Including Navori Labs, TalkShopLive, and Secret Sales: 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 Walmart de Mexico y Centroamerica, Best Buy, Manna Drone Delivery, Monoprix, Halfords Group, and JD Sports.
173 and 180…Navori Labs has deployed a unified digital signage software and AI-based camera analytics solution for Walmart Connect, the omnichannel retail media business of Walmart de Mexico y Centroamerica.
This is now live across all 173 Walmart Supercenters in Mexico and 180 of 200 in-country Sam’s Club locations, with the remaining 20 stores to follow.
The Navori Labs QL digital signage and Aquaji analytics solution allows Walmart de Mexico y Centroamerica to gather customer engagement metrics and offer analytics, including shopper demographics, to DOOH advertising partners that advertise their brands across its in-store digital media networks.
$1.75 million…mirrAR, an Indian startup that specialises in augmented reality (AR) and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, has announced completion of its pre-series A capital raise of $1.75 million.
US-based Diaspark spearheaded the round, with participation from angel investors such as Aparna Chennapragada, CVP at Microsoft, Alagu Periyannan, Founder of BlueJeans by Verizon and Khadim Batti CEO and Co-founder Whatfix.
mirrAR’s technology enables brands and retailers to offer immersive 3D and 360-degree shopping experiences on websites, mobile apps, and social channels through the 3D Commerce Cloud offering.
Shoppers can virtually try on products or interact with them in their physical environment.
3…TalkShopLive is set to power a series of live shopping shows for Best Buy.
The three-part holiday shopping series kicked off this week and highlighted the best beauty and wellness tech products, live from the Best Buy Studios.
The events will broadcast on Best Buy’s TalkShopLive channel and will be hosted by the retailer’s Virtual Sales Experts.
Each show will feature tech from some of Best Buy’s newest categories like beauty and wellness, e-transportation, outdoor living, pet tech and even a few not-so-techy things like LEGO.
Additionally, during each show, viewers will see some limited time deals and one person will have a chance to win a $200 Best Buy gift card.
£184.55…UK consumers aren’t letting the cost-of-living crisis interfere with their Christmas spending with the average spend for Black Friday 2023 expected to reach £184.55 – up from £171.66 in 2022, according to Wunderman Thompson Commerce and Technology.
The company surveyed 2,025 online shoppers.
It found that 54% of consumer spend this Black Friday period is predicted to be on Christmas presents.
And the trend towards online shopping hasn’t diminished now that bricks and mortar stores are back to business in a post-Covid world.
76% of Black Friday spend is set to be online this year. All of which will be music to the ears of marketplaces, spearheaded by giants like Amazon who remain the top choice for deals, accounting for 54% of all Black Friday spend.
But all is not lost for Amazon’s competitors. Amongst the 16-24 age group specifically, its stronghold has become weaker, capturing only 37% of the market share.
2 million…TalkShopLive reports over two million views and counting for its recent Good Housekeeping tie up.
This saw the latter team up with the online livestream home shopping platform to introduce its first ever GH Live Shopping Week, where people could score exclusive deals on gift worthy products from celebs and influencers.
From 9th October through to 14th October, it was possible to tune in every day to the experience on goodhousekeeping.com.
Things kicked off with Dolly Parton and the chance to nab a copy of her very first rock album, Rockstar, and her upcoming book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones.
Elsewhere in the schedule, Good Housekeeping hosted an exclusive reveal of select products from Paris Hilton’s new cookware line with Walmart.
4…Secret Sales, a platform and marketplace for off-price retail in fashion, sportswear and beauty, has announced its expansion into Ireland.
Shoppers in Ireland will now have direct access to over £700 million worth of off-price inventory on Secretsales.com from 450 premium brands, including Dsquared2, Plein Sport, Aquascutum, Cavalli, Diesel, Asics, Hackett, Ted Baker, and Superdry.
This launch supports Secret Sales’ strategy of establishing itself as the go-to destination for non-full price retail in all main European markets by 2025, following the acquisition of Spanish e-commerce firm Dreivip.
The initiative kicked off the European company’s first US operations, where it will be serving residents at Pecan Square by Hillwood Communities.
They will have the opportunity to order a range of food and beverages from both national and local retailers, including a wide selection of Halloween chocolates and candies.
“After over four years of operations and over 150,000 flights logged in Europe, we are excited to be touching down in the United States to offer the residents of Dallas/Fort Worth a lightning quick and sustainable home delivery service,” says Andrew Patton, Head of US for Manna Drone Delivery.
“We are taking Halloween to new heights, with a fun new way for kids to trick or treat - especially when the weather isn’t very Halloween compatible.”
30,000 and 250…A2Z Smart Technologies Corp. reports that, further to announcements of its channel partnership with IR2S intended to deploy 30,000 smart carts across retail chains in France between 2023 and 2026, A2Z Cust2mate has received a first purchase order involving Monoprix stores.
Monoprix operates a portfolio of over 700 locations and operates as part of the Casino Group, which has a global footprint spanning over 11,500 locations worldwide.
The initial phase of the partnership involves the delivery of 250 smart carts, with anticipation for deployment at 20 select Monoprix locations starting within the current quarter of 2023.
$9 billion…This Friday will see Walmart’s largest single day roll-out of re-modelled stores in company history.
The projects (involving 117 locations) represent more than half a billion dollars in capital investments across 30 US states.
Associates and customers will be welcomed into the improved Supercenters and Neighborhood Markets with ceremonies, ribbon cuttings and family friendly activities to commemorate the occasion.
“We’re investing more than $9 billion over a two-year period to upgrade and modernise more than 1,400 of our stores across the US,” says John Furner, CEO at Walmart U.S.
"With nearly 90% of the US population living within 10 miles of a Walmart, we understand how important our local stores are to customers and communities, and these construction investments allow us to create more local jobs and make it easier for our associates to get customers what they want, when they want it.”
5%…Halfords Group, a UK-based provider of motoring and cycling products and services, reports that Bridgestone has acquired a 5% stake in its automotive Software as a service (SaaS) venture, Avayler, valuing the business that was launched in July 2021, at over $60 million.
The agreement will allow also Bridgestone to leverage Avayler’s products in retail stores and mobile applications.
The Avayler solution was developed in-house by Halfords to manage automotive services across its garage network and increasing number of mobile vans.
As well as streamlining customer bookings – online, over the phone, and in-store – and job execution inside the garage, its mobile capability uses algorithms to instantly calculate the available customer time slots according to the nearest van location and parts availability.
4…American Freight, a US-based retailer of furniture, mattresses and appliances, is expanding into Utah for the first time with the opening of four new stores in the Salt Lake City metro area.
Visitors will be able to visualise how furniture will look in their homes before purchasing using AR technology on the company’s website.
Following the first opening in Ogden, American Freight will open three additional locations in Layton, Orem and Logan.
€50 million…Twinco Capital has secured a €50 million debt facility from BBVA Spark (part of Spain’s second largest bank, BBVA) to scale its proposition.
The Amsterdam and Madrid-based FinTech, which was founded in 2019, works with large corporations, mostly in the retail and apparel sectors, and offers funding to their suppliers worldwide, advancing up to 60% of the purchase order value upfront and paying the remainder upon delivery.
It uses machine learning to assess the quality and strength of the commercial relationships between these buyers and their suppliers.
10 million…JD Sports has turned the arrival of a giant fluffy Croc at its Arndale, Manchester store into a social media success story.
In a LinkedIn post, Lauren C., Social Media Executive at JD Sports, said: “Mega proud of this one. Ten million views later. Last week a giant fluffy Croc arrived in the JD Arndale store, immediately I’m thinking of how we can get it on social.”
She added: “I saw a trending sound about (Formula 1 driver) Lando Norris floating around TikTok and thought it would fit perfectly around my idea. A few days later, I’ve surpassed ten million views on the video.”
“McLaren Automotive (Norris’ team) dropped a comment on how they thought Lando would love the content, so I sent him a pair of Crocs to the McLaren HQ.”
“Over 1.4 million likes and 10,000 comments later, the sentiment has been super positive and just shows the hype around Crocs at the moment.”
This comes as the BHF says the sale of menswear has increased by 35% from the previous year.
The poll, which involved 2,000 male consumers across the UK, also revealed that: those aged 55 and over are the most likely to do so (77%); Of those who have donated clothes to charity shops before, one in ten said they only give brand new clothes; 22% of UK men aged 25-34 give items to charity they’ve only worn once.
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