The retail technology week in numbers
3….Appear Here, a marketplace for short-term retail space, has launched its third Space for Ideas competition.
£63 million…Amazon UK has revealed that last year it paid UK business rates of £63 million-plus.
13…Scottish outdoor pursuits retailer, Tiso, has selected the Eurostop connected stock management and EPoS systems, e-rmis, e-pos touch and e-cubes, for 13 of its stores.
$12 million…Spanish bank BBVA’s investment arm, Propel Venture Partners, has led a $12 million Series A funding round involving PayTech venture Grabango.
Nine out of ten ex-Woolworths sites remain in active retail use, a decade after closure, research from consultancy CannyInsights finds.
2…JD.com has launched two smart delivery stations in the Chinese cities of Changsha and Hohhot.
5…Eagle Eye has secured a five-year contract with Waitrose. The supermarket chain will be tapping into the AIR platform to improve its digital marketing proposition. The deal extends Eagle Eye’s relationship with John Lewis, first announced in May 2017.
4 million…The founder of Japanese online clothing retailer Zozo has ousted a chicken nugget obsessed US teenager to lay claim to the most retweeted tweet of all time.
Yusaku Maezawa said he would share 100 million yen between 100 randomly selected people. "To participate, all you have to do is follow me and RT this tweet," he commented. The post appeared to be in celebration of his website Zozotown making 10 billion yen in sales over the Christmas and New Year period.
Dated 5th January, it has been shared more than four million times, half a million more than Carter Wilkinson's 2017 attempt to snag a year of free chicken nuggets from Wendy's.
15.6 million…Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield’s London and Stratford City centres attracted 15.6 million shoppers over the festive period, an uplift of 11% year-on-year.
$203.6 billion…Retail is undergoing a technological transformation that is driving retailers to automate redundant tasks and revamp their mobile strategies, according to eMarketer. It flags up Gartner research showing that worldwide retail tech spending will increase 3.6% to $203.6 billion in 2019, with similar growth rates for the next two years.