June 2022: retail technology deals and deployments at a glance
RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, deployments and pilots from June, including REWE Group, Walmart, Amazon, Asda, H&M Group, Hugo Boss, and The Home Depot.
REWE Group has announced the upcoming opening of a second Trigo powered hybrid checkout-free supermarket.
Located in Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin, Germany, this builds on a launch last year in Cologne.
Shoppers at the 400 square metre Schönhauser Allee location can walk in and shop for items including fresh baked goods, weighted fruits and vegetables and other grocery products, then exit the store and receive a receipt within minutes.
A traditional checkout option will also be available.
Pricer has received an order of approximately 90 MSEK from the Dutch co-operative supermarket chain PLUS to equip 128 additional stores, previously under the Coop banner, with electronic shelf labels.
The roll-out is planned to start during Q1 2023 with the initial delivery scheduled for November and consecutive deliveries in March 2023.
Hugo Boss has selected Nedap’s iD Cloud platform for its retail business.
The aim of this tie up is to create supply chain visibility, improve merchandise availability and to deliver excellent shopping experiences.
The Home Depot has selected Aruba ESP (Edge Services Platform) delivered via HPE GreenLake for Aruba networking, to power “advanced customer and associate experiences” across its US stores.
commercetools has announced a partnership with fashion retailer, New Look.
In the first phase, New Look will be leveraging commercetools technology to focus on improving the transactional element of its online shopping experience, updating order capture, the checkout journey and cart functionality and pricing.
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.”
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.
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.
Alimentation Couche-Tard is set to deploy more than 10,000 Mashgin AI powered touchless checkout systems, branded as Smart Checkout, to over 7,000 of its Circle K and Couche-Tard stores during the next three years.
The agreement launches the global deployment of the solution, and is claimed to be one of the largest scale expansions of computer vision powered checkout technology to date.
It builds upon the deployment of Mashgin across nearly 500 Circle K locations in the US and Sweden since 2020, as well as at Couche-Tard's retail innovation lab store on the campus of McGill University in Montreal.
UK technology and electrical retailer, Currys, is leveraging Salesforce solutions to support its omnichannel transformation plans.
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.
UK big four supermarket Asda is set to deploy Salesforce technology as it looks to give “a 360-degree view of its customers, providing personalised and tailored experiences that will revolutionise the consumer grocery experience”.
Leveraging Salesforce’s full retail suite, including Commerce Cloud, Service Cloud, and Marketing Cloud, Asda says it will create a cloud first environment that “gives its 18 million customers one connected and consistent experience across every channel and device, no matter where or how they choose to interact with the brand”.
The initiative comes as the business separates from Walmart.
J.B. Hunt Transport Services and Waymo report that the latest development in their collaboration on autonomous trucking technology will include a pilot delivering goods for the former’s customer Wayfair.
This will span six plus weeks during July and August and take place along the I-45 corridor between Houston and Dallas, the location of J.B. Hunt and Waymo’s original pilot nearly one year ago.
It will be the first in-depth transportation of home furnishings retail freight between J.B. Hunt and Waymo Via (the company’s autonomous Class 8 trucking unit powered by the Waymo Driver technology).
3D Cloud by Marxent is partnering with Kingfisher to roll-out new 3D visualisation, planning, and design tech across a number of its banners.
The initiative includes a 3D kitchen, bathroom, and storage planner with virtual reality capabilities in addition to a series of mobile 3D product configurators.
Kingfisher's B&Q and Brico Depot Romania have already launched the system in the UK, Republic of Ireland and Romania.
B&Q UK has also rolled out a line-up of intuitive, mobile first 3D product configurators for fireplaces and for the Kingfisher exclusive Atomia and Alara product lines.
Using the aforementioned tools, shoppers are able to explore, design, visualise and checkout in a single app. More sophisticated design features are available for experienced designers.
Walmart has announced plans to build four new fulfilment centres. These will implement automation technology that provides customers and Walmart+ members with access to next or two day shipping on millions of items.
Locations include McCordsville, Indiana, and Greencastle, Pennsylvania.
“Our new next generation fulfilment centre is a first of its kind for Walmart that will transform the way we ship online orders to customers,” says David Guggina, Senior Vice President, Automation, and Innovation at Walmart.
“Through our automated storage system and patent pending five step process, we’ll not only provide increased comfort for associates but also double the storage capacity and double the number of customer orders we’re able to fulfil in a day.”
Google Cloud has announced a new partnership with H&M Group which will see the Swedish multinational leverage its data analytics capabilities and sustainable global infrastructure to enhance its customer experience and supply chain enablement.
The pair will collaborate to develop an enterprise data backbone including a core data platform, data product, and advanced artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities.
This will also include the establishment of a new data mesh to further make all types of data and events accessible from multiple sources including in-store, online, its brands ecosystem and suppliers.
