INDUSTRY FOCUS
AI Driving River Island Stock
Fashion giant River Island has chosen Spanish tech firm Nextail to roll out artificial intelligence (AI) driven forecasting and stock solutions across its store and product network.
The fashion retailer is rolling out Nextail’s technology to 343 stores in the UK, Ireland, Asia the Middle East and Europe and across its womenswear, menswear, kids and homeware ranges.
The move is part of River Island’s IT and data infrastructure overhaul. By taking up Nextail’s prescriptive analytics, River Island is upgrading its forecasting and decision-making tools for replenishment.
The company said it was hoping the machine learning technology would help it to achieve a 30 per cent reduction in in-store stock levels and a five to 10 per cent increase in sales.
River Island also said it was embracing cloud technology for core processes to help overcome the issues of overstocking and changing shopping habits which are disrupting the UK High Street.
Doug Gardner, chief information officer at River Island, who is leading the company’s tech transformation, said: “The main return on investment of cloud computing, artificial intelligence and automation is not about cost savings, it is more about enabling River Island to be an agile organisation that is able to adapt rapidly.”
