It’s always interesting how one change can trigger a big, long, and occasionally heated discussion — on nearly any subject. For example, in 2001, future-homerun-king Barry Bonds showed up with maple bats, and soon thereafter maple bats were in use by a lot of professional and amateur baseball players — you can even buy one at the local Sports Authority store. Now, guess what? There’s a controversy raging in the sport about whether or not maple bats are more explosive, both figuratively and literally, than traditional hickory bats (RSR doesn’t have an official position on this subject). Meanwhile, in the retail world a few years ago, practitioners and pundits alike took notice of the Apple Store’s approach to the plate. My first impression walking into an Apple store was, “what an outrageous waste of selling space! And look at all the labor on the floor! ” etc. etc. Then, remembering that I was no longer an exec at a traditional retailer, but someone who is supposed to be thinking about where retail might go, I started looking at what they were actually doing. Now of course, Apple Store’s successes are in the record books, and they’re a bit like a new retail homerun king.

The Apple experience has been at the center of a lot of discussion in the industry; whether you love it or think that it won’t work for you, you’re talking about it nonetheless. Other retailers, such as Nordstrom and Urban Outfitters, have picked up on the Apple Store’s big innovation that got everyone talking: instead of the customer seeking out service in a fixed location, the service comes to the customer. Both retailers (among others) have taken that innovation to heart and have run with it.

The key enabler for the bringing the service to you idea is mobile technology. Mobile POS isn’t a new concept — in fact it’s been around for a long time (I remember now-defunct clothier Mervyn’s deploying line-busting technology from IBM and Telxon in the early ‘90’s). However, the problems with earlier mobile technologies were deal-killers. They were slow, expensive, had clunky interfaces, and frankly didn’t do very much. But that was before the smart mobile explosion. One has to be amazed at how fast consumers (who are also employees) have adopted the smart mobile experience. For example, while talking to a digital signage solutions provider early this year, he confided that “We’ve had to completely re-think our solution because people walk up to a display and start tapping it or try to stretch an image, just like they’d do on their iPhone. There are fingerprints all over the display! “ The good news in this for any retailer considering mobile-anything in the store now is that their employees are already trained on the technology interface! Now they just have to understand the business use-case. That is really significant.

The Urban Outfitters Story

Urban Outfitters is actually several distinct brands, including Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie, Free People, BHLDN, and Terrain. Back in February 2011, Urban Outfitters CEO Glen Senk said, “as we study the mobile experience, we believe these devices may ultimately impact the in-store experience more than they actually impact the online experience… just yesterday we were asking ourselves, ‘how do we make our website as good as our stores?’ and now we’re asking, ‘how can we make our stores as good as our website?’ ” Those are strong words, and so RSR decided to follow-up with the company to see how the CEO’s vision is being executed.

To that end, we talked last week to Joe Stratter, Urban Outfitter’s Director of Store and Marketing technologies. When asked how long Urban Outfitters has been actively engaged in a mobile initiative, Joe replied, “from a technology perspective, until about a year ago, not a lot! In March of last year (2010), we started to take a look at mobile point-of-sale and what it could potentially mean to our stores. ” That’s a true testament to how fast the “mobile ” agenda is moving in retail: in one year, the retailer moved from not a lot to the CEO conveying a strong position on the subject.

According to the IT leader, “the initiative that we’re currently engaged in is really more from a sales associate, a store mobile app, perspective. We’re looking at how mobile POS can change the customer experience. Across all of our brands, our approach is to create an unimagined experience online or in stores. We want people to become immersed in the culture (of the brand). Technology has a less prominent role. The challenge for us is ‘how can we incorporate a little bit of this new mobile technology into our brands in a way that’s right for us?’ “

As Mr. Stratter further elaborated, “We allowed the brands to be creative in how to use the technology. We put the technology into the hands of the brand teams and that enabled them to visualize, based on what their core values are for their brand and their customers, what the appropriate application of the technology should be. ” They knew, that being able to untether the sales associates from the cash register and empowering them with a device that gives them information from across the enterprise and gives them the ability to service the customer anywhere in the store, that customers would respond to that.

Mr. Stratter cited examples: Anthropologie wants to be able to provide check-out in as many places as possible in the store, especially during a Personal Shopping experience. Said Joe, “when a customer engages in a Personal Shopping experience at Anthropologie the experience should be consistent throughout; including check-out. ” “Whether a customer completes her experience in the fitting room, at a jewelry case, or anywhere on the sales floor the experience should be personal. ” Mobile POS enables that experience. Urban Outfitters is taking a slightly different approach and is applying the technology to expand the brand to physical places beyond the four walls of the store, for example, a sidewalk sale. “In Ann Arbor, Michigan, at our University of Michigan store, there’s an annual arts festival in July “, explained Joe. “It’s a large street festival, and the store experiences peak volume for a very short period. So what we needed to do was to deploy mobile devices. The store used those devices non-stop, and the reaction was just huge. Without those devices, we would not have been able to handle the volume. “

Extending the Brand

Urban Outfitters doesn’t plan to stop at sidewalk sales. The retailer sees an opportunity to extend the brand beyond the four walls by deploying a mobile store at colleges, concerts, fairs, etc., and using mobile POS to transact the business over a cellular link that connects back to a host store. The concept is already in practice with an Anthropologie store. Explained Joe, “every year outside of Philadelphia, there’s a big horse show, and every single year the store has set up a pop-up at the horse show. There’s a 4G hotspot out there, so this year we said ‘here’s the VPN connection back to the store, here’s your mobile devices, and you’re ready to go. “

Many retailers think of mobile POS as a way to reduce register counts in the store to save money, but Urban Outfitters thinks there’s more value in extending the brand wherever the customer wants it to be. For example, Terrain is a home & garden lifestyle store, currently with only one location. Part of that store is a several-acre large outdoor garden area. It’s simply not practical to extend traditional registers across the whole area, but the company’s mobile POS can be used throughout, to service the customer where she is. Citing another example, the retailer explained how the company’s bridal concept store, BHLDN, will incorporate Mobile POS into their experience: “while the customer is in the consultation room, they will be able to complete the transaction right then and there with the mother and the bride. We want to create a very personal experience. Completing the transaction itself isn’t game changing – it’s how you incorporate it into the total brand experience that is. “

Near-term ROI, Long-term Strategic Value

While extending the value of the brand in new ways is important to create game changing value, the retailer is cognizant of the need to generate value quickly with this (and any) new technology, and fortunately there’s a use-case that should do just that. The company is integrating its new order management system into the Mobile POS experience throughout the Urban Outfitters brand, so that sales associates can create orders for in-store items that are out-of-stock. The capability enables to associate to see available inventory anywhere in the chain, and trigger a direct-to-customer fulfillment.

Ultimately, the retailer believes that the mobile offering must support and enhance the Brand’s value. “For us, technology should not be too much of the brand “, explained Stratter. But it does create the opportunity to deliver that Brand value in new and compelling ways.