Last week’s biggest retail technology plays at a glance
RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, deployments and pilots from the past seven days. Featuring Shake Shack, Phase Eight, Amazon Fresh, Walmart, and Whole Foods Market.
At Google I/O 2022 last week, Lowe’s unveiled Infinite Kitchen, created in partnership with Google using its new Immersive Stream platform.
This helps its customers create personalised kitchen designs and visualise the results in real-time wherever they are, all from their mobile device.
Lowe’s is the first retailer to use Immersive Stream for XR. This, according to a press release, is “a building block that makes high fidelity, real-time XR experiences available to almost anyone, no state-of-the-art phone required.”
Cleveron Mobility and DPD Eesti say they’re the first in Europe to deliver a package to a customer via a driverless autonomous vehicle.
Said vehicle is manufactured by Cleveron Mobility, with delivery taking place under the DPD banner.
Fashion retailer Phase Eight has partnered with supply chain transparency platform Segura.
This allows it to contain all supplier processes within one system that boosts data and tracks updates in real-time, enhances how purchase orders are issued, embedding traceability into the linked trims and labelling requirements, and hosts a suite that enables audits, corrective action plans, policy requirements and communications to be streamlined and automated.
Panasonic has worked with the convenience store of a German team energie GmbH & Company fuel station to deploy electronic shelf labels (ESLs).
The solution provides a wireless connection to a centralised PoS system to automatically update the price displays in-store - enabling marketing campaigns, reducing pricing errors and saving staff up to 30 minutes a day.
team energie, with 2,800 employees at 290 locations across Germany, has deployed the first ESL solution at its fuel station in Flensburg, near the German and Danish border.
Scibids has implemented its AI as a service solution for a Charlotte Tilbury marketing campaign, leveraging Google Display & Video 360’s custom bidding feature, which, it says, has reduced customer acquisition costs by 29%.
Lolli users can now earn free Bitcoin rewards at Shake Shack when they shop with the former’s new Card Boost feature.
In an online post, Lolli says: “Just link any debit or credit card on the Lolli app for iOS and activate a Shake Shack Card Boost before heading to Shake Shack to make a purchase.”
“You'll get an email within a few hours of making a purchase letting you know that your rewards have been processed and are on their way to your Lolli wallet. This is what Bitcoin adoption looks like.”
Lucky Beach cafe in Brighton says that it is the first hospitality business in the UK to introduce buy now pay later technology.
The initiative has seen Klarna working in partnership with storekit to deliver BNPL to the restaurants, cafes, and hotels which comprise the latter’s customer base.
Lucky Beach was the beta client for the integration.
Consumers purchasing a limited edition of Clinique's Moisture Surge 100H moisturiser can access a range of digital content by tapping an NFC chip in the product’s packaging with their smartphone.
Purchasers can find out what dehydrators may be affecting their skin, get advice from Clinique’s experts plus take a selfie and then share with others.
The cream is available exclusively in Boots in the UK and in 35 markets globally.
Clinique partnered with SharpEnd on the initiative.
NewStore, an omnichannel cloud platform for retail brands, has launched a new consumer shopping app on behalf of fashion company Tom Tailor.
Customers in Germany can now download the app on both iOS and Android, and the brand will roll it out to additional markets soon.
Yochananof, an Israeli supermarket chain, has placed a follow on order for an aggregate of 1,000 Cust2Mate smart carts, after an initial roll-out in stores.
Walmart has expanded its use of the Wrike work management platform outside of Walmart Canada.
It now encompasses more than 1,000 new users across international teams, including Global Tax, Product, Walmart Health, and Walmart Realty.
Felleskjøpet Agri, and equipment supplier to Norwegian farmers and retailer of agricultural products, pet products and gardening equipment, has expanded its partnership with RELEX Solutions.
This will include space aware replenishment, access to RELEX’s mobile platform, forecast sharing, and enhancements to capacity management.
Sustainable fashion brand Thought has gone live on Shopify as part of its digital transformation programme in partnership with data optimisation specialist Clekt.
Thought invested into the Enterprise Data Hub from Clekt to integrate to multiple systems, centralise business data and put data driven processes at the heart of their business transformation agenda.
It’s official! Sevenoaks in Kent will host the UK’s first Amazon Fresh checkout-free store outside of London.
Last week, we reported on rumours that this would be situated in the former Baby Gap outlet in Bligh's Meadow.
Council planning documents, we noted, showed that permission had been granted for both interior and exterior work on the site.
And job listings had also been posted for retail associates at a Sevenoaks store powered by Just Walk Out technology.
Now an Amazon spokesperson has told RTIH: “We’re delighted to serve customers in the Sevenoaks area and look forward to opening more stores in the future.”
Whole Foods Market’s High Street Kensington, London store has unveiled a new window display to celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
This marks the start of a competition where 70 winners will “take home some of the highest quality, on-trend, best of British products Whole Foods Market has to offer”.
69 people will win a selection of Platinum Picnic goodies in the prize draw, and the 70th customer will bag the entire window display, worth more than £300.
To enter, you need to visit the Whole Foods Market High Street Kensington store and scan the QR code.
The competition will be running until 2nd June.
Fast fashion big hitter boohoo has partnered with four female artists from the NFT community (Amy Kilner, Reem El, Aoife O’Dwyer and Shar.eth) to create an “affordable and inclusive avatar collection”.
The artists created 230 unique traits and features, with a range of these consisting of statement fashion pieces from boohoo’s product range.
Using these traits, the pureplay came up with a collection of 30,000 avatars which aim to represent the diversity of its community.
Footwear and accessories brand, TOMS, has partnered with Astound Commerce to migrate its e-commerce experience to Salesforce Commerce Cloud Storefront Reference Architecture (SFRA).
The implementation also included integrations to support customer loyalty (CrowdTwist), personalisation, product recommendations and reviews (Einstein, PowerReviews), customer data insights (Custora), and a variety of payment options (PayPal, Apple Pay, Klarna, AfterPay, and Clutch Gift Cards).
TOMS and Astound also partnered on solving order management system functionality needs via SFCC.
AiFi has enabled autonomous shopping for racing fans at the Formula 1 Miami Grand Prix.
The event took place from 6th-8th May at the Miami International Autodrome in Miami Gardens, Florida, United States.
It was the first edition of the Miami Grand Prix and the fifth round of the 2022 Formula One World Championship.
Ten robots are helping Bilka Odense shop floor stuff with physical and time consuming Click and Collect tasks.
This is the result of a collaboration between the Danish supermarket retailer and startup Coalescent Mobile Robotics (CMR).
