Check out this week's coolest retail technology reveals
RTIH Editor, Scott Thompson, brings you his top ‘future of retail systems’ deployments from the past seven days, including Casino Group, Gorillas, Nisa Retail, Jisp, Amazon, Walmart and Gopuff.
Casino Group
Casino Group and Gorillas have announced a quick commerce partnership focused on the French market.
The former has been boosting its online presence by tapping Ocado Group’s fulfilment platform, while its Monoprix supermarket arm works with Amazon.
This new partnership, which will see Casino buying a "symbolic" stake in Gorillas, will give Gorillas access to Casino’s national brands products, and also to Monoprix’s private label products.
These will be available through Gorillas’ app and delivered within 10 minutes to customers in Paris, Lille, Bordeaux, Lyon and Nice.
Nisa Retail
Nisa Retail has doubled the number of stores participating in Jisp’s Scan & Save roll-out, bringing the total number to 25.
The announcement comes on the back of an eight-week pilot, with nearly 400 customers making over 12,700 scans, 5,800 taps and 3,300 redemptions on 65 products.
Amazon
Amazon is gearing up to open an Amazon Fresh checkout-free location in Chingford, London.
No news on the exact launch date. But we can reveal that this will be the e-commerce giant’s eighth such UK convenience store to feature Just Walk Out Shopping tech, which was pioneered at the Amazon Go offering in the States.
The other six are in Camden, Ealing, Wembley Park, White City, Canary Wharf and Dalston, whilst a seventh one is due to launch in Holborn soon.
Walmart
Walmart is making daily deliveries from a dark store to a Neighborhood Market in Bentonville, Arkansas, using an autonomous vehicle that doesn’t carry a safety driver, a world first, according to the retailer and its technology partner, Gatik.
“This milestone signifies a revolutionary breakthrough for the autonomous trucking industry,” says Gautam Narang, CEO and Co-founder, Gatik.
“Our deployment in Bentonville is not a one time demonstration. These are frequent, revenue-generating, daily runs that our trucks are completing safely in a range of conditions on public roads, demonstrating the commercial and technical advantages of fully driverless operations on the middle mile.”
Gopuff
US-based rapid delivery startup, Gopuff, has announced a launch across the UK.
It is now operational in Birmingham, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle, Nottingham and Sheffield. And it aims to be in 33 UK cities by mid 2022.
The arrival in the UK (Gopuff’s first market outside of the US) was driven by the company’s acquisitions of Fancy and Dija earlier this year.
Amazon (again)
Amazon has opened its second Amazon 4-star UK store.
Situated at Westfield London, this offers a range of products that are rated four stars and above, are top sellers, or are trending on the Amazon UK site.
It lines up alongside a store in Bluewater Shopping Centre, Kent, which launched in early October.
Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company concluded its 2021 Disney Accelerator programme last week with a Demo Day that showcased the eight companies in this year’s class.
Senior Disney leaders spoke with accelerator company CEOs about their technologies and the impact they could have across Disney’s businesses.
These companies included Bambuser, which is focusing on retail and social media with live streamed shopping.
During the Disney Accelerator, it launched two campaigns with Disney Consumer Products, Games, & Publishing to showcase new Disney merchandise to fans.
L.K.Bennett
UK-based luxury fashion retailer, L.K.Bennett, is now offering Mode as an additional payment option for customers.
Shoppers will be able to make instant payments and earn rewards, all in one app.
The Open Banking powered solution will remove the need for customers to enter their card details or CVVs at checkout.
People can scan a QR code or click a button, to make payments via the Mode app. Payments will be authorised in real-time through biometric security and Strong Customer Authentication (SCA).
