River Island adds AI tech from Nextail, co claims it can boost sales by 10%

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Apr 16, 2019

Fashion retail chain River island is rolling out technology from Spain’s Nextail to its 343 stores in the UK Ireland, Asia, the Middle East and Europe as it works to to boost sales and increase margins. It will also use the artificial intelligence-based product to keep stock levels under control and enhance the customer experience by making sure it holds the right amount of stock at each of its stores at any point in time.

The company said the tech will give it “a powerful forecasting and decision-making tool to facilitate its decisions at both SKU and store level.” 

Nextail claims an average rise in sales of between 5% and 10% for companies using its product, as well as a 30% reduction of in-store stock levels and a 60% reduction in stockouts.

River Island has been diving deep into technology in recent years and this new artificial intelligence solution comes at a time when many fashion retailers are battling with overstocking and struggling with the shift in shopping habits. 

The new tech should help it react more quickly to changes in demand and Nextail said its product works particularly well for fast-fashion stores that have a high volume of new products arriving weekly. 

River Island CIO Doug Gardner, who has been behind the chain’s tech drive, said that “the main return on investment of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and automation is not about cost savings [but] is more about enabling River Island to be an agile organisation that is able to adapt rapidly.”