Amazon UK stores and strikes: RTIH presents the retail technology week in numbers
Do you like numbers? Do you like retail systems news? Then this is the article for you. Including Emperia, Amazon UK, Mercaux, Gemba, Adobe, and Twinco Capital.
$18 million…Gemba, a virtual reality training startup used by the likes of Nike, Coca-Cola, and Amazon, has bagged $18 million in a Series A round of funding from Parkway Venture Capital.
This values the firm at $60 million.
The investment will accelerate growth in EMEA and help fund expansion into North America.
Gemba says that customers can expect an even wider choice of training simulations, tools, events and learning experiences, and in 2023 will see the introduction of colocation services, adaptable mixed reality, AI-powered consultants, and a customisable version for enterprise use at scale.
$10 million…Emperia, which creates immersive e-commerce spaces for retail brands, has raised a $10 million Series A.
This follows an $875k pre-seed in 2021 (featuring Concept Ventures, SFC Capital, Blissgrowth).
The Series A round was led by Base10 Partners and joined by investors including Daphni (via its retail fund Dastore), Sony Innovation Fund, Background Capital, Stanford Capital Partners and Concept Ventures. Angels include Blissgrowth’s Jay Radia.
1…Hundreds of workers staged the first ever Amazon strike in the UK this week.
Employees at the e-commerce giant’s fulfilment centre in Coventry walked out over its 50 pence per hour pay offer (offering them £10.50)..
An industrial action ballot saw a majority of more than 98% of workers vote to strike, according to the GMB union.
Stuart Richards, GMB Senior Organiser, says: “These workers have defied the odds to become the first ever Amazon workers in the UK to go on strike.”
"They’re taking on one of the world’s biggest companies to fight for a decent standard of living. They should be rightly proud of themselves.”
“After six months of ignoring all requests to listen to workers’ concerns, GMB urges Amazon UK bosses to do the right thing and give workers a proper pay rise.”
5-10…The biggest opportunity in grocery e-commerce lies in building a full cart in five to ten minutes.
That’s the view of Viv Craske, Founder of Geeky Foody, a consultancy working with FoodTech and retail tech startups at seed, Series A and B stages.
In a LinkedIn post, he says: “Shopping on a retailer such as Tesco, Carrefour, Walmart for a full shop takes 45 mins. It is painfully slow.”
“This is why (pre-pandemic) grocery e-commerce penetration in the UK was at 7-10% and e-commerce penetration in other sectors such as fashion, electrical, beauty was 20-50%.”
He adds: “Choosing 50-80 products from a selection of 50,000 using menu taxonomies and search is slow and frustrating. Then, quick commerce apps appeared and made shopping for two to ten items on an app just about bearable.”
“But large shops still mostly happen on a laptop or desktop which is a better experience than on a mobile (although it's miles from good). If you figure out how to make it easy to shop a full basket on a desktop and a mobile, you will rapidly increase your market share.”
Craske concludes: “This is the most untapped arena for competition as no one is doing this well. I have been saying this since 2014. It's time now.”
87%…The latest edition of the annual Pulse of Retail report, exploring the strategies of leading retailers for the upcoming year, was officially released at last week’s NRF 2023 event in New York.
The Mercaux offering, which surveyed more than 500 retailers, has for the first time been jointly commissioned by fellow MACH Alliance members, Fluent Commerce, commercetools and Orium.
According to the research, the top technologies in “launch phase” are centred around customer experiences, with 87% of retailers focusing on this area during 2023.
100…The BRC has announced that Mary Portas, founder and Chief Creative Office at Portas, will open the BRC Summer School this June.
This is celebrating its 100th anniversary since it was founded in 1923.
Portas will speak to around 100 retail delegates about how the future of retail requires not only striving for profit, but also connecting to consumers’ values of people and planet.
It is not the first time she has spoken at the Summer School, having previously delivered the keynote speech in 1995.
2,000…Miigle+ has announced the growth of its sustainable shopping marketplace to 2,000 brands, across 12 categories.
By downloading the firm’s AI driven Chrome browser extension, consumers will be presented with thousands of ethical brand alternatives from its directory, wherever they shop online.
Miigle+’s CEO and Founder Luc Berlin says: “The time and technology is right and ripe to make conscious shopping easy and fun - everyday. This new product development is a key milestone in our mission to turn consumerism into cause-sumerism.”
$12 million…Twinco Capital, a global supply chain finance solution that covers the production cycle from purchase order to final invoice payment, has closed a $12 million equity and debt round.
The investment was led by Quona Capital, and included participation from Working Capital, as well as existing investors Mundi Ventures and Finch Capital. Zubi Capital provided the venture debt portion.
The funds will be used to accelerate the company’s expansion within the major sourcing countries and strengthen its technology and data capabilities, in particular in relation to ESG.
$9.5 million…SYKY, a blockchain enabled luxury fashion platform, has closed a $9.5 million Series A funding round.
This was led by Alexis Ohanian's firm Seven Seven Six. The round was also funded by Brevan Howard Digital, Leadout Capital, First Light Capital Group, and Polygon Ventures.
SYKY, led by Alice Delahunt, the former Chief Digital & Content Officer at Ralph Lauren and Digital & Social Marketing Director at Burberry, is building a platform that will serve as an incubator, marketplace and social community for the next generation of designers and consumers.
£110.6 billion…Adobe has released UK online retail insights for the 2022 calendar year.
Based on Adobe Analytics data, the report covers tens of billions of visits to UK retail sites, 100 million SKUs, and 18 product categories.
The total amount spent online by consumers decreased by 8.6% compared to 2021, falling to £110.6 billion last year.
Despite the decline in annual spending – primarily driven by heavy discounting from retailers and consumers seeking out deals in response to the cost-of-living crisis – basket sizes grew.
The average number of items in each online order increased from 3.3 in 2021 to 3.4 in 2022.
18…Amazon Fresh UK has closed its Dalston, London location, less than 18 months after opening it in a blaze of autonomous retail glory.
Its first UK checkout-free store arrived in March 2021, in Ealing, west London.
It then quickly opened another 18, predominantly in the capital, and said lots more (100 or so) were in the pipeline.
Yet in August of last year, we reported that Amazon had slammed on the brakes, due to sales falling short of expectations and fit out costs being multiple times higher than with a standard location.
According to a report by The Sunday Times, the US giant was understood to have walked away from talks on dozens of sites, and stopped its search for more locations.
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