Beware porch pirates this holiday season! RTIH presents the retail technology week in numbers
Do you like numbers? Do you like retail systems news? Then this is the article for you. Including Ocado Zoom, Aldi Nord, Trigo, Superdrug, Mirakl, Marks and Spencer, Tesco, and Domino’s Pizza.
£250,000…UK tech retailer, Currys, says it has invested over £250,000 in a fleet of robotic exoskeleton suits to help colleagues from logistics partner, GXO, work safely and efficiently through the festive period.
The suits, which are being used at Currys’ facility in Newark, will help people carry out their physical day to day tasks, with the aim of putting less pressure on their joints and muscles while lifting heavy loads.
The Newark site will help deliver 8.7 million units of stock to all 309 of its stores this Black Friday period.
$2.2 million…PayTech startup Atoa has announced a $2.2 million pre-seed funding round led by Leo Capital and Passion Capital.
This also included angel investors such as Matt Robinson (co-founder of GoCardless and Nested) alongside Moon Capital Ventures.
Anil Stocker, Co-Founder and CEO of MarketFinance also serves as a company advisor.
One in four Brits intentionally give false data about themselves to brands, posing a serious risk to marketers planning to collect information amidst the Black Friday sales.
That’s according to a survey of 2,000 UK consumers commissioned by Treasure Data, which also found that a 34% will not use their primary email address when signing up to brand communications.
80%…Marks and Spencer says that it has reduced workplace incidents by 80% just 10 weeks after introducing AI driven health and safety technology from Protex AI to its distribution centre in Castle Donington.
Protex AI uses CCTV systems to provide health and safety teams with technology that autonomously captures unsafe events and flags them to health and safety officers.
By increasing visibility of these incidents on-site, it helped the M&S HSE team to catch patterns in unsafe behaviour and take proactive action, providing focused training to staff to correct issues.
2…The NHL’s Nashville Predators and food and beverage partner at Bridgestone Arena, Delaware North, are opening two stores powered by Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology and Amazon One.
The first store will open this Friday when the Predators face the Colorado Avalanche, and the second will make its debut in early 2023.
This is the first time Amazon’s physical retail technologies are being deployed in a sports and entertainment venue in Tennessee.
People can insert their credit card or hover their palm at the entry gates to shop.
Once they’re inside, anything they take off the shelf is automatically added to their virtual cart, and anything they put back on the shelf comes out of their virtual cart.
When they have completed their shopping experience, they will be able to leave the store and the credit card they inserted or linked to their Amazon One ID will be charged for the items they took.
Offerings include an assortment of packaged beer, spiked seltzers, soda, bottled water, chips, candies and sundries.
500,000…Rapid grocery delivery firm, Getir, has reached a milestone of over 500,000 donated meals from its gstores.
This has been orchestrated by the Neighbourly platform, which serves some of the world’s biggest companies and supports thousands of local good causes.
43%…As Black Friday fas approaches, the latest EY Future Consumer Index finds that 43% of UK consumers expect to spend less over the festive season compared to 22% for the same period last year.
The 11th edition of the survey of over 1,000 Brits shows that falling consumer confidence due to the cost-of-living crisis will have an impact on a number of Christmas spending habits.
12% said they will be cutting back on celebrations and expect to have smaller events this festive season, 29% are planning savings on food, while 31% expect to spend less on alcohol.
Present giving will also be affected, with 43% planning on cutting back on gifts for friends, and 34% doing do so on gifts for family.
Consumers are also increasingly likely to do their bargain hunting in store this year, although online shopping remains key with two-fifths of shoppers looking to do most of their deal hunting online this year.
4…Tesco has announced the opening of a fourth Trigo powered store in London.
The hybrid autonomous store is located in the Fulham Reach real estate development.
While still in the capital, it has shoppers with different needs than the on the go shopper which is typical of Tesco’s other Trigo powered locations in Central London High Holborn and Chiswell.
The grocery giant says that it is catering to a new subset of customers who use the location for their weekly shopping trips, with larger basket sizes.
£630 million…Quadient is warning ’porch pirates’ will be out in force over Black Friday and Christmas, as a series of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests to UK police showed the number of reported parcel thefts almost quadrupled between 2019 and 2022.
The average reported value of a stolen parcel is £115.07, which with Citizens Advice claiming 5.5 million parcels are stolen each year, suggests a hidden economy of up to £630 million.
Comparing data held by the police to Citizens Advice’s figure it appears just 0.002% of parcel thefts are ever reported.
60% of Brits will make the most of the 2022 Black Friday sales, with the average shopper set to spend £282.89, according to research from Emarsys.
Amidst cost-of-living concerns and in the run-up to Christmas, the study of 2,000 consumers suggests that 79% will not decrease their spending, instead opting to spend the same or increase their spending – with a third stating that there is “no minimum discount” required for them to buy a product in the sales.
8,000…SymphonyAI Retail CPG reports that implementation of its shelf planning and assortment solutions will expand beyond Metro Romania to more than 8,000 Metro and Makro locations in Eastern Europe, including Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovakia.
800…Domino’s Pizza reports that more than 100 custom branded 2023 Chevy Bolt electric vehicles are arriving at select franchise and corporate stores throughout the US this month, with an additional 700 rolling out in the coming months, making it the largest electric pizza delivery fleet in the country.
300…UK health and beauty retailer, Superdrug, says it has signed 300 brands to the Superdrug Marketplace, which officially launched this week.
Third-party products on the platform will sit alongside Superdrug products on the company’s website and will be identifiable with a marketplace logo and banner.
The aforementioned brands include Up Circle, Nature Spell, FFS Beauty and Jecca Blac.
Marketing and E-commerce Director Matt Walburn, who led the development of the Marketplace at Superdrug, comments: “Marketplace is the exciting next step in our digital transformation programme. “
“Our intention is twofold; to promote diversity by supporting entrepreneurs and small businesses within the industry and to dramatically increase our range on Superdrug.com, broadening and strengthening our accessible beauty and health offering to our customers.”
Four out of five…All of the UK’s major parcel firms are continuing to let down online shoppers, according to research from Citizens Advice.
Opinium Research conducted a survey between 10th and 31st October of 8,421 Brits who have received a parcel in the last month from Royal Mail, DPD, Yodel, Amazon Logistics or Evri.
Four out of five of them failed to secure even a three-star overall rating out of five after being scored against criteria including customer service, parcel problems and accessibility needs, such as people needing longer to answer the door.
Evri, formerly known as Hermes, came last for a second year running, despite overall improvement, with 1.75 stars out of a possible five.
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