Barcelona Retail Lab promotes the digitalization of commerce with Beabloo

The Barcelona Retail Lab project is being carried out with Beabloo, contest winner, through a pilot test in four shops in Cor Eixample: Flores Navarro, Barbés, Crearte Styling and Crois Croissant Gourmet.

Local commerce accelerates its transformation and digitalization through the project BCN Retail Lab, with a pilot test in four reference establishments in Barcelona's Eixample, whose purpose is to improve the customer experience and personalize their communication.

The company in charge of carrying out this project after winning the contest has been Beabloo, technology company that develops solutions to make physical spaces smarter, which has the support of the Barcelona City Council, CorEixample and CTecno.

The local shops chosen by the CorEixample entity for this pilot have been Flores Navarro, iconic florist of the city for more than 65 years; Barrabés Skiing and Mountain, European reference shop specialized in the mountains and the outdoor; Crearte Styling, comprehensive beauty salon, image workshop, hairdressing and aesthetics with organic products, and Crois Croissant Gourmet, Italian-style café.

These businesses meet the following criteria: they have a lot of presence of the surrounding neighborhood and with circulation; work with well-known brands; are premises of proximity services representative of the environment and are significant singular establishments of the history and identity of the neighborhood where it has been possible to experiment with innovation.

In all four cases, the specific needs of each store have been studied and a technological project has been carried out to respond to their digital transformation needs.. Once the first results of the project have been evaluated, its scalability to other businesses will be valued.

Minerva, artificial intelligence at the service of the client and manager

specifically, in Flores Navarro and Crois Croissant Gourmet has been installed Minerva, an artificial intelligence system that manages the different solutions and learns to personalize the customer experience, providing daily forecasts of visits, sales and other indicators to the managers of the establishment.

"All the information provided by Minerva serves as a guide to know what to do at all times in terms of internal business management. It is a very interesting tool because it fulfills the objective of accompanying us, while being able to predict stocks", explains Sylvia Navarro, manager of Flores Navarro.

Another of the installed solutions is Interaction Care, that allows to monitor and regulate the capacity, and thus minimize the interactions of risk of contagion by COVID-19. To this is added the deployment of digital signage with audience analytics to show content adapted to the demographic profile of the client, always respecting your privacy.

In addition, another type of technology deployed in the establishment is responsible for analyzing the journey that customers make inside to optimize the organization of the space and improve the service.

The manager of Crois Croissant, Jacopo Talanta, explains that "the 'customer satisfaction survey'’ attracts the attention of the customer and digital signage is an attractive element to announce more things than we apparently offer in Crois. People ask for more products and services.".

As for Barrabés Skiing and Mountain, for this pilot, a videowall solution has been installed that allows workers to access the characteristics of a product from different points of the store without having to travel, as well as interactive digital signage that unites the online and offline universe of this establishment.

"The heat maps help us interpret which areas of the store customers spend the most in and how long they are at each point. It provides us with very useful information to know in which spaces it will be more effective to place the product we offer -says Juan Carlos Gómez, manager of Barrabés-." Every day we obtain this data and work with it, so we can know which campaigns and promotions are working best.".

They have also been implemented QR codes in the customer satisfaction measurement system, through which customers can give their opinion on the shopping experience in the store and that is reflected in the main online search engine.

In Crearte Styling, in addition to digital signage integrated into the furniture and audience analysis and capacity control systems, has been installed Lift technology&Learn, that allows to quickly verify the information of a product through a interactive shelving.

In this establishment they also have a system of collection of customer satisfaction, as well as interactive devices in waiting areas.

Guillermo Garcia, co-owner of Crearte Styling, ensures that the installation of Beabloo solutions is already yielding results: “from the first moment, the assessment and reception of customers has been very positive. The screens are impressive and the customer is attracted by. Interaction starts from the waiting room, where the screens offer personalized advice and in the end we can see that the degree of satisfaction is very positive".

According to Jaume Portell, CEO and co-founder of Beabloo, “with this project we have the objective of connecting traditional establishments to the digital world and start this technological transformation towards smart shops".

Beabloo has already deployed digital transformation initiatives in commercial spaces in Europe, United States, Latam and the Middle East for the creation of personalized shopping experience.

Digital Commerce Network

The forecast is that the BCN Retail Lab project will expand towards the 164 surrounding shops with the aim of reaching one million people. currently, the Catalan capital has 25.000 Associated to commercial axes, and therefore the forecast is to scale it to other districts of Barcelona and transform the traditional commerce of the city.

Another objective is to have the interconnection and cross-promotions between shops deploying a new form of digital commerce network in the Eixample district.

It will be in the month of July when the economic impact of the installation of these digital solutions in shops will be assessed and the results in the experiences of customers will be analyzed.

Other articles on Barcelona City Council, Barcelona Retail Lab, Barrabés Skiing and Mountain, Beabloo, CorEixample, Crearte Styling, Crois Croissant Gourmet, Flores Navarro