Startup interview: Simon Wilson, Co-founder, CheQout
CheQout’s Simon Wilson tells RTIH about his quest to “bring physical retail into the age of the internet”.
RTIH: Tell us about CheQout.
SW: I founded CheQout in late 2019. Since then, I have recruited the best people I could find to grow the company. The team consists of founding member Gary Bailey, CSO, six hard working technology partners and an intern.
Our main goal is to bring physical retail into the age of the internet. Physical retail has failed to adapt to customers’ ever changing shopping behaviours and actions, not to mention competing with the constantly advancing technology and simplicity of e-commerce.
Cheqout technologies enable retailers to boost consumer engagement, increase consumer spending, reduce operation costs, and understand consumer habits with its technologies, which use the existing hardware all retailers have.
Our first mission is to give all retailers the tools to understand what is going on in their stores.
From there, we will give retailers the tools to offer their customers a frictionless experience via walk-in walk-out technologies and scale that throughout the UK until it becomes just as normal as self-checkout machines.
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?
SW: Prior to CheQout, I founded a food delivery company in 2015. This powered food delivery at all stages.
If you ordered food within North East and West London from 2015 - 2019, chances are we were delivering, working with everyone from small local takeaways to big national ordering platforms.
Unfortunately, due to new delivery platforms like Uber and Deliveroo (managing their own fleet) taking huge market share month on month, we had to sell what we had remaining to a courier firm, knowing we would not survive.
Luckily enough, it was the right decision; Uber and Deliveroo own over 70% of the London market. Over the next few months, I was seeking my next calling, and it had to be something truly disruptive to the existing market.
I met my friend for a beer at one of their family’s supermarkets in Hackney London fields.
Seeing ten or so customers queue in such a small narrow aisle, with only one person at the till made me think, ‘there must be a better way to speed-up queues and take some stress off the till operators.’
Doing some research, I came across Amazon Go and was impressed. This technology could be used in many ways, changing retail forever.
I had to do it; if Amazon was attacking the market; it was a market, I would attack too. CheQout was born.
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
SW: There have been extremely positive reviews, and businesses are eager to implement our systems.
Customers are even more excited. As walk-in-walk-out technology seems something of the future, people want their share of the pie first and to experience it.
Amazon Go and its stories, via the press, is proof that there is a huge following that desires CheQut to come to the UK.
Covid-19 has seen an increase in demand for our technology from businesses and consumers, allowing for fewer interactions, and faster customer turnarounds.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
SW: The biggest setbacks and hurdles are the things that propel a business forward once overcoming the hurdle.
At CheQout, without the huge capital, on startup, to build a tech team to create a product that is not yet in the market was the first challenge.
We did so by doing things in an unorthodox way; we did not have the resources to be a normal tech company.
Building a startup is not about what you can do to make this thing grow; it is about motivating and getting your team members to do the very best they can do.
I want to say fundraising and finding the right investors is up there as a setback, however, by being consistent in conveying your message, the right investors will come (as long as you’re searching of course).
RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the omnichannel retail sector right now?
SW: Seamless engagement.
Consumers expect the very best service from every single point of contact, and retailers can and are doing this. They want more, and the more we give, the more they demand. It needs to be on a more personalised level.
Linking what consumers are looking at in the store and offering a 10% discount to that same product if they order that item for delivery. Our solutions can help link the physical retail world and connect it with the online world.
RTIH: What’s the best question about your company or the market you’ve been asked recently by a.) an investor and b.) a customer?
SW: We have not pushed for investment until recently.
The most common reply we get from investors is “give us a call when you have some other investors interested or are sure we will co-invest with other investors.
It tells us that because there is no widespread adoption, investors want to see it in operation first (apart from self-checkout machines that we want to replace).
Before we go to the VCs, we will raise our first round with angels and other professionals interested in seeing us change how people shop in retail.
Customers such as SME retailers are shocked; we can do something like this and are eager to have more information to join.
Larger players such as wholesalers and big brands know this technology is coming to the market and will choose the best companies to provide this technology for them.
RTIH: What can we expect to see from CheQout over the next 12 months?
SW: Over the course of the year, we will expand our offering stage by stage –the final stage securing a handful of frictionless stores by September-January, all over London.
Many of you will be using our technology without even knowing it; at smaller local shops and retailers this will be more widespread.
We are likely to onboard a few hundred small retailers by the end of the year. Expect there to be fundraising available to all those interested.