Top 10: last week’s most popular retail technology articles
These are the RTIH retail systems articles that caught your fancy last week, including retailers in the metaverse, buy now pay later controversy, and the 2021 RTIH Innovation Awards.
eBay UK enlists Roberto Carlos and Eni Aluko for Dream Transfer competition
eBay UK is giving football fans the chance to sign World Cup winner and former Real Madrid Galactico Roberto Carlos, and ex-Juventus and Chelsea women’s star Eni Aluko to their Sunday league teams for one match.
Food startup Sessions announces $10 million Series A round
Sessions, a startup which provides UK foodie entrepreneurs with a platform to sell their products, has raised $10 million in a Series A round.
Founded by Dan Warne, formerly MD of Deliveroo, CFO Ian Banks, formerly CFO of Soho House, and leisure industry specialist Chairman, Graham Turner, Sessions has secured the cash from a syndicate of investors led by Guinness Asset Management.
The business comprises physical consumer facing locations (the Shelter Hall in Brighton being the first of several planned), delivery kitchens and an accelerator model.
The retail technology year in review: November 2021
An eventful month for the retail tech sector included mega funding rounds, an underwhelming Black Friday, and the booming checkout free stores and rapid delivery spaces.
This is not how Walmart envisions shopping in the metaverse
A video did the rounds on social media last week, supposedly showing “how Walmart envisions shopping in the metaverse.”
Responses were not positive, with people mocking the clunky visuals and utter naffness of the whole endeavour.
In Walmart’s defence, however, the video was four years old. A quick Google search revealed that a digital agency made the clip for the retailer to impress influencers at SXSW 2017.
We’ll leave it up to you to decide what that says about social media and the heavily hyped metaverse space in 2022. We couldn’t possibly comment.
H&M becomes first ever metaverse clothing retailer
H&M has opened a virtual store in Ceek City and became the first clothing location in the metaverse.
Ethereum-based project Ceek announced on Twitter: “Shopping in the metaverse with $CEEK Concept VR store presented to H&M by CEEK creates mainstream use cases for $CEEK + scaling virtual reality beyond games.”
Customers can walk through the store, choose the products they want and buy them in the Ceek City universe.
They will also have the opportunity to later order the products at physical H&M stores with Ceek currency.
Gorillas, Getir and Buyk set to become major real-time retail delivery players
Rapid grocery delivery firms must transform their business models in order to survive in a hugely competitive, fast changing space.
That’s the view of Brittain Ladd, a supply chain consultant and former Amazon executive.
2021 RTIH Innovation Awards: winners announced
Metapack, Asda, Carrefour UAE, Situ Live, Starbucks, Oracle, Go Instore and Halla were among the companies who emerged victorious at RTIH’s 2021 retail technology awards.
The awards, sponsored by PMC, StoreSpace, Critizr, Marxent, QVALON and Selazar, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.
We received a record number of submissions this year across 14 categories (you can find a full rundown of the 2021 shortlists here).
Our winners and highly commended companies were announced during an exclusive event that took place in central London during December and was attended by retailers, members of our judging panel, and sponsors.
Six 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 Cogsy, 3DLOOK and theUp.co.
QVALON talks startup life and ambitious growth plans
Andrey Podgornov, CEO, and Boris Shkolnikov, CTO, give RTIH the lowdown on QVALON, which offers a mobile solution for managing retail operational processes.
Which? calls for action on buy now pay later debt risks
Which? has called for stronger safeguards to stop online shoppers from choosing buy now pay later services to pay for products without knowing the risks.
