Last week’s biggest retail technology deals at a glance
RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, deployments and pilots from the past seven days. Featuring Pets at Home, Amazon, WHSmith, Walmart and Casino Group.
WHSmith is set to open its first checkout-free store in the coming weeks.
This will be based inside one of New York’s three major international airports and will feature Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, which was pioneered at the Amazon Go offering in the States.
The store will be WHSmith branded, as opposed to the retailer’s other fascias such as InMotion and MRG.
PlaceMakers, a New Zealand-based supplier of building materials and hardware, has launched a new 3D kitchen planner, powered by the Marxent 3D Cloud.
Pets at Home has partnered with RELEX Solutions for a project involving its supply chain operations across forecasting, on-shelf availability, inventory planning, and the automation of manual tasks.
RELEX will service Pets at Home’s online channel as well as its 453 stores and distribution centres across the UK.
The partnership comes as part of a demand and fulfilment transformation project across the retailer’s end-to-end supply chain.
Under Armour has selected Amazon Web Services (AWS) as its preferred cloud provider for SAP as it looks to increase resilience, enhance security, and provide more significant insights across its business.
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.
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.
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).
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.”
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.
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.
