The Kirkgate Market - The First Omni Channel Market

Title: The Kirkgate Market - The First Omni Channel Market
Kirkgate Market has fresh food, drink, fashion, jewellery, flowers, hardware and haberdashery units and is located in Leeds city centre near the bus station and railway station. The Market is owned and managed by Leeds City Council Markets Service, employs around 2,000 people, has 235 traders , trading 6 days per week. However evidence strongly suggests that shoppers want both more flexibility in trading hours and to buy more products online. The Council would consider this if demand from traders was there, but most are sole traders with small margins, unable to open for longer hours. Markets Service has worked with a private provider and traders to allow online ordering, but only a few food traders took advantage of this, which did not drive additional footfall into the Market. It has also set up a Shop & Drop scheme, allowing shoppers to buy and store food in custom-built facilities and collect later.
The aim of this project is to retain existing and attract additional shoppers to the Market. Working with food traders and subcontractors, Markets Service wants to create a digitally enabled shopping experience merging a marketplace environment with digital support that brings local flavour and convenience for market shoppers. The two phases are:
Phase 1: Undertaking a feasibility study about the potential for a Click and Collect service and online presence (website plus app). The key challenges are testing and developing a 3D platform of the market, enabling shoppers to remotely purchase products from a range of food based traders, how food is safely stored for collection and how to set up the collection hub so that the shopper could access their shopping either on foot or by car.
Phase 2: To increase the robustness of the model to meet expected demand from shoppers, engage more Kirkgate Market traders such as ‘food to go’ and ‘grab and go’ traders to promote the convenience of the offer, develop and go live with the website and app and undertake the required works to facilitate collection. Activities also include a promotion, training for traders, recruitment and training and company creation and administration.
The outcome will be a 3D digital platform, able to map any indoor market and a logistics solution that covers both delivery and food integrity needed to implement the 3D platform. This solution will enable market websites and apps to run the software. For Kirkgate Market the project will enable traders to adopt and benefit from e-commerce to increase sustainabiity and enhance opportunities. The Market will match the convenience of large high street and out of town retailers and provide additional reasons for shoppers to come to the Market, thereby supporting Leeds city centre. This model could be expanded to provide a Click and Collect hub for other city centre independent retailers not based at the market and could easily become replicable for small town and village centres.
Leeds City Council is committed to reimagining the high street and is involved in two SBRI bids. Prof Cathy Barnes is involved in both bids and has ensured complementarity. Whilst this bid aims to deliver a digital platform for Kirkgate Market, the other bid hopes to develop an open data platform to support high street decisions in Leeds. If funded, this project would become a link in the open data infrastructure of the city and provide key data for analysis.