Innovation labs key to new products

DX3 CONFERENCE

Prior to the Rio Olympics in 2016, Whitespace engineers ran tests with Canada’s Olympic beach volleyball team in order to design uniforms that would respond well to the athletes’ needs on a scorching South American beach. It used a body scanner to customize the uniforms to each individual athlete and fit the group within a “climate chamber” in order to perfect the sizing, because heat and humidity cause garments to expand. Whitespace is also responsible for developing its fourway stretch “Naked Sensation” soft athletic leggings, a top seller for Lululemon since their introduction in 2015.

Sears Canada opened its lab, Initium, last year in part to spearhead a massive IT overhaul, replacing 20 years of legacy technology an integrated cloud-based system and launch a new online platform to operate the back end of Sears.ca.

“When we are building a technology or process improvement solution, we are solving it for a specific Sears Canada challenge, but we are also solving a challenge that many if not most retailers also have,” said Alex Glinka, head of strategic innovation at Sears Canada. “We are looking at it from the perspective of where we are at now not only in the retail industry, but everywhere, to what is happening in the S&P 500. The cycles of renewal, if you will, are becoming faster and faster.”

Under the stewardship of executive chairman Brandon Stranzl, Sears has been trying to lower costs, simplify its processes and find ways to appeal to customers, but continues to struggle.

In the third quarter ended Oct. 29, the department store more than doubled its net loss and reported a seven per cent drop in same-store sales.

At the time, Stranzl said Sears is “in a process of constant innovation to deliver better products and experiences to customers and thereby drive better business results over time,” despite having “much work to do.”