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 Starbucks, Amazon, Hulu, eBay UK, Tesco, Alibaba Group and AMC Theatres.
The first Starbucks Pickup with Amazon Go location opened last week in New York City, powered by the latter’s Just Walk Out checkout free technology.
Located at 59th Street between Park & Lexington Avenues, this offers the full Starbucks menu and an assortment of food and beverages in the Amazon Go market.
RTIH first reported on this tie up in October. Starbucks and Amazon plan to open at least two more locations over the next year.
Buy now, pay later specialist, Openpay, has announced partnerships with Maplin, Snug, Tradeprices and Junior Bambinos.
Consumers can now spread the cost of items over three to four months, after making a payment at the time of purchase.
Just in time for the holiday season, Hulu, the American subscription streaming platform owned by The Walt Disney Company and Comcast, has launched a Shop Hulu online store.
Powered by Snow Commerce, this is selling apparel, accessories, and other gifts inspired by Hulu Originals and other content.
Among the items debuting this month are ugly holiday sweaters, inspired by such shows as The Handmaid’s Tale, Solar Opposites and The Great.
US-based grocery retailer, Nude Foods Market, has launched MishiPay’s mobile self-checkout solution as the primary payment method in its flagship store in Boulder, Colorado, instead of conventional registers.
E-commerce delivery and returns company InPost has announced a new partnership with eBay.
eBay marketplace sellers will now have access to its 2,500 parcel lockers for the first time, enabling them to drop off items for onward delivery to buyers’ homes.
Lite e-Commerce, a startup operating within Polish convenience store chain owner Żabka Group, has selected commercetools and fulfillmenttools as technology partners.
The companies will support the firm in the implementation of a new service on the q-commerce market in Poland – Żabka Jush.
Fashion retailer Brother2Brother is expanding into Canada, Australia, Israel, Japan and UAE through a new integration from e-commerce platform Visualsoft and cross-border specialist Glopal.
Experiential retail venture Brik + Clik has partnered with US startup Moon to offer Bitcoin Lightning Network payments at its Point of Sale locations in New York and Los Angeles this holiday season.
“You'll be able to pay with Bitcoin for awesome DTC brands like Goli Nutrition, GETMR, OLIPOP PBC, Candy Club, and Kin Euphorics,” Kenneth Kruger, Founder and CEO at Moon, said in a LinkedIn post.
“In NYC? Swing by their flagship location on the ground floor of the Oculus starting Monday to pay with Lightning. In LA? Starting Black Friday you can check out their cabanas sprinkled throughout Westfield Century City.”
Tesco is leveraging a platform from RangeMe to “help its buyers scale product sourcing efforts with streamlined submissions and simplified discovery tools”.
It says that British suppliers will now have “a direct and unified journey to present their products to Tesco buyers”.
Amazon has opened a 2,500 square feet, front of house, Amazon Fresh checkout-free location in East Sheen, London.
This is the seventh such convenience store to offer Just Walk Out Shopping tech in the UK.
The other six are in Camden, Ealing, Wembley Park, White City, Canary Wharf and Dalston.
Opening hours are from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, seven days a week.
Customers use the Amazon app to enter and put their phone away and shop for what they need. At the end of their visit, they can head for the exit, with no need to stand in a queue or check out.
Habitat, a homewares brand within the Sainsbury’s group, has launched a new digital shopping experience entitled Room Creator and created by Hullabalook.
“The Room Creator experience enables shoppers to visualise products in their ideal room setting before they buy,” Hullabalook said in a LinkedIn post.
“It's also the perfect de-risking tool for online furniture shoppers. And an engaging way to encourage shoppers to explore more of a product catalogue.”
The company’s tech is now live with six of the top UK furniture retailers.
Alibaba Cloud says that it fully migrated all of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group’s systems and operations onto the cloud ahead of the 11.11 Global Shopping Festival.
This it claims, reduced computing resources by 50% for every 10,000 transactions compared to last year.
There was also a boost of 20% in technology deployment efficiency and 30% in CPU resource utilisation.
Sainsbury’s is set to open a cashierless store in London later this month, using Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology.
This will make it the first known customer outside the US for the tech that powers Amazon Go and Fresh stores.
The SmartShop Pick & Go location, situated in High Holborn on the edge of the City of London, is currently open to Sainsbury’s employees.
The boohoo group has partnered with Nexer and Microsoft to replace its legacy finance solutions with the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance Application.
The new systems are due to go live Q1 2022. Nexer will be the consultancy partner leading the delivery of projects.
The grocery sector’s ‘Pearl Harbor Moment’ has arrived courtesy of Amazon Fresh, according to Brittain Ladd, a supply chain consultant and former Amazon executive.
In the US, the e-commerce giant has just opened a 35,000 square foot store with Just Walk Out capability. Something, Ladd argues that most, if not all of the major grocery retailers, including Walmart, didn't think would be possible for several more years.
“What Amazon has done is made every grocery store in the US, and globally, obsolete,” Ladd said in a LinkedIn post.
American online shoe and clothing retailer Zappos has partnered with Bitcoin rewards startup Lolli.
Shoppers can now earn 1.5% back in free Bitcoin every time they shop with Zappos.
American cinema giant AMC Theatres is adopting cryptocurrencies for online payments.
CEO Adam Aron has announced on Twitter that the company now accepts Bitcoin, Ether, Bitcoin Cash and Litecoin.
These line up alongside traditional payment options like Apple Pay, Google Pay and PayPal.
Euronics has joined ReceiptHero’s merchant network, giving customers in Finland the option of having receipts sent to them digitally when buying in-store.
They will be able to do this via the ReceiptHero iOS & Android apps, and also through its partner applications such as Eurocard, eTasku and Bezala.
