward some valuable observations drawn from his 22 years of experience in the industry, during BR’s re:Focus on Retail and Logistics third panel, How do we innovate & keep up with the increasing pressures of this new world.

He pointed out that Omnichannel is actually the evolution of the old Multichannel concept and it meant a unification of all communication and sales platforms in the retail industry.

“You need to be in close contact to your customer on every channel and device and offer the possibility to interact with the brand you’re representing. There’s good progress here too. For some companies, Omnichannel only means their internal channels, but for others the concept also includes channels that are not under their direct control, such as Marketplace.”

GDPR and Big Data

“Since the new GDPR legislation was adopted, everyone needs to abide by those rules and we must inform and ask permission about collecting data. This customer behavior tracking is still in a grey zone, but in the offline area it doesn’t exist, because we can’t install cameras to see what kind of products a client has looked at but didn’t buy. We can only see the final results, the sales. We rely on our employees in this regard. In the offline area they are irreplaceable.”

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Where is innovation truly needed?

“The biggest problems for clients are delivery and refund times. I have to admit, even on our website, most complaints are related to those issues. This is an area where innovation is truly needed because it improves your credibility in front of your customers and improves their experience.”