Last week’s biggest retail technology deals at a glance
RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, deployments and pilots from the past seven days. Featuring American Eagle, Boots UK, Walmart, Amazon, Carrefour UAE, Asos, Farmstead and Circle K.
American Eagle is set to make its Roblox debut to promote a spring Members Always collection that draws on vintage and prep styles and pushes inclusivity messaging.
Headlining the campaign images and video are tennis player, Coco Gauff, actor and musician Joshua Bassett, actors Madelyn Cline, Maitreyi Ramakrishnan and Michael Evans Behling, and multi-hyphenate mxmtoon.
The retailer has partnered with Livetopia, a role playing game on Roblox, to create a virtual AE Members Always Club that users can explore while hunting for apparel based on the aforementioned collection.
Boots UK has implemented Recite Me assistive and language support technology across its online store.
Director of E-commerce at Boots.com Paula Bobbett says: “We know that shopping online or in-store isn’t as easy as it should be for everyone.”
“Hence why we’ve launched Recite Me to make it easier for people to navigate our site in the way that works best for them. We have also worked on a Boots best practice guide for our suppliers to ensure they also have this front of mind.”
Australian founded fashion brand, Forever New, has launched new mobile apps with poq technology.
Following its acquisition last year of Zeekit, creator of a virtual fitting room platform, Walmart is rolling out the venture’s tech, starting with a Choose My Model feature, to users of the retailer’s app and website.
Its customers are able to select from 50 models at launch, based on their height, body shape and skin tone, to have a better sense of how clothing will look on them.
The Very Group, which operates online retailer Very, has announced plans to transform the technology behind its e-commerce platform via a new partnership with commercetools.
The move is the first in a series of 2022 investments in technology and people as Very looks to boost its digital customer experience.
Amazon has opened an Amazon Fresh store in Southwark, London, powered by its Just Walk Out technology.
Situated at 110 Southwark Street, SE1 0TA, this is the first of these checkout-free stores to launch in the UK during 2022.
It’s also the 16th such location on these shores, lining up alongside the likes of Camden, Ealing, White City Canary Wharf and Holborn Chancery Lane.
US-based checkout-free technology firm Zippin has announced the opening of its second store in Houston’s NRG Stadium, in partnership with Aramark, the venue’s exclusive food and beverage provider.
Carrefour has opened its first BIO store in the UAE, featuring the retailer’s first ever café and an in-store hydroponic farm.
With over 3,000 items to choose from, the store specialises in healthy and organic products spanning from food and beverages to beauty, personal, and home care items.
Grocery e-commerce startup Farmstead has struck an agreement with Circle K which will see the pair piloting projects in supply chain, distribution and e-commerce fulfilment and leveraging the former’s Grocery OS software.
In addition, Circle K has made an undisclosed equity investment in Farmstead via its Circle K Venture Fund.
Alphabet’s drone service Wing has hit 200,000 commercial deliveries across global markets, excluding test flights.
Australia, which has been the primary market for testing and commercial deployment, comprises 30,000 of those deliveries in the first two months of this year.
The venture has also announced a partnership with Australian supermarket chain Coles.
Its customers can now order up to 250 items from Coles, with the likes of bread, fresh produce, snacks, meals, health care items, kitchen essentials, and toilet paper being delivered by drone in minutes.
Asos has signed a new agreement with Microsoft that will see the fast fashion giant continue to use Microsoft Cloud as its preferred cloud platform for the next five years.
The retailer taps Microsoft Azure and its AI capabilities to power its digital platforms and support new data led workstreams.
Through the renewed partnership, it will work with Microsoft to launch new projects to support and accelerate its strategic growth plans.
These focus on unlocking new customer experiences and business capabilities, such as Asos’ Partner Fulfilment programme, which aims to expand the range and availability of products, and maximise demand conversion, customer choice and stock availability.
French fashion house Figaret has chosen OneStock OMS for an ominchannel initiative that includes deployment of the latter’s Order In-Store solution in all 29 of its stores.
Figaret has also renewed its partnership with HiPay, to support it in payment management for this new project.
