Introduction

What’s the Story?

The Coresight Research team will attend and participate in this year’s Shoptalk conference, which will be held on March 27–30, 2022, in Las Vegas, US. Shoptalk 2022 will address the sudden transformation in the retail environment since the outbreak of Covid-19, as the industry is looking to embrace technology and innovation to address new challenges.

On March 27, 2022, Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, will emcee and feature on the judging panel of Shoptalk 2022’s “Shark Reef” startup pitch competition, which will see 15 early-stage US retail-technology innovators compete to win the Shark’s Choice and Audience Choice awards. In the lead-up to the event, we are profiling the participating innovators.

This report forms part of our Innovator Profile series, which focuses on emerging technologies that are disrupting traditional retail and fuelling innovation across the retail value chain. We present Endear, a CRM and messaging platform for retailers. Coresight Research collaborated with Endear to offer insights into its service capabilities and offerings.

Why It Matters

Coresight Research categorizes the 15 participating innovators into four areas of disruption in retail. Endear falls under “consumer experience and client relationship management.” As consumers interact with brands and retailers across more channels—both online and offline—in a post-pandemic world, they will gravitate toward those that provide a richer, more engaging shopping journey. Retail-technology companies are helping retailers by creating seamless channels of communication, integrating digital infrastructures, and simplifying online shopping, with the aim of better managing their relationships with their clients and enhancing the overall consumer experience.

Endear: In Detail

Headquarters

New York, New York, US

Funding Stage

Seed stage

Total funding amount: $3.1 million

Company Description

Founded in 2016, Endear is a retail-technology company that provides a customer relationship management (CRM), data analytics and messaging platform aimed specifically at retail servicing. It helps retailers to enhance customer relationships and increase sales conversions. The company claims to facilitate the transformation of traditional store associates into digital marketers with access to a full suite of clienteling tools that enable them to enrich an omnichannel CRM platform.

Endear’s platform allows associates to contact customers from anywhere and communicate with them via multiple methods. Messages can be personalized to include specific branding content or product recommendations based on a customer’s order history and interests. Endear also allows retailers to track in-store and online sales via sales reports and data insights into a team’s effectiveness in executing the sales process.  

What Problem Is the Company Solving?

With omnichannel retail popular among consumers, many retailers are facing challenges in managing simultaneous communication with customers across physical and digital channels. Problems include keeping up with lead pipelines, tracking associate sales performances across different channels and ensuring timely responses to customer requests to keep up superior client relationship standards. Overseeing, managing and tracking important store analytics and metrics for numerous stores across different channels can also be challenging, meaning that retailers struggle to pinpoint effective strategies to enhance sales conversions.

Endear’s CRM platform enables retailers to effectively manage their stores and communicate with their customers across digital and physical channels from one platform. The solution [MJ1] allows associates to communicate with customers via email, text and messaging application WhatsApp with the option to add personalized product recommendations and promotions to messages based on customer buying patterns.

Retailers can use the platform’s dashboard to analyze sales metrics and conversion rates across their different teams and channels to examine their current system and identify effective strategies. Having all these features on one platform allows brands and retailers to be more organized in the delivery of high-quality customer experiences.

Market Opportunity

As innovative technologies such as augmented reality (AR) and cloud computing bolster social commerce and digital shopping, retail will no longer simply be divided between online and offline experiences. Coresight Research [PK2] estimates that e-commerce sales will comprise 24.2% of total retail sales in 2026, up from 18.0% in 2021, indicating that consumers will continue to interact with both physical and digital channels going forward.

We expect retailers to look to effective CRM management solutions that enable them to efficiently manage their omnichannel customer relationships and drive sales conversions. The global CRM software market is set to reach about $73 billion in 2022 and grow to $116 billion in 2026, representing a CAGR of 12.3% during that period, according to Statista.[SH3] [PK4] 

As emerging technologies make sales metrics more transparent and accessible, retailers may also explore more advanced statistical modeling to help inform their future strategies. The global retail analytics market is set to grow from $5.8 billion in 2021 to $18.3 billion in 2028 at a CAGR of 17.7% during the forecast period, according to estimates by India-based market research firm Fortune Business Insights.

What We Think

We expect consumers to continue to adopt omnichannel retail, leaving retailers to manage larger and more diverse channels of communication. To deliver high-quality customer service across channels and optimize sales, retailers should look to CRM and data analytics platforms with innovative solutions for maintaining customer relationships and implementing data-driven  sales strategies.