OMNI-CHANNEL
A focus on AI and omnichannel in 2024
by Claude Hanan: Co-founder of Bash.com
Going into 2024, the two trends we're primarily focussed on are AI and omnichannel.
Artificial Intelligence
There is obviously a lot of fan-fare and excitement about it at the moment, but we're actually operationalising AI - albeit slowly for now, but it will speed up significantly this year. There are endless use cases for a business like ours, the trick is to make AI a must-win aspect of the business, and engrain it into the DNA of our culture. As with any adoption curve, there will be early and late adopters - and we're still in a phase (in SA at least) where the early adopters can establish an enduring advantage here.
Omnichannel
We're lucky enough to not only be SA's most visited fashion and lifestyle app, but also have over 3k physical stores to leverage. The first two years of our time at TFG was focussed on getting ecommerce fundamentals in place - and we have done a decent job at this to date, and whilst our work here will continue, we are turning some of our attention and resources to in-store technology including endless aisle (in-store assisted selling), reserve online pickup in-store, enhanced click & collect experiences etc. We're already seeing promising results from our beta in-store launch late last year.
It's going to be an exciting year. Amazon officially launches, Shein keeps growing, Checkers are doing great things via Sixty60, Takealot Group continues to grow - so it feels like the digital space is now firmly a cornerstone of SA retail and will continue to grow its relevance and importance to the sector in 2024.
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