Top 10: last week’s most popular retail technology articles

These are the RTIH retail systems articles that caught your fancy last week, including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, yet another Amazon Fresh London store, and the 2021 RTIH Innovation Awards.

Macy’s launches NFT series for Thanksgiving Day Parade

The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade celebrates its 95th anniversary this year with a drop of 9,500 free NFT artwork, featuring balloons from past events in support of Make-A-Wish.

Reebok goes live on Bitcoin rewards platform Lolli

Reebok has partnered with Bitcoin rewards startup Lolli.

“That means you can now earn up to 6% back on premium clothing and footwear for your active lifestyle, whether you’re hitting the gym or the streets,” Lolli says in a blog post.

“To start earning with Reebok, download Lolli for your browser extension or app store for iOS. Activate Reebok on our site and start shopping to earn free Bitcoin on your order.”

Amazon Fresh store opens at London's Holborn Chancery Lane

Earlier this month, RTIH reported that Amazon was working away on an Amazon Fresh store at Holborn Chancery Lane in London.

Said store opened its doors to the public last week.

This is 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 seven are in Camden, Ealing, Wembley Park, White City, Canary Wharf, Dalston and East Sheen. Opening hours are from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, seven days a week.

Carrefour taps AiFi tech for new Flash 10/10 convenience store

Carrefour has opened a Flash 10/10 concept store in Paris.

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.

Ten retail technology firms that have powered ahead in 2021

It’s been a pretty, pretty good year for these retail tech ventures who are innovating in such areas as checkout free stores, 3D commerce, rapid grocery delivery, e-commerce fulfilment and shoppertainment platforms.

Rapid delivery venture GetFaster bags €7.5m in seed round

German quick commerce startup GetFaster has raised €7.5 million in seed funding.

The venture, which focuses on the soft discounter part of the delivery market, plans to use the cash for coverage expansion, customer base growth, and product range development.

Uncrowd raises £3 million for customer analytics platform

Arete has led a £3 million investment into customer analytics startup Uncrowd.

Begin and Matrix Capital also participated in the round. This builds on a a £500,000 seed funding round in 2020.

Ten retail technology funding rounds you need to know about

RTIH rounds up the retail tech ventures who have been making waves with major investments, including Nuro, Selazar, 8fig, Deliverr and GetFaster.

Ikea claims a first as it deploys Mobile Checkout solution in Australia

Ikea is launching its new Mobile Checkout solution in Australia.

This aims to give customers a faster and more convenient checkout experience in-store, with Ikea claiming that the roll-out is a first for home furnishing retailers down under.

Going live ahead of the Christmas shopping period, customers shopping at Ikea Logan and North Lakes in Queensland will be the first to experience the feature, which can be activated via the retailer’s app, or by scanning a QR code in-store.