RTIH awards: Most Innovative Pureplay shortlist announced

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RTIH has unveiled the ninth shortlist for its 2020 Innovation Awards.

For the Most Innovative Pureplay category, our judges have been asked to look at tech deployments, pilots etc and decide which e-tailer has been the most consistently forward thinking and customer centric in 2020.

Last year, Ocado emerged triumphant, with highlights including the expansion of its network of development hubs to London, creating around 300 new jobs in the process.

Ocado also launched a trial of its one-hour delivery service, Ocado Zoom. And it inked a customer fulfilment centre partnership agreement with Australia’s Coles Group.

Here are the 2020 runners and riders.

AO

AO partnered with Tesco to launch its first ever physical retail experience. It is working on five store-within-a-store concepts as part of a six-month pilot with the grocery giant.

Also this year, it expanded its logistics operation and went on a recruitment drive as sales rocketed during the coronavirus outbreak.

Coupang

Coupang hired Thuan Pham as Chief Technology Officer.

SoftBank backed Coupang is South Korea’s largest e-commerce company by market share. It is known for its fast delivery services, including Dawn Delivery which drops off packages ordered by midnight at customers’ doors before 7am.

Etsy

Etsy completed its migration to Google Cloud. It began the project in 2018 and has since moved 5.5 petabytes of data from 2,000 on-premise servers.

It also launched Klarna’s buy now, pay later solution, enabled by Adyen.

The roll-out will begin in the US, with the e-commerce venture expecting other core markets to follow in 2021.

Farfetch

Farfetch announced a joint Chinese venture with Alibaba Group.

In October, Bambuser entered into a live video shopping pilot agreement, worth £35,000, with Farfetch. This kicked off during the autumn and will run for six months, featuring support for English, Japanese, Chinese and Arabic languages.

Also this year, Farfetch ran its Dream Assembly 4 accelerator programme.

Flipkart

Flipkart rolled out an AI powered voice assistant feature, supporting the venture’s grocery store, called Supermart.

It announced Flipkart Leap, its first startup accelerator.

It also launched a hyperlocal service, Flipkart Quick, in suburbs of Bangalore.

The Very Group

The Very Group reported a return to profit, with full year revenue topping £2 billion for the first time.

It also announced a series of senior hires, including Paul Hornby rejoining as Digital Customer Experience Director and Steve Pimblett as Chief Data Officer. And Matt Grest as CIO.

And it opened Skygate, a fulfilment centre in the East Midlands.

What’s next?

We will now ask our judging panel to cast their votes and provide their feedback.

The winner will be revealed in mid-December.

Stay tuned for more shortlists and, if you would like to be an RTIH Innovation Awards sponsor, please email scott.thompson@retailtechinnovationhub.com for further details.

You can also check out the other shortlists announced thus far here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.