The retail technology week in numbers

£1,000…The Petersfield Bookshop has been inundated with customers after revealing on Twitter that it had not welcomed one paying customer on Tuesday this week.

Fantasy and science fiction author Neil Gaiman retweeted the post to his millions of followers and, hey presto, £1,000+ worth of orders came flooding in.

90,000…Amazon has opened a new tech centre in Manchester. The 90,000 sq ft site will eventually employ 600 people, taking the e-commerce giant’s headcount in the North West to more than 6,000.

€700,000…Romanian retail tech startup Tokinomo has raised €700,000 in an investment round led by Early Game Ventures (EGV).

77%…Robotic barista venture Briggo Coffee has reported 77% year-over-year growth.

€147 million…Google is set to acquire Pointy, an Irish startup that helps people find out what their local stores have in stock.

Terms of the deal, expected to close in the coming weeks, were not disclosed, although according to media reports Google is shelling out €147 million.

800…Asos is testing out See My Fit, an augmented reality tool developed in partnership with Israeli company Zeekit. This offers customers a simulated view of a product in different sizes and on different body types. 800 dresses are involved in the trial.

3,800…Watsons China is set to deploy Tencent’s WeChat Work platform and Cloud Stores in its 3,800 stores during Q1.

1,000…Bossa Nova Robotics is on track to bring its shelf-scanning inventory robot to 1,000 Walmart stores in the US.

36%...More than 36% of retailers think that leaving the EU at the end of January will have mostly negative effects on their business over the next five years, according to research from IRX.

$11 million…French startup SimpliField has closed a $11 million Series A funding round, led by Five Elms Capital.

1.6 million…REPL Group has rolled out JDA Workforce Management to help improve scheduling accuracy for Walmart. This follows on from implementation of the solution in Asda stores.

REPL also deployed its own WFM Connect, a mobile-based application which works with JDA Workforce Management. The project covers 1.6 million associates in 7,000 stores.