The six biggest retail technology news stories of the week
It’s Friday, the weekend is almost upon us, 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 Amazon Style, Flipkart, SHEIN, and Walmart.
1. Amazon opens second retail technology centric Amazon Style store
Amazon is continuing its excursion into physical fashion retail.
The company has opened a second Amazon Style store, with the aim of combining the personalisation of e-commerce with the immediacy of bricks and mortar shopping.
This is located at Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio.
Amazon debuted the concept earlier this year at The Americana at Brand, in Glendale, California.
2. SHEIN enlists Treet for fashion resale platform launch
Chinese fast fashion giant, SHEIN, has announced the launch of SHEIN Exchange, an online peer-to-peer resale destination.
The firm says that, over the past years, through community created Facebook groups and social platforms, its customers have communicated an interest in buying and selling previously owned SHEIN products without the high platform fees that they are usually required to pay.
Available via the SHEIN app, a pilot version of SHEIN Exchange is currently available in the US.
3. Flipkart teams with eDAO to launch shopping experience in the metaverse
Flipkart has launched a metaverse offering for consumers to more interactively discover and shop new products on its app.
The Walmart backed Indian e-commerce giant has partnered with eDAO, a Polygon incubated firm, to launch Flipverse.
This is in the pilot stage and will be available on Flipkart’s newly launched platform, FireDrops.
Brands including Puma, Noise, Nivea, Lavie, Tokyo Talkies, Campus, VIP, Ajmal Perfumes, Himalaya, and Butterfly India will be participating in the first edition.
Phase one of Flipverse is an Android only experience, and will be live for a week.
4. Walmart makes social commerce move as it unveils new content creator platform
Walmart has announced the launch of a new platform designed around creators.
Walmart Creator is pitched as a one stop portal that makes it easy for the latter to monetise shoppable products from the retailer.
In a press release, Walmart says that those who sign up will have “access to tens of thousands of products and are given the opportunity to earn revenue all while earning commissions on sales they refer with no cap”.
Users of the platform can share product links to any social platform or group of their choice, receive product recommendations based on interests and affinities, and collect performance data to help grow their community and following.
5. Sam’s Club finalises deployment of Inventory Scan towers with Brain Corp
Sam’s Club, a division of Walmart, has announced the completion of a US, chain wide roll-out of Inventory Scan towers that have been added to its existing fleet of robotic scrubbers in partnership with Brain Corp.
The deployment was initiated in late January 2022 and has resulted in Brain Corp claiming the title of world’s leading supplier of robotic inventory scanners.
6. Sainsbury’s enlists Tata Consultancy Services for cloud first move
Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) is working with Sainsbury’s as the UK grocery giant looks to accelerate its cloud first strategy.
TCS has been a strategic partner to Sainsbury’s for over a decade.
As a part of a new multi-year deal, it will consolidate and modernise the retailer’s IT infrastructure landscape into a hybrid cloud stack using TCS Enterprise Cloud.
It will also provide end-to-end managed services for workplace services, network connectivity, and security.
The aim here is to help Sainsbury’s speed up time to market, create new revenue streams, and enhance agility to respond in real-time to emerging business scenarios.
Sainsbury’s plans to reinvest the savings to offer value to customers through innovation and lower costs.
