Retailers get Fresh

“It’s a variety show of new technology.” That’s how Fred Brown describes the Fresh program at RetailVision. Brown, one of four partners with the IT consulting firm The Sightline Group, came up with idea for Fresh a year ago when he was approached about leading a panel on emerging technology at RetailVision Spring 2008. Brown had a better idea. “We need to be cutting edge,” Brown responded.

With that burst of inspiration, Fresh was born at RetailVision as a platform for companies with emerging technologies trying to reach the consumer market. Two RetailVisions later, Fresh has become a bona fide hit. “Retailers have come up to us and said what they’re really looking for is emerging technologies,” Brown said. “It’s great to see existing Vendors and existing programs, but to really try and get a sneak peek at what’s coming soon to the marketplace is one of the key reasons they attend the event and leave their office.”

Brown and his equally energetic Sightline Group colleague Ray Ribidoux are the dynamic onstage duo of the emerging retail channel, dazzling crowds of Retailers by bringing new products to light at RetailVision in a fun way. Their packed Fresh segments blend fast-paced, gee-whiz demonstrations of emerging technology with probing questions that Retailers in the audience would want to ask. Each Vendor gets 3 or 4 minutes on stage – and no PowerPoint slides. In Brown’s view, that’s more than enough time. Retailers “can tell in 3 or 4 minutes, ‘I want to talk to that company.’” Interested Retailers can follow up with Fresh Vendors in the reFreshingly laid-back Fresh Café, where both parties can “have an adult conversation” about partnership opportunities.

Format aside, Brown is quick to credit the quality of the new technology on display at RetailVision as the reason why Fresh has been such a hit with Retailers. He compares it to a frame and a painting: “The frame, which is important, is the format, but the painting is the technology. The art has to be there or the frame doesn’t do any good.”

When Brown and Ribidoux aren’t on stage, they’re working with RetailVision staff, Venture Capitalists and applicants to their Freshnewtechnology.com website to identify candidates for the next Fresh program at RetailVision. Brown said all companies that appear on stage must have “compelling new technology” that passes muster with the Fresh Selection Committee, and only a small fraction of products make the final cut. While some larger companies present new technologies as part of Fresh, Brown said that “naturally some of the new, unique products that come out are usually [from] startup ventures."

With several new Vendors already signed for RetailVision Spring 2009, Fresh is anything but stale. The program is also debuting at Everything Channel’s XChange Tech Innovators event later this month, thus extending its energy and reach beyond RetailVision. By partnering with RetailVision, the Sightline Group’s Fresh program adds an element of innovation to RetailVision’s winning formula of peer-to-peer networking and Private Boardroom Presentations.

Fresh is also fun. As Brown put it, the rapid-fire Fresh format “was created out of the necessity to not be boring.” Most retailers would agree: Mission accomplished.