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 French Connection, GUESS, Amazon, River Island, Macy’s, and Ikea.
Bitreel has launched a retail metaverse experience with Ethan Allen.
The company’s initial launch of its Virtual Design Centre offering showcases its product portfolio while fostering collaboration between its interior designers and clients.
It will be further expanded with 75 indoor and outdoor room settings and more than 2,000 shoppable products.
French Connection has integrated its four Shopify Plus websites (UK, US, EU, and Great Plains) with its bespoke customer service and warehouse fulfilment solution, Options, using BPA Platform from Codeless Platforms.
Asendia has installed automated sorting and six new robots for over-labelling at its parcel processing centre at Heathrow.
It says that the system will drive a significant parcel throughput increase on behalf of retailers, e-commerce brands and other clients, achieving a rate of up to 7,200 parcels per hour, with the site open seven days a week, and able to operate 24 hours per day.
Asendia UK, whose clients include Asos, Boohoo, Boden, Chilly’s, Bali Body and Urban Outfitters, has invested £2.5 million of CAPEX in these improvements.
Premier League football club West Ham United has chosen Mapp tech to create a unified supporter view across all its websites, while providing a “hyper-personalised fan experience”.
Ivalua has teamed up with Migros – one of the world’s top 40 retailers – to digitise its indirect source-to-pay (S2P) process.
Bestway Retail is extending the use of age estimation technology in a number of Bargain Booze stores in the UK following a trial with Innovative Technology Ltd (ITL).
The implementation is aimed at protecting children from harm in the retail sale of alcohol products.
PVH Europe, home to the global headquarters of Tommy Hilfiger and European offices of Calvin Klein, has selected the Mendix low-code platform.
GUESS has adopted Matterport digital twins/AI to ensure store brand consistency and create immersive, virtual experiences for its employees, buyers, and wholesale partners.
Ingka Group, the largest Ikea retailer, has launched a new artificial intelligence driven digital home design experience, Ikea Kreativ.
This offers customers a “lifelike, fully integrated way” to design and visualise their own living spaces, via their computers and smartphones.
Ikea Kreativ taps the latest developments in spatial computing, machine learning and 3D mixed reality technologies.
Its core technology was developed by Silicon Valley AI specialists, Geomagical Labs, which Ingka Group acquired in April 2020.
Located in the former Baby Gap outlet in Bligh's Meadow, this will be open 7am-11pm, Monday-Sunday.
Like its London counterparts, it is powered by Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology.
To shop, customers scan the QR code from their Amazon app, buy what they need, and walk out.
Nursery retailer, Baby Bunting, has increased stock availability and reduced inventory value in its stores as a result of a roll-out of RELEX Solutions’ suite of demand. forecasting, replenishment, allocation, and promotion forecasting solutions across its nationwide network of 64 locations in Australia.
River Island says that it has chosen Cloudinary solutions to “future-proof its digital media tech stack, boost the user experience, and shorten time to market”.
The retailer will replace Adobe Scene7 with Cloudinary’s Media Experience Cloud platform and its Digital Asset Management (DAM) solution.
Radley London has selected Origin from Retail247 as its new global product information management (PIM) platform.
Neil Plaistowe, Chief Information and Transformation Officer at Radley, says: “Origin will provide a solution for our global product data needs and ultimately provide data to all our external trading partners as we continue our international expansion as a brand within a digital first framework.”
The initial phase of the deployment has now gone live and a roll-out to all external partners is underway.
Stravito has been selected as the knowledge management solution for Reckitt Benckiser, a UK-based consumer goods manufacturer producing leading health, hygiene and nutrition brands.
Macy’s has announced a limited collection drop of free NFTs that include access to its first augmented reality wearables as well as the launch of a Discord channel.
“As we commemorate our Independence Day with the nation’s largest pyrotechnic celebration, Macy’s wanted to take the fun into the Web3 frontier bringing the revelry to a digital landscape,” says Will Coss, Executive Producer of Macy’s 4th of July fireworks.”
“These free NFTs will help attract a new set of fans with an easy to access implementation that democratises this emerging space for a mass audience, while also embracing a digitally native audience with added utilities including augmented reality wearables.”
Roku has announced a TV shopping partnership with Walmart,
The two companies are working "to make TV streaming the next e-commerce shopping destination" and have inked a deal that will make Walmart the exclusive retailer allowing streaming viewers to purchase products fulfilled by the company and directly on Roku's platform.
