Retailers are leaning into the circular economy to align with consumers’ desires for sustainable living. Recent global consumer research finds that 60% of consumers agree it’s important that retailers’ brand values, such as sustainability and ethically sourced materials, align with their own. As shopping for secondhand and rentable goods becomes increasingly popular, retailers have an opportunity to give customers what they want while making a positive impact on the world.
The global market value of secondhand and resale apparel is rising rapidly and is estimated to reach 218 billion dollars in 2026 (Statista). Retailers seeking to embrace sustainable merchandising practices quickly face a significant challenge – a lack of turnkey systems to support emerging business models. Disparate systems and siloed data stand in the way of making informed decisions to achieve sustainability goals. Oracle is committed to developing practices and products that help protect the environment and address retail sustainability challenges, as evident by its introduction of the Oracle Retail Supplier Evaluation Cloud Service, as well as the development of a new circular retail cloud extension.
Through close collaboration with leading fashion retailers in the United States and Europe, the Oracle Retail Customer Value organization developed a new cloud extension that retailers can swiftly adapt to their core business activities. Oracle’s Circular Retail Cloud Extension helps retailers efficiently adopt new buy back and rental practices and measure the commercial and environmental impact. It consists of two core modules that are deployable independently due to the extensible, flexible architecture of the underlying Oracle Retail platform.
82% of people have or are open to shopping second-hand when disposable income is less. The “Second Hand” app of the Oracle Retail Circular Retail Cloud Extension helps retailers facilitate an efficient process for buying back items, collecting items for recycling, and exposing information to increase supply chain transparency. For example, when a customer brings an item into the store for buy back, the store associate can facilitate a seamless transaction with guidance from embedded machine learning and artificial intelligence. Using a handheld device, the store associate can snap a photo of the item and visual search can identify it, extract attributes, find similar items, and assess its condition.
The rental business model allows retailers to serve their existing customers in new ways and reach new target audiences while extending a garment’s lifespan and injecting newness into customers’ wardrobes. The “Rentals” app of the Oracle Retail Circular Retail Cloud Extension helps retailers manage the rental process, including quotes, item availability, pricing model, returns, customer alerts, and more. The rentals dashboard presents critical KPIs such as the number of active rentals, percentage of expired rentals, the number of rentals going out versus returning, and more.
With Oracle’s Circular Retail Cloud Extension, fashion, apparel, consumer electronics, specialty, and DIY retailers can generate additional revenue and attract new traffic while keeping goods in the economy and out of landfills longer than under traditional models.
“There are operational benefits that come along with caring about the environment and other people. There is a massive opportunity for retailers not only to satisfy the compliance requirements of sustainability, but also to use sustainability to build better assortments, differentiate the customer experience, and improve brand reputation. A platform, such as Oracle’s, that provides centralized data and visibility, can open the opportunity to retailers to act on sustainability initiatives with speed and scale.”
Jordan Speer
Research Director, IDC Retail Insights
Oracle Retail Circular Retail Cloud Extension integrates with Oracle Retail Xstore Point-of-Service, Oracle Retail Customer Engagement Cloud Services, Oracle Retail Store Inventory Operations Cloud Service, and Oracle Retail Merchandising Foundation Cloud Service and can be easily integrated with other solutions, including non-Oracle applications.
Learn More
View the presentation, “Driving Cloud Adoption and Maximizing Value,” from our annual executive retail forum to learn more about how the Oracle Retail Customer Value team can help you accelerate cloud adoption in support of your sustainability initiatives