Aurora Launches UK’s 1st Retail iPad POS Mobile Ordering System3 min read

Aurora Fashions is the owner, developer, and manager of well-known international “high-street” (i.e., high-end) women’s fashion brands Coast, Oasis, and Warehouse (its Karen Miller brand was spun off as an independent company last March). It operates over 1278 stores across 33 countries and employs 6,900 people worldwide. The Group has consistently won awards for its retail IT processes and initiatives; its IT team won 9 major awards last year alone, including the Retail Week Technology Award for Oasis’ iPhone app – the world’s first high-street commercial fashion brand iPhone app and the Best E-Commerce Payment Innovation Award, the Retail Systems Award, and the Electronic Point of Sale (EPoS) Initiative of the Year for Oasis brand’s release of the world’s first high-street fashion brand peer-to-peer short message service (SMS) Mobile Gift Voucher technology. Aurora “continues to lead the way in innovative retail technology initiatives,” like its new iPad POS mobile ordering initiative, that positions Aurora “at the forefront of technological development for the high street.”

In August, the award winning, multi-channel, multi-national fashion retailer began trialing an iPad POS mobile ordering system in eight of its stores in London and Oxford (the “trial stores”). The company says that by “embracing the emerging mobile market, Aurora has created a roadmap for the future integration of online and in-store commerce.”

Last month, independent news source Fashion United, a leading business-to-business platform for the fashion industry, spoke with Ish Patel, Aurora’s Director of Group Strategic Development, about the company’s new iPad POS mobile ordering system. Patel said, “The remarkable thing about this new technology has in many ways been the ease and rapid implementation.” Aurora Fashions first met with their wireless network provider and began researching the concept in May. They learned that their customers wanted “the same brand experience across all channels”; that became the key driver. Aurora began trialing the technology in August; within ten weeks, the system was fully integrated into its eight trial stores.

The move brings together the company’s retail, customer access, engagement, and in-store experiences. The iPad POS mobile ordering system enables sales assistants to log onto the brands’ website and warehouse from the store to find information, check product availability, and place orders, and enables customers to take pictures of themselves in different outfits as they try them on, email the photos, and instantly “purchase on the shop floor” using mobile payment methods — an “extended aisle service” that is seen as a line-busting strategy to reduce “queues at the tills” (i.e., “lines at the registers”).

The company had originally planned to integrate a “till system” (i.e., an electronic cash drawer) with the iPad, but realized that letting their customers pay directly from the iPad POS mobile ordering system was far superior. “It’s integrated into the sales channel,” says Patel, “by moving the focus away from the till towards the fitting room area.”

Eliminating the need to focus on the cash register, has forced the Group to re-evaluate “store design and layout” and take a hard look at other areas of strengths and weakness and what other functions can be delegated to the iPad POS mobile ordering system. Patel says that two functions under consideration are “reducing technology in store and keeping the amount of printed material down.”

So far, he says, the results have been good. “We’ve taken a very collaborative approach – store managers and staff have been involved in the whole process so the transition has actually been smooth.”

Disclaimer: This is an independent report sourced from one or more news articles and or press releases; none of the company’s, entities or technologies digressed in this report are affiliated with or a client of Open.

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