ALIEXPRESS

AliExpress Plaza Gran Via II, an electronics store based in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Spain, has chosen SOLUM to digitize their one-in-a-kind outlet – with a mission to bridge the gap between their already established online presence and emerging offline retail market.

Requirements

On the 25th of August 2019, AliExpress, a subsidiary of Alibaba Group, launched its first physical store in Madrid, Spain. After the United States and Russia, Spain is considered AliExpress' third largest overseas market and its gateway to Europe. Thousands of people attended the company's initial store opening, which was deemed a huge success. Alibaba, AliExpress' parent business, is the largest retailer and e-commerce corporation in the world.

Alibaba's internet-powered supermarket chain Hema was outfitted with cloud-driven SOLUM ESL tags in 2019. In the eyes of Alibaba's founder and CEO, Jack Ma, Hema best represents what "new retail" looks like. Hema, which is typically found in residential districts throughout major Chinese cities, provides a shopping app with extended functionality that, when closely integrated with SOLUM's smart ESLs, enables levels of online-offline retail integration never seen before. So, when Alibaba decided to open multiple physical locations in Spain, they naturally turned to SOLUM's Spanish partner ASTS for assistance.

Results

With SOLUM ESL, AliExpress Plaza Gran Via II was able to leverage features that otherwise not available in traditional signages, such as dynamic pricing which now allows them to change their products in the store based on various defined events such as online price changes.

Customers can also use their smartphones to get more information about specific products by scanning the QR-code displayed on the ESL or connecting to it via NFC. This will automatically redirect them to a specific product webpage or launch the company's mobile app. Furthermore, Solum ESLs can display up to 7 pages, which can be used to display localized multilingual content, for example. Meanwhile, the free built-in NFC allows for mobile payments with self-checkout, and customers can even order home delivery via the app.