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Future Store: Starting Out on the Future of Retailing

28.04.2003

Future Store: Starting Out on the Future of Retailing

Rheinberg, Germany, April 28, 2003 – METRO Group has opened its first ever Future Store in Rheinberg near Duisburg/Germany. The remodeled convenience store of METRO Group’s Extra sales division is a novelty. To date, worldwide retailing can offer only individual applications of new technologies or isolated systems. The Extra Future Store in Rheinberg combines a complex and innovative interplay of these applications for the first time.
The store uses wireless devices, an intelligent scale to automatically identify and weigh fruit and vegetables, electronic shelf labeling and other shopping aids such as an automatic self check-out machine and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). In a modern merchandizing atmosphere, future technologies for tomorrow’s retail trade will be tested and further developed under real conditions. The focus is on the needs of the customers.

The Future Store is the first project within the METRO Group Future Store Initiative. The partners in the initiative include METRO Group, the world’s fifth-largest retailer; Intel, the world’s largest microprocessor manufacturer; SAP, the world’s leading provider of business software solutions; as well as other companies from the IT and consumer goods industries.

"The METRO Group Future Store Initiative demonstrates our company’s leadership role in driving innovations in retail. It also signals our confidence in Germany as a suitable business location for the latest technologies and the development of sustainable future visions," said Dr. Hans-Joachim Körber, Chairman and CEO of METRO Group, during the opening of the Future Store. "The use of state-of-the-art technologies at all stages of the value-added chain is an important building block in the consistent optimization of our merchandizing concepts."

The center stage in the Extra Future Store is taken by technologies that will considerably shape retailing in the next five to ten years. They include Radio Frequency Identification as the basis technology for the electronic control of inventory management. RFID allows data to be read from computer chips that are equipped with a small antenna without line-of-sight requirements. Goods with RFID labels can be localized throughout the logistics chain at any time – from production and transportation through to the point of sale.

"From the beginning, one of our main goals for this project was to prove in a real world shopping environment how cutting-edge technology enables innovative business processes," says Dr. Peter Zencke, member of the SAP Executive Board. "The Future Store is a clear example that technology can be a driving force behind business – it impacts manufacturers and retailers as well as the customer. Together with our partners we see this technology as an opportunity to enter a new era of cooperation in the retail and consumer products industries, an era that is now tangible with this unique project."

John Davies, Vice President of Intel’s Solutions Market Development Group, adds: "Intel architecture and communications products help form the foundation of the Future Store project. This provides the compute power necessary to track and process the massive amount of real-time consumer and inventory data generated by RFID and the Electronic Product Code standard. The net result will be tremendous efficiency and visibility across the retail supply chain as well as an enhanced consumer experience."

"The METRO Group Future Store Initiative is a future lab that is unprecedented worldwide. Almost 40 companies from different industries are joining forces to develop the shopping experience of the future," says Zygmunt Mierdorf, Member of the Management Board of METRO Group. "The new technologies will benefit both the customers and the industry: Customer satisfaction will rise because goods will be more readily available, the service is becoming more individualized and shopping more convenient. At the same time, this will boost our sales in retailing. In addition, we are able to lower our costs because our processes are becoming more efficient."

The opening of the Extra Future Store in Rheinberg was attended by numerous guests from government, industry and society, among them Harald Schartau, Minister of Trade and Commerce in the German state North Rhine-Westphalia. The first customer of the Future Store was Rheinberg-born Claudia Schiffer. In the first official appointment after her parental leave, the top model said: "I am happy to fire the starting shot for a real novelty. Shopping will become really exciting!"

Further information can be found on the Internet at www.future-store.org

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