SandStar Shares Tips at a Retail Industry Forum Celebrating the Opening of the EY Wavespace™ Flagship Center in Beijing
This month, SandStar CEO Yili Wu was invited to an innovation forum of the retail industry at a corporate digital transformation summit celebrating the opening of the EY wavespace™ flagship center in Beijing.
CHARLOTTE, N.C., April 30, 2021 (Newswire.com) - Artificial Intelligence (AI) is an important driver for a new round of global technological revolution and industrial transformation, and the value of retail digitization is being recognized by more and more retailers. SandStar has advanced digital technologies for retail and a lot of implementation experience. This was exactly what CEO Wu shared with other panelists at the retail innovation forum of EY wavespace™.
For major retailers, data collection at retail outlets is crucial. Many international beverage and snack brands once faced the same pains in operations: when expanding the sales channels for their products, they could only get the data about the purchases made by their distributors, but couldn't know how the performance of their products was at the retail outlets at all: were there interactions between consumers and their products on shelves? Was their product display enough to catch consumers' attention? What types of consumers were buying their products? Such data can provide a huge help for brands in business decision making about how to optimize products and how to expand channels, etc.
With the help of the computer vision technology, SandStar was able to overcome the limitation in the past that the operators could only obtain very little valid data. Now things like the number of customers entering a store, how they take items from shelves, and the efficiency of cashiers all can be intuitively displayed as tables of data in addition to analysis and operational advice. The operators will be able to assess the outcomes of their selection, display, and restocking strategies based on consumer behaviors more clearly, so as to adjust and optimize them. Currently, over 20 Fortune 500 companies are using the products and solutions of SandStar in more than 12 countries and regions around the world.
According to Wu, as a 5-year-old technology company focusing on empowering retail with AI, SandStar stays true to its beliefs, aiming to build a bridge connecting technology and business, and to create value for customers with technology. Over the past 5 years, SandStar has spent more than 80 million dollars on technology development. Its solutions including the AI vending machine, the pure vision unmanned store, and the smart store analytics have been iterated several times, and their performance, functionality and design are constantly being improved and optimized.
"AI shouldn't be just a gimmick, and ROI is the thing that we should focus on the most," said Wu. SandStar's AI vending machine can reduce the restocking cost by 40% for clients, whereas its smart store analytics solution can increase sales by at least 20% for them. This is because SandStar wanted to focus on using computer vision technology to help clients make physical retail digital at the very beginning, to be the "eye" and "brain" for retail customers.
The forum that SandStar was invited to attend was the first one of the industry-specific forums at the opening ceremony of the EY wavespace™ flagship center in Beijing and its corporate digital transformation summit. The EY wavespace™ is a global innovation network of wavespace™ centers in more than 40 of the most dynamic and innovative urban areas around the world. They can integrate digital innovation and transformation solutions for various types of businesses across regions. SandStar is thankful to EY and all the panelists for their support. SandStar hopes that, with its help, more and more retailers from various parts of the world will be able to achieve efficient operations, sales growth, and brilliant results in the future.
Source: SandStar
