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 Currys, Fortnum & Mason, Co-op, Amazon, Hudson, Lacoste, and TAG Heuer.
Happy Nation, a new brand from Victoria’s Secret & Co., is collaborating with Roblox on a virtual hub with three themed obstacle courses.
For every Roblox player who completes all three obstacle courses, Happy Nation will donate one pair of underwear, up to 10,500, to Undies for Everyone until 31st July. Players can track their impact using the live counter displayed at the brand’s hub.
Players who complete an obstacle course will receive a virtual tote bag.
They can also browse the brand’s capsule collection, go to its photo booth, rest in the outdoor lounge area or visit the Wall of Happy, which highlights users that complete all three obstacle courses.
Following a review and upgrade of its UK contact centre infrastructure, British bed manufacturer and retailer, Bensons for Beds, has moved to Freshdesk and Freshworks, and added to its existing PCI Pal deployment by integrating PCI Pal Digital.
This includes the ability to take customer payments across multiple digital engagement channels, such as telephone, live chat, email and social media.
After its collaboration with Minecraft, which saw the first immersive projection of Lacoste in a virtual world, Croco Island, the French company is launching its first Web3 experience, UNDW3 (pronounced underwater).
UK technology and electrical retailer, Currys, is leveraging Salesforce solutions to support its omnichannel transformation plans.
Fortnum & Mason has announced a partnership with e-commerce accelerator Pattern to expand its online business to China.
Pattern will act as the British retailer’s Tmall Trade Partner, supporting every aspect of running its new flagship store on cross-border online marketplace Tmall Global.
Ideal World TV has partnered with Clearpay, known as Afterpay outside the UK and Europe, on a buy now pay later service.
It is the first TV shopping channel in the UK to offer Clearpay, allowing customers to pay for their purchases in four instalments over six weeks.
Doddle, a specialist in white labelled technology that powers Click & Collect, returns and ship from store offerings for retailers, carriers and postal operators, has introduced a range of self-service kiosks to its solution portfolio, enabling retailers and carriers to address the challenge of online returns.
L’Oréal Group brand, Yves Saint Laurent Beauté, has announced an NFT wallet, several drops of NFTs and partnerships with Web3 players in collaboration with Wunderman Thompson and powered by Arianee solutions.
Co-op has extended its trial of age estimation technology into five of its stores in partnership with Diebold Nixdorf and Yoti.
The pilot – which is not facial recognition and does not retain or store images – now sees Co-op testing out Vynamic Smart Vision I Age Verification, a new Diebold Nixdorf solution that uses Yoti’s age estimation technology, in five of its Manchester stores, including one located within its Customer Support Centre where it first tested the tech last November.
Acromove has reached an agreement with Retail & More to run a proof of concept of the AcroCloud solution as the potential IT platform for the latter’s planned Carrefour retail network in Greece.
Amazon has opened an Amazon Fresh checkout-free store in Hoxton, London, its 18th such location in the UK.
Powered by Just Walk Out technology, the store can be found at Unit 10, 3A Rosewood Building, Shoreditch Exchange, 97-137 Hackney Road, E2 8GY.
The 3,500 residents of Lockeford, a rural San Joaquin County town in California, will be among the first to have drones deliver their Amazon Prime packages.
“Lockeford residents will play an important role in defining the future,” Amazon said in an online post.
“Their feedback about Prime Air, with drones delivering packages in their backyards, will help us create a service that will safely scale to meet the needs of customers everywhere, while adding another innovation milestone to the town’s aviation history.”
Swiss luxury watchmaker TAG Heuer has unveiled a new experience for its Connected Calibre E4 smartwatch, which allows users to display NFT artworks on their watch by connecting their crypto wallet to guarantee authenticity.
To develop this new feature TAG Heuer teamed with key members of the BAYC, Cryptopunk, CLONE-X and WOW communities, which, it says, “ensured the Lens functionalities and experience created real value for the community”.
It has partnered with Ledger to enable its users to access and display their NFTs on the Connected; the new functionality also supports Metamask. Users can then resize the image, so it works well on the watch’s round screen.
The initiative closely follows the brand introducing crypto payments on its US website with BitPay, enabling customers to purchase TAG Heuer watches and accessories with the likes of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Lexer has been selected as the customer data experience (CDXP) partner for Cotton On Group’s e-commerce site across nine different regions and for all of its eight brands: Cotton On, Cotton On Kids, Cotton On Body, Rubi, Typo, Factorie, Supre, and Ceres Life.
Cotton On says it will use Lexer’s CDXP to better understand its customers at an individual level and use that insight to build more relevant, personalised communications through the customer’s preferred communication channel.
Hudson, which has more than 1,000 stores in airports, commuter hubs, landmarks and tourist destinations across North America, says that its first Southeast location for Hudson Nonstop, powered by Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, is officially open at Nashville International Airport (BNA).
At just over 1,000 square feet of concession space, this is different from any other Hudson Nonstop store as it exclusively offers food and beverage products.
Travellers can enter by swiping their credit card or hovering their palm over an Amazon One device.
They are charged for products they take after they leave the store.
Magnum Ice Cream and Deliveroo last week unveiled a metaverse located Magnum Pleasure Museum at the MET AMS festival in Amsterdam.
Between 14th and 17th June, attendees of the festival were able to wear a VR headset that transported them to the museum in Decentraland.
Grubhub and Cartken have announced a partnership to bring robot delivery to college campuses.
The service was piloted at Ohio State University this spring, and a full roll-out is expected when students return to campus this autumn.
Grubhub partners with more than 250 college campuses across the United States to give students the ability to integrate meal plans directly into their Grubhub account and access restaurants both on- and off-campus for delivery and pickup.
It is now possible to now earn 3% in Bitcoin rewards on groceries at Safeway with Lolli’s new Card Boosts feature.
Perfect Corp. has partnered with hair care and hair tools brand, Beachwaver, for an interactive augmented reality try-on experience, bringing its newest boho summer Floral Collection to life.
This is available in the YouCam Makeup app.
Steve Madden has chosen the HotWax Commerce Omnichannel Order Management Solution to help with such strategies as same-day buy online pick-up in store (BOPIS), ship from store, and pre-orders.
