Innovation Challenges

How might we leverage advanced technologies (E.g. AI/ML, Large Language Models (LLMs), data analytics, DNA testing and image processing) to create personalised health supplement recommendations tailored to individual conditions, wellness goals, and lifestyle, thereby enhancing the effectiveness, customer satisfaction, and overall relevance of our product offerings?

Modern consumers desire personalised health solutions tailored to their individual needs and lifestyles. However, Avance’s current product-by-product approach falls short of meeting this demand, lacking the convenience and customisation expected by customers.

Therefore, we are looking for solutions utilising advanced technologies (E.g. AI/ML, Large Language Models (LLMs), data analytics, DNA testing and image processing) that enable tailored recommendations of our products for our customers, based on their unique health preferences.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

• The solution should have the following basic features:
  1. Ability to collect and store health data from external devices and user input.
  2. Advanced algorithms capable of processing diverse data inputs to provide personalised supplement recommendations.
  3. Compliance with data protection regulations.
  4. Compatibility with web browsers on Android and iOS platforms through responsive design.
  5. An intuitive and user-friendly interface.
  6. Data integration with Best World’s in-house membership management system.
  7. Data integration with other external data sources (E.g. Best World’s existing customer insights, wearable fitness devices, questionnaires, data from health analysis technologies etc.).
  8. Multiple language support (including English and Chinese) with the potential to integrate more languages in the future.
  9. Highly accurate health condition assessment.

Performance Requirements:

• We target the solution to enable an increase in the total number of leads generated and new customers.
• We target the solution to increase online sales and revenue by at least 5%.
• We are looking for a potential ROI within 2 years after implementation of the solution.
  

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How can we leverage disruptive technologies, such as Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) for more efficient decision-making on key criteria and design of store expansion (E.g. location, store type, store layout etc.)?

As a leading global brand, Coach seeks to expand its retail operations efficiently across various markets. Since store expansion is one of our biggest investments, we need to make the right decision on the location and visual of new stores to maximise returns. Currently, store expansion decisions are made by triangulating diverse data sources. These decisions are often made 12-18 months in advance, and goal is to maximize better short-term and long-term planning.

How might we develop a sustainable packaging solution that protects our products against moisture and transit damage?

Commune currently packs our products using paper-based packaging cartons and materials like styrofoam and honeycomb cardboard. Unfortunately, these packaging materials may not protect our products from moisture damage. We incur an average loss of approximately S$20,000 per year from moisture damage. For moisture-absorbent materials like oak, the damage is considerably higher in the range of S$50,000 to S$60,000. Moisture damage is particularly prevalent during rainy seasons.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

• The solution should be made of recycled materials or be easily recyclable.
• The solution should protect against moisture for a minimum of 3 months, and a maximum of 2 years.
• The solution should be in line with the ISTA 3A Protocol (Durable enough to withstand a global logistics supply chain for a duration of 2 to 3 months under different conditions and environments).
• The solution should be easy to unpack.
• The solution should facilitate a cost-effective and easy implementation across various production sites with minimal capital expenditure.
  

Performance Requirements:

• The solution should be priced comparably to the current packaging we use. Presently, our packaging accounts for about 10% of the total material cost of the product (excluding labour).

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How might we transform in-store experiences with cutting-edge, social digital innovations to boost community engagement and drive retail growth?

As a leading global sports retailer, Decathlon aims to provide the best immersive in-store experience to encourage repeat visits and purchases. We seek novel in-store digital experiences that are social in nature to allow customers to: 1) interact with and experience, 2) learn about, and 3) share our products digitally.

What We Are Looking For

• The solution should have the following basic features:
  1. Ability to integrate with our in-house membership programme.
  2. The solution should fit within a 5m2 space and have a maximum height of up to 2 meters.
  3. Ideally, the solution should be applicable across multiple sports categories. This includes categories with bulky items (E.g. cycling) and smaller items (E.g. running or weight lifting).
  4. The solution should require minimum to no support from our sales support staff.
  5. The solution should be sustainable and contribute to the circular economy.
  6. The solution should immediately demonstrate its effectiveness clearly and concisely.
  7. The solution should be easy to understand and operate. It must work in the context of a Decathlon Store; a loved brand that is multi-sport and accessible.

• We target for the solution to enable an increase in conversion rate of at least 5%.
• We target for the solution to allow an increase of quantity (number of items) sold per customer by at least 10%.

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How might we develop an immersive software that converts customers’ uploaded floor plans into 3D images projected in our in-store physical 3D LED Cave, allowing customers to immersively walk through their new homes and experience the virtual appliances, furniture and fittings?

Gain City welcomes potential customers to come to our megastore to purchase products like appliances and furniture for their new homes. In our highly competitive industry, few retailers provide one-stop solutions to homeowners. More specifically, new homeowners are a very important market segment with significant purchasing power and a high average transaction value.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

• The solution should have the following basic features:
  1. The ability to upload a 2D floor plan in the system.
  2. The ability to instantly project the floorplan in 3D into an in-store LED Cave.
  3. The ability to customize layout and play around with various appliances, furniture and other SKU’s including customization of variables such as colour and composition.
  4. The ability to physically print out the visualization once the customer is satisfied.
• The solution should be able to integrate with our warehouse management system, including all our SKU’s.
• The solution should be able to integrate with our ERP system (Microsoft Business Central).

• We target the solution to enable an increase in our conversion rate. Currently our conversion rate stands at approximately 60%.
• We target for the solution to increase new homeowners group buy turnout by 3X.
• We are looking for a potential ROI within 2 years after implementation of the solution.

How might we develop an online end-to-end system that utilises AI to instantly generate and suggest floor plans visualising what our furniture looks like within our customers’ homes?

HomesToLife is a home furnishing brand selling a range of furniture from sofas to dining tables. We are looking for an end-to-end 3D visualisation system to speed up the furniture customisation process, thus shortening sales cycles and increasing conversion.

Customers make purchasing decisions based on different factors, including price, furniture aesthetics, and (primarily) space constraints. This causes delays in their purchasing decision.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

• The solution should be able to integrate with our Sage CRM system to automatically populate the floor plan based on the quotation and specific piece of furniture the customer has selected.
• The solution needs to be integrated into the HomesToLife website as a login member-only feature (accessible after logging in).
• The solution should be deployable via laptop.
• The solution should include a login and account function.
• The solution should enable customers to upload floor plans or photos of their homes.
• The solution should be fully integrated with the HomesToLife database of furniture (CAD-drawings can be made available).
• The solution should automatically configure possible layouts using generative AI, giving customers 3 different options for what the furniture would like inside their homes.
• The solution should also allow for manual configuration too so that our sales team can edit the configuration if needed.
• The solution should be integrated with our quotation system so automatic quotations can be provided.
• We are open for integrations with open-source LLMs for image generation, prompting and questioning.
• We are looking for integration with an AI assistant that can guide the customers by providing feedback (on material and style choices, discounts etc.) throughout the process.

• The solution should enable an increase to the overall number of quotations by about 20%.
• The solution should increase our conversion rates by at least 10% (from 80% currently, to 90%).

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How might we create novel retail experiences to improve our brands’ visibility, the customers’ engagement and experience in a crowded airport retail environment to ultimately lead to increased conversion and higher sales?

Rémy Cointreau operates many Global Travel Retail (GTR) stores, notably in places like airports. In these competitive retail environments where many brands are represented, meeting retailers’ expectations for brand exposure, including brand space, visibility and presentation can be very challenging. Many brands are displayed on standard wall bays, gondola fixtures, endcaps or generic shelves with routine Point of Sales Materials (POSM). Moreover, each Retail Service Associate has limited time (on average only 3 minutes) to engage with customers, making it difficult to engage customers to ultimately increase customer conversion.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

• The solution should have the following basic features:
  1. The solution needs to fit into the gondola and wall bays to be used during activations.
  2. The solution needs to fit the following indicative dimensions (in case it is a physical piece):
     • Height: 320 mm
     • Width: 275 mm
     • Base length: 400 mm
• The solution cannot have a short expiry date (at least three months).
• The solution must be sustainable (sustainability is a key strategic focus of the group).
• The solution must be accessible to customers (without support from sales representatives).
• The solution must follow the standard approval requirements of airport retailers.
• The solution should integrate with different pre-existing loyalty programmes (these programmes are brand-specific)

Performance Requirements:

• We target the solution to increase our conversion rate (current average rate at 30%).
• We target the solution to increase the number of items purchased.
• We target the solution to monitor the engagement (e.g. how many customers are engaging with the activation).

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How might we develop a solution, based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and visual content generation, that can efficiently adapt brand retail design for all airport stores and activations?

Rémy Cointreau continuously revamps its brand retail design for airports and activations. Each installation, like pop-up events or permanent fixtures, requires engaging an agency or designer to adapt the design to the specific environment, as every airport differs in layout and features (e.g. gondolas, wall bays etc.). The cost for one adaptation ranges between US$2000 - US$20,000, depending on the size and complexity, with a turnaround time of 2-3 weeks.

We are therefore looking for AI-based solutions to efficiently automate the generation of brand retail designs based on various parameters.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

• The solution should have the following basic features:
  1. The ability to extract the basic info from a technical drawing or HQ guideline and apply it to an actual site (wall bay, gondola, airport pop-up site, etc.).
  2. The ability to reference brand campaign animation toolkit and design adapt to animation space based on vendor pack specifications.
  3. Ease of implementation and use.
  4. Adherence to brand guidelines such as font/colour.
  5. A mobile, handheld device and desktop interface.
  6. Adherence to retailers’ vendor pack (e.g. height restriction, space dimension etc.).
  7. A fully automated design functionality that adapts designs based on the provided input parameters.
• Output formats include: Sketch Up Pro; Autodesk 3D Max; Adobe Illustrator, Adobe Photoshop.
• The system should be deployed on-premise (not on cloud).
• Ideally, we would like to be able to interact with the solution to generate several iterations of design based on our live feedback.
• Ideally, we would like for the system to be integrated with LLM’s to enable prompts for live iterations.

1. We target the solution to reduce the cost per adaptation by as much as possible and for a significant cost decrease (6-7X).
2. We would like to decrease turnaround time from weeks to days.

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How might we develop immersive solutions that elevate Samsonite’s in-store customer experience and interactions with Samsonite’s product and benefits, to boost retail growth?

Samsonite, with 1,080 stores across the APAC and Middle-East region, believes that our current in-store customer experience has to be more appealing to encourage our customers to make more high-value purchases in-store.

As such, we are aiming to improve our in-store experience to drive more transactions and boost earnings per transaction, ultimately increasing our monthly sales by an additional 5%.

What We Are Looking For

Technical Requirements:

• The solution should fit in our various stores (Sizes range between 30 to 200 square meters).
• The solution can be integrated with various Samsonite in-house software systems, including (but not limited to):
  1. Customer loyalty programme (Samsonite Friends).
  2. EPOS system.
• The experience should be standardised across the various stores.
• The solution should ideally allow for Online to Offline (O2O) integration.

• We target for the solution to enable an increase in our monthly sales by an additional 5%.
• We are looking for solutions with an ROI of 2 to 3 years.

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Wild card submissions will be evaluated alongside other entries, and would stand a chance to win up to $20,000 in grants* and opportunities to showcase your innovative ideas!

* Eligibility criterias need to be met. For more information, visit FAQ.

Awarded innovator will receive support and collaboration opportunities.