The latest from Amazon, Stripe, and Couche-Tard: last week’s biggest retail technology plays at a glance
RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, launches, deployments and pilots from the past seven days. Featuring Couche-Tard, Sass & Belle, Amazon, Stripe, Topps Tiles, and Fanatics.
Amazon
Amazon has opened Amazon Fresh checkout-free convenience stores in Croydon and Monument.
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.
Hawthorn Handmade
Hawthorn Handmade has deployed Brightpearl by Sage’s retail operating system, thus gaining access to an Inventory Planner Premium tool, Automation Engine, and a library of plug and play integrations.
The brand sells direct to consumers in the UK, the States, and Europe, via its own website, Etsy and Amazon, and is increasing its wholesale customer base with the likes of John Lewis and Waterstones.
After seeing a spike in DTC sales during the pandemic that allowed the firm to broaden its reach into international markets, Hawthorn Handmade reached a crossroads in its business journey, leading to the decision to upgrade its systems and remove the operational blockers preventing growth.
Sass & Belle
Sass & Belle is partnering with Akeneo, a specialist in product information management (PIM) and product experience management (PXM) solutions.
The brand operates a wholesale first strategy across Europe, selling through a network of retail stockists as well as a Direct To Consumer (DTC) offer via its e-commerce website in the UK.
It is currently undergoing a re-platforming implementation, migrating to BigCommerce via its systems integration partner Soace48.
The move, it says, to a SaaS led, microservice and app-based ecosphere will allow the e-commerce team more freedom to build in custom functionality, as well as setting the platform up for scale as the company eyes international growth.
A key part of the migration will be to update the existing PIM capabilities, which currently run from the enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution and don’t offer the robustness, scale or flexibility needed to meet Sass & Belle’s growth ambitions.
Couche-Tard
Amazon and Stripe
Stripe and Amazon have announced an expanded global partnership.
Under the new agreement, Stripe becomes a strategic partner for Amazon in the US, Europe, and Canada, processing a “significant” portion of the e-commerce giant’s total payments volume across its businesses, including Prime, Audible, Kindle, Amazon Pay, and Buy With Prime.
Stripe will also expand its use of AWS, the firm’s cloud infrastructure provider.
Amazon started working with the FinTech in 2017 as it looked to accelerate market expansion in Asia and Europe, and support Prime Day, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday purchases around the world.
Topps Tiles
UK retailer Topps Tiles is boosting its fleet delivery capabilities with Descartes Systems Group’s cloud-based route planning and optimisation solution.
By doing so, it says it is decreasing the average kilometres driven per delivery route by two percent and gaining a better understanding of the potential impact of changes to its delivery strategies.
Six Nations Rugby and Fanatics
Six Nations Rugby and Fanatics, a digital sports platform and specialist in licensed sports merchandise, have announced an exclusive partnership that will see the latter launch and run the official Six Nations Rugby online store for fans ahead of the 2023 tournaments.
The store, which is now live, will offer fans a range of officially licensed products, including jerseys, training and lifestyle wear.
As part of the partnership 2022 RTIH Innovation Awards nominee Fanatics will exclusively manufacture Six Nations Rugby apparel and outerwear, as well as headwear including branded caps and beanies.
The tie up, which will run until 2028, will include the Guinness Men’s Six Nations, the TikTok Women’s Six Nations, Under-20s and Under-18s tournaments and the Autumn Nations Series. Six Nations Rugby fans will have access to Fanatics’ Cloud Commerce platform.
CJ Lang & Son
CJ Lang & Son, the wholesaler for SPAR in Scotland, and the largest Scottish convenience store franchise with over 300 locations across the country, has selected RELEX to automate and optimise its supply chain processes.
The latter will deliver integrated store and DC forecasting and replenishment, as well as improved allocations and promotional forecasting for CJ Lang’s company owned stores and distribution centre.
It will also drive improved order accuracy, sharing of forecasts to suppliers, and fresh assortment optimisation.
Continue reading…