Credit crunch not curbing UK online shoppers

The latest figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index reveal that online spending is still at a record high, despite reports of falling consumer confidence and the tightening of debt markets. IMRG and Capgemini have discovered that UK consumers spent £13 billion in the first quarter of 2008, equivalent to £213 for every person in the UK. Shoppers spent over 50% more than the first quarter of 2007.

UK shoppers do not appear to be curbing their spending online as they are now spending a third more per online visit (£12) compared to five years ago. In addition, nearly £8.5 billion was spent online in the week of the Easter holidays, according to the Index. Beers, wines and spirits sector saw a surge in online sales in February and March - an increase of 60%. According to the Index, this online sector is worth more than £700 million per annum. Online sales for clothing, footwear and accessories have also fuelled growth - people spent nearly a quarter (21.8%) more in March compared to February. In contrast, electricals have only seen a small level of growth online for the first quarter of 2008.

Anthoula Madden, vp at Capgemini UK's consumer products and retail team said, "The poor Easter weather appears to have paid off for online retailers as more people seem to have spent more time inside, shopping online in March. Interestingly, people in the UK don't appear to be curbing their drinking as the online beer, wines and spirits sector saw a huge increase in sales of more than 25% in the first week of March alone. The looming budget may have spurred people on to stock up on alcohol before the increase in taxes.

Adding to this, we have seen poor trading results for pubs in light of the bad weather and perhaps more smokers are drinking at home. The latest figures from the IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index show that the future is not all 'doom and gloom' for retailers - yet it underlines that online is an essential channel for retailers to survive in such unstable conditions."

www.uk.capgemini.com

ID Technology goes Republic

Retail security specialists ID Technology Group has installed a fully integrated CCTV system at the new flagship store of Banana Republic, GAP's upmarket trading chain on Regent Street, London.

The store, which offers high end men and women's fashion needed a CCTV to ensure that staff felt secure and the alarm and EAS system were encapsulated within the system.

ID currently installs and maintains all CCTV to the GAP estate across the UK and Ireland and therefore was their natural choice to undertake the project for Banana Republic.

A 29 camera CCTV system, incorporating 12 Pan Tilt & Zoom, 360 Vision Speed dome 22:1 colour cameras, that gives 100% coverage to the 18,050 sq ft retail floor was installed. Two 1.6 terabyte Cathexis DVR's giving perfect picture quality and instant data retrieval were used to control the CCTV system.

Integrated with the stores EAS system and alarm system, suspect buttons were also installed under the counters, whereby staff can instantly notify security and management of potential anti-social instances and the cameras instantly records to a high resolution pre-set location, recording many angles of the incident to ensure maximum coverage.

Matt Allen, sales director at ID Technology Group commented: "This is one of the most anticipated store openings of 2008 to the UK retail sector. Banana Republic needed a CCTV and security system that not only protected the products, but fitted in perfectly with the high specification of the store.

The last thing Banana Republic would want trouble with come opening day is the CCTV system as there was a massive customer footfall expected. ID has demonstrated to Banana Republic an excellent partnership approach, and we look forward to this continuing with this in the future."

www.id-group.co.uk

Ann Summers improves planning

British retailer Ann Summers has selected Island Pacific's IP Planning module, to support the company's merchandise, store, in-season and assortment planning functions. The software will be used across all channels, including retail, web, franchise and Party Plan, for the Ann Summers and Knickerbox brands.

Ann Summers developed the concept of people selling sexy lingerie and sex toys in the privacy of their own homes. The company is headquartered in Surrey, and today it boasts a sales force of over 7,500 women as party organizers; has 134 high street stores in the UK, Ireland, and Channel Islands and one in Spain, and an annual turnover in excess of £155 million.

The first stage of the planning implementation will go live at the end of May 2008; it will then be rolled out across the business, with the final stages of implementation set for August. The module will enable Ann Summers' head office to integrate store planning into its buying requirements, increasing efficiency, and providing an accurate reporting tool.

Previously, Ann Summers operated from an Excel-based system; as Tony Indyk, commercial director at Ann Summers commented, "We spend 80 percent of our time collating merchandising information, and 20 percent analysing the data output via our current system. With the new planning tool, we would anticipate that the time spent on these activities will switch, and as a result we will be able to more efficiently plan across all levels, including channel, location, product and time (weekly or monthly), pre-season and in-season."

He added: "We chose to work with the IP Planning Module, because of the ease of integration. It is in a relatively straightforward format, and does what we want it to do. The system will help us to plan in detail at all levels, and across different hierarchies and channels."

www.islandpacific.com

Metro Group expands collaboration with Teradata

Teradata Corporation has announced that Metro Group, one of the world's largest retailers, continues to expand its Teradata platform to generate analytical business intelligence. The system continuously captures and integrates detailed data from a growing number of business programs and subsidiaries across Europe, Asia and Africa. The system includes software and hardware and is supported by Teradata professional services.

For more than a decade, the Teradata platform has supported Metro's thought leadership in managing and leveraging complex information for deep business visibility and enterprise-class insight. Metro relies on it to collect and analyse a wide variety of detailed data to create powerful intelligence for decision support as well as financial reporting and customer management.

"Our international data warehouse, built on the Teradata platform, is an integral part of our corporate strategy to generate more value with targeted customer relationship management and category management in Europe and beyond," said Heinz-Josef Boeck, CEO of Metro Group Information Technology GmbH. "As our international data warehouse has been growing country by country, Teradata's highly scalable technology has proven to be of great business value, providing high performance under very demanding business circumstances. Teradata reliably handles growing data volumes while supporting mixed workloads and many concurrent users."

Presently, the international data warehouse integrates data from Metro's subsidiaries in 30 countries across Europe.

www.teradata.com