Here’s what happened in the retail technology space during October
RTIH takes a look back at an eventful month for the retail systems sector, including Trigo, Amazon, Getir, SHEIN, Marks and Spencer, Flipkart, Walmart, and Sainsbury’s.
Good month for…
Happy birthday to us…Retail Technology Innovation Hub turned five years old this month!
RTIH was launched in 2017 by Scott Thompson, former Editor of Retail Systems.
It is now the leading website for the global omnichannel retail technology community.
Over the past four years, there have been multiple offshoots, including the launch of roundtable events, the RTIH Top 100 Influencers List and the RTIH Innovation Awards.
Earlier this year, meanwhile, we unveiled the first edition of RTIH magazine at Retail Technology Show in London.
This printed publication has proven to be a huge success, with the second edition making its debut in September, and a third due in early 2023.
Checkout free stores specialist Trigo bagged $100 million in funding, reaching a total of $204 million raised to date.
The investment was led by Singapore state investment firm Temasek (TEM.UL), and 83North.
New strategic investors include SAP and existing backers also joined the round, including Hetz Ventures, Red Dot Capital Partners, Vertex Ventures, Viola, and supermarket giant REWE Group.
Click and Collect transactions will be worth £42.4 billion in 2022 – 8.4% of the UK’s total retail spending, according to research from Barclaycard.
The company’s study – ‘What’s in store for retail?’ – focuses on retail businesses with over ten employees, and looks at the rise of ‘hybrid’ shopping.
Barclaycard surveyed 2,006 UK consumers and 600 UK senior managers in retail businesses who have at least one physical store.
Click and Collect now accounts for 40% of sales for retailers who offer the service, up from 37% a year ago.
The popularity of the service grew during the Covid-19 pandemic but, unlike pure online sales which peaked during that period, it has continued to grow post the lifting of lockdown restrictions.
Bad month for…
Digital receipts startup Flux is shutting down operations in the UK.
Founded in 2016, the firm was accepted on to the Barclays London-based FinTech accelerator programme, Rise, and graduated in 2017.
Barclays took a minority stake in the company in 2020.
Those using its app received digital receipts and cash back offers from such retailers as Costa Coffee, EAT., post and itsu.
The majority if not all of Gopuff's direct rapid delivery competitors will be extinct within the next 6 to 12 months.
So said the company’s Senior Vice President, Business, Daniel Folkman, in a recent interview.
“When money grows on trees, there’s an opportunity to do anything,” he commented.
However, when profit becomes “the pure focus […] if you don’t have a structurally sound core business, it is going to be very hard to endure especially when you have astronomical cash deployment rates,” Folkman added.
He’s right to say this, according to Brittain Ladd, a supply chain consultant and former Amazon exec.
Amazon’s Scout robot package delivery days are over.
The e-commerce giant has shut down field testing and is "reorienting" the programme.
The Scout team has been disbanded, with most of its 400 members being offered new positions within the company
So farewell, then, Scout, it was, erm, real.
Also this month…
South Korean search giant, Naver, was set to acquire secondhand apparel marketplace Poshmark for $1.2 billion in cash.
The pair expect the deal to close by Q1 2023, subject to approval by Poshmark stockholders and “the satisfaction of certain other customary closing conditions.”
Poshmark will become a standalone subsidiary of Naver, led by CEO Manish Chandra and the current management team. It’ll continue to operate under its existing brand, and maintain its staff, user base and headquarters in Redwood City, California.
Quick commerce big hitter, Getir, was in advanced talks to buy rival Gorillas, according to a report by Bloomberg.
The proposed deal would be a mix of cash and equity.
The Bloomberg article noted that, “the combination would give Getir, which is backed by Mubadala Investment Co. and Sequoia Capital, scale in key European markets, including the UK and Germany.”
“Gorillas, which last raised funds at a $3 billion valuation a year ago, has been exploring options after investors became more cautious on the money losing industry. Representatives for Getir and Gorillas declined to comment."
Marks & Spencer's Chief Executive, Stuart Machin, is working on a blueprint to ramp up the retailer’s Ocado food delivery operation.
He is embarking on a review to improve the service, with the aim of making the business more efficient and spurring growth, according to a report by The Mail On Sunday.
M&S is looking to increase its share of the UK's food spending in stores and online by more than 25%. Hannah Gibson, the new boss of the Ocado Retail venture, is spearheading the review.
At present, 75% of the M&S food range is offered through Ocado. Plans are afoot to increase that closer to 100% in the coming months.
An ‘insider’ told The Mail On Sunday that Machin aims to grow Ocado Retail over the next five years to achieve 'a market leading national position in online food retailing and a brilliant showcase for the M&S brand and range'.
He is pushing for 700,000 orders a week, up from 367,000 at the end of the last financial year in March.
Amazon is to begin offering Venmo as a new payment option for orders placed online and via its mobile app.
Venmo, owned by PayPal , allows users to send money to eachother. It has increasingly expanded beyond its peer-to-peer functionality, with more online players, such as Shopify and Lululemon, adding it to their offerings.
It will start to roll-out to select Amazon customers this week, and it will be available to US customers by Black Friday.
Amazon is also 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.
Chinese fast fashion giant, SHEIN, 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.
Flipkart 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.
Walmart 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.
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.
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