The second annual Ispo Digitize Summit, scheduled for July 3 and 4 at the International Congress Center (ICM) in Munich, will focus on Data Analytics & Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Digital Talents & Recruiting, Change Management & Digital Culture and Digital Infrastructure. It will also cover eSports, which is regarded as providing a high potential of development for brands and retailers.
Speakers will give an outlook on visions and trends in their lectures, and experts will use case studies to show how digitization can be implemented. The roster of confirmed speakers includes Carsten Keller, vice president of direct to consumer operations at Zalando, who is responsible for the integration of brick-and-mortar retail into the company's online platform. The other speakers will be Matthias Schulte, chief executive of Tradebyte Software; Susanne Franz, global marketing communication director of SEAT; Hartmut Wimmer, founder and CEO of a digital solution provider, Outdooractive; and Stefan Herzog, the former general manager of SportScheck who runs the German sporting goods retailers' association, VDS.
The participants in the summit will also gain practical experience in workshops and in a hands-on “Experience Area” where existing services and solutions will be presented by companies like Color Digital, ECD, MobiMedia, Redpoint Solutions, Shopware and The Walt Disney Company.
Messe München has already placed a strong emphasis on digital transformation in the Ispo Digitize areas at the Ispo shows in Munich and Shanghai since the beginning of last year. It held a well-attended first Ispo Digitize Summit last June, after presenting its new OutDoor by Ispo show concept.
This year, the Ispo Digitize Summit will slightly overlap with the first OutDoor by Ispo trade show, which will take place on the other side of the Munich fairgrounds from June 30 through July 3. Applications for the new event have been more numerous than originally planned, with more than 950 exhibitors due to be hosted in nine halls (more on this in our Outdoor Industry Compass).
Messe München is offering discounted online tickets for the Ispo Digitize Summit until May 28. The organizers feel that digitalization can be a valuable component of a future-oriented reorientation for sports retailers. Making the right choices in this domain can significantly shorten the time spent on long experiments with a large variety of ways to respond to new buyer expectations, while bridging digital and physical shopping experiences, satisfying today's typical omni-channel shopper and better managing back-office processes.
For vendors too, who are investing more and more in direct-to-consumer retailing, digitalization can also produce an optimization of the supply chain, which is a critical element of competitiveness and is all too often far from digitized enough. Changing consumer behavior, which often demands a personalized shopping experience, means that data-driven optimization, speed, time and transparency are becoming more crucial than ever.
