METRO GROUP and real,- open the store of the future

 The retailing company is confident that the real,- Future Store will provide renewed impetus for innovation throughout the retail sector. Its cuttingedge technologies and innovative shopping concepts provide customers with greater convenience and more information as well as a broader and more enjoyable shopping experience.

 At the real,- Future Store, METRO GROUP is testing groundbreaking technologies and innovative concepts for the retail of tomorrow. The company’s aim: to tailor product ranges and services to perfectly match the needs of consumers. "The concepts and technologies that prove successful here in Toenisvorst will be introduced successively at stores belonging to our sales brands," says Dr. Eckhard Cordes, Chairman of the Management Board of METRO GROUP. "Consequently, the real,- Future Store is strategically important for the future development of the entire group."

 One of the most important innovations at the real,- Future Store is the Mobile Shopping Assistant (MSA). This is an application for mobile phones which allows customers to scan in their purchases while shopping. The MSA will make long queues at the checkout a thing of the past. "Almost every consumer these days owns a mobile phone and uses it as a matter of course," argues Dr. Cordes. "Today’s high-performance mobile phones are ideally suited for mobile shopping." The MSA was developed in collaboration with Deutsche Telekom. Customers can use the device to find specific products in the store or to call up product information. "Thanks to mobile Internet access, a cell phone can be transformed into an extremely useful personal shopping assistant," says René Obermann, Chairman of Deutsche Telekom AG.

 Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) also has a key role to play at the real,- Future Store. The automatic product recognition technology is an intrinsic part of the store’s quality assurance system for meat products prepared in the in-house butchery. These are fitted with Smart Chips and displayed in the Smart Freezer, which monitors stock levels and the best-before dates on all the items. Every time a customer removes a product, integrated RFID readers register this automatically. This makes it possible to plan the inhouse production of fresh meat products extremely precisely and significantly contributes toward the ongoing optimization of quality assurance processes.

 The real,- Future Store is also testing a range of new solutions for providing customers with helpful information. In the newly designed "beauty & more" department, various terminals provide customers with beauty tips and tricks. At the interactive skin care Information Terminal, for example, customers can find out exactly which skin type they have and can call up corresponding expert beauty and care advice.

 An innovative wine tasting concept is also being tested in the store’s wine department. The wine tasting counter offers a range of 16 chilled wines that can be dispensed hygienically into testing cups at the push of a button. This provides customers with the chance of testing selected wines at a constant high quality before making their purchase.

 These, and many other innovations, are presented to customers by the store’s innovation guides. These two robots talk to customers and, on request, show them the store’s cutting-edge technologies and novel concepts. Each of the innovation guides is equipped with a swiveling head and sensors which allow it to find its way around the hypermarket of tomorrow. They also provide customers with helpful answers to questions that can be entered via their integrated touchscreens.

 Even greater convenience is provided by the state-of-the-art payment options, for instance the new Pay by Fingerprint system. Customers merely need to place their finger onto a specially developed fingerprint scanner to pay for their purchases – without the need for any signature or PIN. Modern encryption algorithms make this an extremely secure method of payment.

 The real,- Future Store is making a fundamental contribution to the sales brand’s strategic realignment. real,- has initiated an extensive turnaround program which will significantly improve the brand’s attractiveness to customers. "At Toenisvorst, for example, we’ve implemented our very latest concepts for meats, fresh fish and cheese. These are product groups that we would like to see performing even better on the market," explains Joёl Saveuse, Member of the Management Board of METRO GROUP and CEO of real,-. "Innovations and concepts that prove successful at the real,- Future Store will be introduced at other real,- hypermarkets. Our new concepts for both foods and nonfoods are a direct reaction to the significant developments over recent years in what our customers expect from a modern shopping experience," he continues.

 At the real,- Future Store, METRO GROUP is continuing a success story that began back in 2003 with the first Future Store in Rheinberg near Duesseldorf. Today, METRO GROUP is already using many of the technologies that were tested there in stores belonging to its own sales brands. These include innovations such as the Smart Scales that automatically identify fruit and vegetables, and Self-Checkouts where customers have the option of carrying out the entire checkout process themselves.

 
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 Antonia Voerste
Head of Corporate Communications
METRO GROUP Future Store Initiative
Metro-Strasse 12
40235 Duesseldorf
Phone: +49 211 6886 2869
Fax: +49 211 6886 2000
E-mail:  voerste@metro.de

 Albrecht von Truchseß
Head of Corporate Communications
real,- SB-Warenhaus GmbH
Reyerhuette 51
41065 Moenchengladbach
Phone: +49 2161 403 880
Fax: +49 2161 403 222
E-mail:  truchsess@real.de