The retail technology year in review: June

RTIH takes a look back at June and rounds up the winners and losers.

Winners

JD.com made $29.2 billion in sales during its annual 6.18 shopping festival, a record high for the Chinese e-commerce giant.

StockX joined the unicorn club after a $110 million funding round puts it valuation at over $1 billion.

China is on track to overtake the US to become the world’s largest grocery market by 2023 (in value terms), according to IGD Asia. The country’s total market size will reach CNY11.0tn ($1.8 trillion), more than Asia’s next four largest grocery markets (India, Japan, Indonesia and South Korea) combined.

The number of people using digital wallets will increase from 2.3 billion this year to nearly 4 billion by 2024, according to Juniper Research.

Amazon’s UK retail revenue is set to rise 58.2% over the next five years to reach £15.7 billion by 2024, according to GlobalData. And the Jeff Bezos-driven juggernaut will account for one fifth of UK online spend by that date.

The Entertainer said that it had improved online sales by 32% since the introduction of its new website, developed by LiveArea. Website speed had increased by 18%, while conversion rates were up by 13%.

Global retail technology spending will top $203 billion in 2019, according to research conducted by Tech., a collaboration between Retail Week and World Retail Congress.

Aura Vision, a UK startup that provides in-store data analytics to retailers, closed a $1.1 million seed round, involving a mix of angel investors, angel funds and corporate venture funds.

Google announced the acquisition of analytics startup Looker for $2.6 billion and that it was adding it to Google Cloud.

RetailEXPO 2019 pulled in record numbers of senior level retail decision makers, with 81% of attendees authorising or influencing buying decisions for retail solutions.

Losers…

Software at cash registers in Target US stores crashed on Saturday, 15th June, leading to huge lines of customers and abandoned shopping carts

Tesco was left red faced as hackers took over its Twitter account to push a Bitcoin scam.

A mother of five was banned from every Asda store in the country due to what she described as faulty scan-as-you-go technology. Beth Robinson, 31, claimed the scanner failed to pick up £16 of items.

Also in June…

John Lewis Partnership pulled off a surprise by announcing Ofcom boss Sharon White as its next Chair.

Justin King, former Sainsbury’s CEO, took an undisclosed stake in mobile commerce venture Rezolve and said he would also serve as Senior International Advisor.

Rezolve is the brainchild of Dan Wagner who, you might remember, headed up another mobile retail outfit, Powa. This was once feted as one of the UK’s great tech hopes, but collapsed three years ago after burning through millions of pounds of investors’ money.

Coles, Australia’s second-biggest grocery chain, was looking to technology to help it achieve A$1 billion ($685.40 million) in cost savings by financial year 2023.