New Retail in Hauts-de-France
For traditional retailers, forced to reinvent themselves to compete with e-commerce, the New Retail concept offers innovative solutions that radically enhance the customer experience at points of sale, including scan-and-go services, products with RFID chips and 24/7 store hours. In Hauts-de-France, our powerful IT ecosystem is working with Auchan, Décathlon and other well-established mass-market leaders to develop technologies that will keep retail businesses competitive by optimizing supply chains, inventory management and restocking.
New Retail in Hauts-de-France
For traditional retailers, forced to reinvent themselves to compete with e-commerce, the New Retail concept offers innovative solutions that radically enhance the customer experience at points of sale, including scan-and-go services, products with RFID chips and 24/7 store hours. In Hauts-de-France, our powerful IT ecosystem is working with Auchan, Décathlon and other well-established mass-market leaders to develop technologies that will keep retail businesses competitive by optimizing supply chains, inventory management and restocking.
Putting technology to work for retail
For consumers, there are few things more irritating than waiting in a long check-out line. For retailers, boosting customer satisfaction is essential to avoid losing market share to e-commerce. Which is why New Retail technologies are transforming the industry, from the in-store purchasing experience to supply chain processing.
In each case, the goal is to reimagine retail, improving the customer experience at physical points of sale to stay in the game—and stay competitive.
New Retail harnesses new technologies
- fully automated stores, with automated cash registers—and no employees at all
- payment anywhere in the store to a salesperson equipped with a mobile payment terminal
- “scan and go”: customers scan purchases themselves, and pay with their own cellphone
- RFID technology embeds chips into product labels
- outlets in new, formerly disused, spaces
Close-up: New Retail innovations—only in Hauts-de-France
As the retail sector reinvents itself to stay competitive and productive, Hauts-de-France is out in front.
Auchan launches the only “container stores” in France
At Auchan’s Retail France headquarters, a new kind of supermarket has appeared in the parking lot. This employees-only store is the size of a shipping container, and it’s stocked with items that consumers pick up between larger grocery runs. The emphasis is on speed, with company ID badges used for purchase and payment.
Auchan began deploying this model in 2017 in China, where there are now some 100 Auchan Minute stores built on the popular WeChat app. Chinese customers use the app to unlock the doors, scan their purchases at the register and pay.
In France, the Auchan Minute model is still in the experimental stage. “The idea is to pilot a new option that lets us get to know our customers better, test new products and experiment with new approaches to merchandising and dynamic information,” says the retail giant.
Hauts-de-France is also home to the second French Auchan Minute store, on the Decathlon campus in Villeneuve d’Ascq. Here the container’s footprint is less than 18 sq m—slightly smaller to meet European standards—and the range of products is a little smaller. Like the first mini-store, open only to Auchan employees, this one is exclusively for Decathlon employees, who use their ID badges to enter and exit, and to pay for their purchases.
Pioneering RFID chips at Decathlon
Decathlon has used RFID technology to cut register time since 2014, with chips embedded in labeling for all of its products. When customers arrive at the register, there’s no barcode scanning. Instead, they place their purchases in a specially designed bin that detects the items within a few seconds. They then pay—and leave.
RFID technology pays for itself in other areas, too:
- RFID chips help prevent theft
- retailers can take inventory in record time
- customers can easily request another size from inside the dressing room
- the chips create a link to Decathlon’s e-commerce operations: shoppers can access customer reviews and order on line if an item isn’t available in-store
Thanks to the time saved in all these areas, Decathlon can now devote more staff to customer relations.
A great time to grow in Europe
Supermarkets that fail to regain their footing in urban markets will find it hard to survive—but new opportunities are opening up a different future. With New Retail, you can position stores in targeted locations such as residential complexes and event venues, and operate them without staff. And there’s plenty of room to experiment. Brick-and-mortar stores are fearlessly reinventing themselves, becoming bolder, more mobile, and more automated, and their new flexibility—combined with new ways to manage inventory and the restocking process—is creating disruptive new business models. Today’s economy is ideal for reimagining retail:
- Demand for automated registers is growing
- Recruiting challenges are forcing companies to find alternatives to human beings
- Job markets in Eastern Europe are saturated, fueling a spike in payroll costs
- Consumers are adopting new habits, deserting big-box retailers for human-scale neighborhood stores and paying closer attention to the quality of products and services.
Find customers in Hauts-de-France
Our region offers an abundance of business development opportunities. You’ll find prospective customers—King Fisher, Auchan, Boulanger, Adéo, Decathlon, Happychic and more—right here in the region. You can also connect with French and European customers headquartered nearby, including Tesco, Carrefour and Casino. And because Hauts-de-France is so close to France’s border with Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, it’s easy to develop new business across Northwestern Europe.
Find the talent you need in Hauts-de-France
With 35% of our population under 25, Hauts-de-France is the youngest region in the country, and we offer the high-quality training you need for your future employees. We are France’s #2 region for training, with:
- a wealth of engineering schools. Nearly 10% of all French engineers are trained in Hauts-de-France.
- the region is home to over 100 training programs dedicated to digital technology, including 24 that you won’t find anywhere else
- 6 business schools specializing in management. EDHEC, SKEMA and IESEG—all in Hauts-de-France—are listed in the Financial Times and Shanghai global rankings
Bottom line: it’s easy to recruit the qualified employees you need.
Join a robust, well-organized ecosystem
Outsourcing is easier in Hauts-de-France because all the service providers you need for the success of your New Retail business are already here:
- Logistics providers
- Data centers
- Digital agencies
- Catalog production companies
- Photo studios
- Service providers
- And more
The Hauts-de-France retail ecosystem is unique:
retailers are headquartered here
for €65 billion in sales
Organizations to support your business
- The Picom competitiveness cluster is a resource for top French players in distribution, e-commerce and customer relations, forecasting trends in the distribution market and analyzing consumption patterns.
- SILAB is an innovation center with a catalog of nearly 100 cosmetic and dermo-cosmetic products for hair and healthy or damaged skin.
- The Blanchemaille complex, covering nearly 2,000-sq m, includes an incubator for e-commerce technologies, a business accelerator, and a business service center.
- EuraTechnologies is a center of excellence and innovation, home to 300 tech companies, 200 startups, labs, training centers, a fablab, investors and software vendors such as Critizr.
Data storage capacity
When you work with a French data center, you can count on high-quality hosting. Leading data storage providers OVH and CIV are here in Hauts-de-France, offering a range of benefits for New Retail players:
- Very high-speed connectivity. Choose a French supplier, and you’ll enjoy service that’s the envy of many countries. Better yet, you can store your information in a data center near your business, the power grid and the expertise of their engineers.
- French and European data protection laws. It’s safer here: when you choose a storage provider in the United States, you grant the government the right to access your data under the USA Patriot Act.
- Better performance. A French location gives you a clear advantage: when your data center is in France, in-country cloud users enjoy faster speeds, more efficiency and reduced latency.
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