Goodbye NRF, hey RTS 2023: RTIH presents the six biggest retail technology news stories of the week

It’s Friday, the weekend is almost upon us, so let’s kick back and reflect on another eventful week for the retail systems space. Here's your briefing on the most important stories from the past five days, including Amazon UK,  Żabka Group, Emperia, Mercaux, and Retail Technology Show 2023.

1. Autonomous retail technology will push things forward: Żabka Group reviews its time at NRF 2023

Żabka Group was last week out in force at NRF 2023 in New York. 

Żabka Nano, an autonomous store concept that has been developed under the umbrella of Żabka Future for over a year and a half, was featured at the Microsoft booth.

And now Patryk Powierża, Growth Lead at Żabka Polska, has taken to LinkedIn to sum up the firm’s time at the show.

Autonomous technology will drive the retail industry, he argued.

“We have had great talks with worldwide retailers. All of them were interested in the details of approaching autonomous technology from the retailer's perspective and our plans for how to scale it up. Most of them were from Asia and North and South America,” he wrote.

He added: “The doors of our Nano store were opened about 1,200 times. Most of the visits included groups of about five to eight people.”

“We can say that a few thousand people had a chance to check the Żabka Nano store. From unofficial info, we know that the Microsoft booth was one of the most interesting during the whole event.”

Powierża concluded: “Opening the pop-up store in NYC was a challenge. I used to compare our store to Ikea Retail, but sending a store from Poland to the USA wasn’t an easy job.”

“The store was assembled in three days and it was fully functional. It only proves how flexible our technology is.”

2, Teaming up: Retail Technology Show and the BRC announce innovation partnership

Retail Technology Show and British Retail Consortium have announced a strategic partnership which will showcase the role of innovation in driving the future of retail.

This will see the latter lead a keynote session at Retail Technology Show, taking place at London’s Olympia on 26th-27th April, as part of a conference programme that also includes Farfetch, Alibaba, Deliveroo and Currys.

Andrew Opie, Director of Food and Sustainability at the BRC, will be discussing the key sustainability questions retailers should be asking themselves in 2023 on day one of the show.

Dr Kris Hamer, Director of Insight at the BRC, meanwhile, will join the closing keynote panel discussion, also on day one, which explores the key innovations impacting retail today and how this will evolve as we look ahead to 2028.

3. Amazon UK opens Just Walk Out tech powered Amazon Fresh store in Croydon after Dalston closure

Amazon has opened an Amazon Fresh checkout-free convenience store in Croydon.

This can be found at Unit 1, Ruskin Square, Croydon, London, CR0 2WF, and is open from 7:00 am to 11:00 pm, seven days a week.

In addition to a convenience grocery store offering, customers can also pick up items purchased on Amazon.co.uk at an Amazon Hub, and return items without needing to package the product or print a shipping label. 

On Saturday, RTIH exclusively reported that Amazon Fresh had closed its Dalston, London location, less than 18 months after opening it in a blaze of autonomous retail glory.

4. Mercaux Pulse of Retail report showcases retailers’ digital transformation strategies in 2023

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.

Additionally, the survey found that composable architectures are important for 91% of respondents, suggesting that retailers are recognising the need for flexibility and scalability in their technology systems, in order to quickly adapt to changing customer needs and market trends.

Meanwhile, transitioning from legacy to next generation Point of Sale (PoS) systems is important for 79% of retailers.

However, the survey revealed that just 11% of retailers currently offer a frictionless omnichannel experience, where customers can seamlessly transition from shopping online to in-store, and vice versa.

5. Amazon UK fulfilment centre workers in Coventry make history as they go on strike

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 have 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.” 

6. Emperia raises $10 million to further develop its virtual store management SaaS platform

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.

Emperia's clients include Dior, Bloomingdales and Lacoste. It was launched by fashion and retail specialist Olga Dogadkina and VR innovation expert Simonas Holcmann in 2019.

It will use this fresh funding to grow its team, develop its virtual store SaaS platform and deepen the capabilities of the data suite that powers it, with the aim of accelerating global market presence .

It also plans to utilise virtual store customer data to provide retailers with even better tools with which to personalise the customer experience.

Emperia will also work with partners to bring various global virtual e-commerce solutions under one roof; leveraging the fast growing Web3 ecosystem and its partners’ brand and retail technologies to deliver “game changing customer experiences”.