The five biggest retail technology news stories of the week
It’s Friday, the week is nearly done, so let’s kick back and reflect on another eventful week for the retail systems space. Here's your briefing on the most important stories from the past five days, including Walmart, Carrefour, Getir and Richemont.
1. Walmart enlists Jason Derulo for first shoppable livestream on Twitter
This Sunday, 28th November, Walmart is kicking off Cyber Week with a shoppable livestream event featuring Jason Derulo.
This will be beta testing Twitter’s shoppable livestream function, allowing customers to shop products straight from the platform.
“This will be the first time a brand in the US has leveraged this capability on Twitter and I’m excited to bring customers incredible deals on a platform they already love during the most joyful shopping season of the year,” says William White, Chief Marketing Officer, Walmart U.S.
“Twitter is a platform where we consistently see high return across top-and middle-of-funnel content, so it’s a natural next step for us to explore this new functionality.”
2. Carrefour taps AiFi tech for new Flash 10/10 convenience store
Carrefour opened a Flash 10/10 concept store in Paris on 24th November.
The convenience store – developed in collaboration with US startup AiFi – is pitched as the first of its kind in France, and is located at 11 avenue Parmentier, in the capital’s eleventh arrondissement.
Flash 10/10 ("10 seconds to shop and 10 seconds to pay”) features a shopping journey that does not involve having to scan any products and quick payment.
Customers don't need to take items out of their bags. They can enter and exit the store without having to pass through a gateway. There is no need to download an app or register beforehand. And they can view their total spend in real-time.
3. Getir acquires rival rapid grocery delivery venture Weezy
Turkish rapid grocery venture Getir is to acquire UK founded rival Weezy. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Earlier this year, Weezy raised $20 million in Series A funding to expand its ultra fast grocery delivery service across London and the UK.
Founded in 2015, Getir launched in the UK in January and delivers across London, Birmingham, Manchester, Brighton, Cardiff, Liverpool and Bristol. It expects to operate in up to 15 UK cities by the end of 2021.
4. Richemont selects Amazon Web Services as preferred cloud provider
Compagnie Financière Richemont, owner of Cartier, Montblanc, IWC Schaffhausen, and Van Cleef & Arpels, is moving its entire enterprise IT infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Richemont will close its European datacentres and migrate additional ones in Hong Kong and the US to AWS by the end of 2022.
As part of its digital transformation strategy, the company will move more than 5,000 virtual machines and 120 SAP instances to AWS as it looks to “modernise its infrastructure, raise its security posture, and drive automation across its global operations”.
Richemont will also increase its use of AWS Marketplace to discover, procure, entitle, provision, and govern third-party software.
5. Boots and Ocado slam Mode Bitcoin cash back announcement
Boots and Ocado have distanced themselves from a Mode press release involving a scheme that offers customers cash back in Bitcoin.
Last week, UK-based FinTech Mode said it was teaming up with over 40 merchants, including Ocado, Homebase and Boots.
Its initiative is presently live with THG and L.K. Bennett.
However, a spokesperson for Boots told RTIH: “We are not involved with this scheme. We have not been directly approached by Mode and they have used our name without permission in their press release and marketing materials.”
And an Ocado spokesperson said: “We have never had any direct affiliation with Mode, nor any involvement with their announcement from 18th November 2021.”
Homebase, meanwhile, did not respond to our request for comment.
And we await a response from Mode. We will update this article when their PR people get back to us.
