Four Retailers Win RIS Mobile App of the Year Awards

The highly-anticipated first annual Mobile App of the Year Awards took place today at the 4th annual Retail Technology Conference held at the Ritz Carlton in Orlando, FL. Find out which cutting-edge retailers won the award for their game-changing innovations in mobile retailing.

The retail winners announced at this year's award ceremony include:

Customer Engagement -- Wet Seal
Wet Seal, the $560 million girls and young women's fashion chain with 500 stores, successfully launched the iRunway app, which is the subject of a major story in Apparel magazine this month. iRunway was cited for its user-friendly ability to search and view tens of thousands of outfits created each month by members of the Wet Seal Fashion Community at WetSeal.com. Jon Kubo, CIO, Wet Seal accepted the award for Wet Seal.

Customer Convenience -- Target
Target, the $65 billion mass merchant with more than 1700 stores, gets this year's award for the Target iPhone app which provides a convenient set of mobile tools to help shoppers check out what's in the Weekly Ad or the Gift Finder, find and manage TargetLists or a Gift Registry, search products by convenient categories, present barcode IDs to cashiers, and find and set their store locations using GPS while also checking product availability, aisle location and available services. Kent Hathaway, Senior Group Manager Interactive & Multi-channel Experience, Target accepted the award for customer convenience.

Best Shopping -- 1-800-FLOWERS
1-800-FLOWERS, the all-occasion multi-channel gift giant, for the Mobile Flower & Gift Center, provides a unique and fully integrated customer experience optimized with the latest functionalities in mobile technology for streamlining the retail process. The app offers a special selection of bestselling items from flowers to gourmet foods, streamlined browsing and checkout, full-sized images, complete descriptions, and integration with the customer's address book. It also delivers exclusive offers for Mobile users, secure local wallet and transaction processes, and integration with customer's account. Vib Prasad, Vice President Web Marketing and Merchandising accepted the award for 1-800-FLOWERS.

Rich Experience -- Tommy Hilfiger
Tommy Hilfiger won in the Rich Experience category for an iPhone app that gives consumers the opportunity to explore, search and purchase anytime, anywhere. Shoppers can browse collections, use search and filters to find the latest styles by category, size or price range. They can also pan and zoom images to view details, add to a shopping cart, and checkout with quick-fill capabilities to enter shipping and billing information. Whether shoppers start online or on their iPhone their shopping carts follow them.

Three of the award winners, including Kubo of Wet Seal, Hathaway of Target and Prasad of 1-800-Flowers, participated in a lively panel discussion about the details and development of their award winning app. The three executives also provided the audience with key insights they can bring back to their companies and apply to their own mobile strategies.

For more information on the first annual Mobile App of the Year Awards, follow us at #rtc10.