July, good month/bad month
Retail Technology Innovation Hub takes a look at the retail technology space during July and rounds up the winners and losers
Good month for…
The Starbucks Rewards loyalty programme added 1.9 million active members in the US during the retailer’s fiscal third quarter ended 1st July, up 14% year-over-year. Total member spend now accounts for 40% of US company-operated sales. Mobile Order and Pay, meanwhile, represented 13% of US company-operated transactions.
Trax, a provider of computer vision and analytics solutions for the retail sector, has completed its largest investment round to date, raising $125 million. This was led by Chinese private equity investment firm, Boyu Capital, which is also an investor in Alibaba.
Ocado’s half year results were a relatively solid performance for a company that's putting the right building blocks in place to get back in the black next year, and stay there for many years to come, according to Fiona Cincotta, Senior Market Analyst at City Index.
$12 million…Pointy has raised $12 million in a Series B funding round led by Polaris Partners and Vulcan Capital. This brings total funding for the Irish startup to $19 million.
Yet another eye watering set of numbers from Amazon, with second quarter sales up 39% to $52.9 billion.
US startup, Standard Cognition, raised an additional $5.5 million from CRV, bringing its total funding to date to $11.2 million.
UK online retailers had reasons to be cheerful during June, as the hot weather and start of the World Cup spurred a 16.9% year-on-year (YoY) growth of retail sales, according to the latest IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index.
The UK convenience channel is set to add £7.1 billion in the next five years to reach £47.2 billion by 2023, according to IGD.
Alibaba has joined a $600 million fundraising round for Megvii, the Chinese AI startup behind facial recognition system Face++.
Retail ERP platform provider, Brightpearl, has announced a £11 million funding round led by Cipio Partners and the appointment of a new Chairman.
John Lewis has inked a deal with retail tech startup EDITED. The latter’s platform and artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology will help the retailer use data to support decisions related to buying and stocking all fashion lines, as well as children’s wear, shoes and accessories.
Mobile computer vision, barcode scanning and augmented reality venture, Scandit, has raised $30 million in Series B funding led by GV, with participation from NGP Capital and existing investor Atomico. The company has previously raised $13 million.
Bad month for…
Around 23,000 of Fortnum & Mason’s customers had their names, email addresses and home addresses, as well as social media handles, compromised by hackers.
Supporters of the US President took to social media to attack Walmart for selling anti-Trump baby clothing online. The clothes feature the slogan ‘Impeach 45’ (in other words, impeach President Trump, the 45th President of the United States).
Tesco’s mobile payments offering, Tesco Pay+, misfired in early July. Many customers were unable to use the app to pay for their shopping. In an email to users, the retailer said: “Rest assured we’ve fixed the problem and the app is working as normal again.”
It didn’t give any details about the cause of the problem but did add: “We know this falls short of the service you expect so, to make it up to you, we've credited you with an extra 50 Tesco Clubcard points."
Build-A-Bear was forced to pull a marketing stunt that sparked long queues and outbreaks of violence at its UK stores.
President Donald Trump's daughter, Ivanka Trump, is closing down her namesake fashion brand.
Vue’s website crashed over the weekend of 28th/29th July as rain and gale-force winds resulted in thousands of Brits attempting to book film tickets.
The jury’s out on…
Worldpay is testing out drone technology and contactless doormats in an attempt to tackle parcel fraud.