The retail technology year in review: November 2021
An eventful month for the retail systems sector included mega funding rounds, an underwhelming Black Friday, and the booming checkout free stores and rapid delivery spaces.
Good month for…
Bestseller owner and CEO Anders Hoch Povlsen’s holding company, Heartland, invested $4.4 million in Touchtech, a venture whose tech brings digital experiences to shoppers in physical spaces.
Arete led a £3 million investment into customer analytics startup Uncrowd.
Begin and Matrix Capital also participated in the round. This built on a £500,000 seed funding round in 2020.
Cymbio, an online marketplace and drop ship automation platform, announced a $20 million Series B financing round led by Corner Ventures.
E-commerce fulfilment startup Selazar landed a £20 million investment that, it said, would significantly increase its valuation, enhance its UK network and fund expansion into Europe, the US, and Latin America.
Autonomous vehicle company Nuro completed a $600 million round of funding led by Tiger Global Management.
Bad month for…
Matt Moulding, the boss of The Hut Group (THG), expressed his regret at listing the e-commerce company in London.
English Premier League football club Manchester City suspended a partnership with cryptocurrency startup 3Key Technologies just days after announcing it to the world.
With no Covid-19 lockdown yet enacted this autumn, UK online retail sales for Black Friday were down -14.3% year-on-year, according to the IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index.
Last year’s YoY results (+30%) made for a tough comparison, as the nation was told to stay at home and consumers had no choice but to shop online.
Also this month…
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.
The first Starbucks Pickup with Amazon Go location opened this month 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.
E-commerce delivery and returns company InPost partnered 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.
Amazon said UK customers would no longer be able to pay for goods using a Visa credit card.
The e-commerce giant emailed customers to confirm the move would take effect from 19th January, blaming “a high cost of payments”.
Sainsbury’s opened a cashierless store in London this month, using Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology.
This made it the first known customer outside the US for the tech that powers Amazon Go and Fresh stores.
Amazon UK was planning to open more than 260 Amazon Fresh grocery stores before the end of 2024.
US-based rapid delivery startup, Gopuff, 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 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.
Buyk, a startup that promises grocery delivery from dark store to doorstep within 15 minutes, announced a Stateside expansion into Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, following a launch in Manhattan during September.
Buyk was founded by Slava Bocharov and Rodion Shishkov. The pair also co-founded Samokat, Russia’s largest grocery delivery company, in 2018 before selling their stake to fund Buyk.
Its latest move brought the company’s total number of dark stores to 20.
Currys partnered with Uber on a London-based delivery trial that gets small tech products from stores to shoppers in as little as 30 minutes.
Launching the week of 15th November, this is Uber’s biggest UK retailer partnership to date and builds on Currys’ online and delivery proposition, which includes the ShopLive 24/7 video shopping service and its one-hour Order & Collect offering.
Casino Group and Gorillas agreed 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.
ICA Gruppen went live with an automated warehouse in Brunna, outside Stockholm, powered by Ocado Group technology.
