Celebrating outstanding e-commerce leaders: 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 Amazon UK, IMRG, AutoStore, Walmart, WeChat, Tesco, Trigo, and Carrefour.
3 and 4,000…Tesco has opened its latest GetGo location, Aston University Express. Powered by Trigo technology, this is located in Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city.
The university location is the final instalment of Tesco’s announced three autonomous stores deployment throughout the UK, the other sites being Chiswell Street Express in central London, and Fulham Reach Express in Parrs Way, London.
It is the largest autonomous Tesco store to date at over 4,000 square metres.
50,000 and 100,000…Swedish online pharmacy, Apotea, automated its logistics centre in autumn 2022 to deliver approximately 50,000 orders a day to its customers.
Following cooperation between Element Logic, AutoStore, RightHand Robotics and Apotea, the centre fully integrated eOperator piece-picking robots with an AutoStore solution, pitched as a world first.
“During the pandemic, we looked at expanding the capacity to go from delivering 50,000 orders to 100,000 orders,” says Pär Svärdson, CEO at Apotea.
“That's when we started looking at Element Logic and AutoStore. When we thought of installing AutoStore, it was precisely the ability to be able to robotise the picking that was one of the driving forces.”
10%…More than two-thirds of US retailers plan to increase their investment in technology over the next three years, with nearly three in ten set to up spending by at least 10%, according to a new report from Coresight Research.
This notes that retailers are facing a host of challenges, including intense competition, macroeconomic headwinds and shifting consumer preferences, and they also need to grow revenues, manage costs and improve efficiency.
They must, therefore, address crucial business components and identify solutions to drive growth and weather near- and long-term challenges.
In its report, which can be downloaded here, Coresight Research examines retailers’ rapid investment in in-store technology and the implications, leveraging findings from a survey of US-based IT decision makers conducted in November 2022.
It says that retailers can tap business gains through technology solutions, such as by leveraging cloud computing, which enables them to turn fixed costs into variable costs, access near-unlimited computing power and develop new functions more quickly and easily.
Yet the cloud on its own may not be enough; retailers also need to deploy computing power closer to physical stores, for example, on store premises, which is also known as on-the-edge computing, to enhance security and provide a quicker response for functions such as computer vision, which are sensitive to delays in the network (i.e., latency).
300…US-based Southeastern Grocers is expanding its online shopping service with the launch of curbside pickup in nearly 300 Winn-Dixie stores and Harveys Supermarket locations throughout Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi.
3…Walmart is to close three of its US technology hubs, asking hundreds of workers to relocate to keep their jobs.
Nearly all technology employees across the retail giant will be expected to work in its offices for at least two days a week.
The hubs are in Austin, Texas, in Carlsbad, California and in Portland, Oregon. Operations will move to hubs including one in San Bruno, California or the company's headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas.
62%…More than half of fashion retailers find themselves stuck with excess stock after a disappointing start to 2023, according to research by Inventory Planner.
It found that 62% of apparel sellers still have goods they cannot sell after January discounting.
And the ‘returns tsunami’ which traditionally hits hardest in January and early February will only make the problem worse. Last year 22% of excess stock was written off altogether by clothing retailers.
+5%, +35%, +1% and -10.5%,,,For all the tumult of the past few years, UK online sales have actually grown by a similar amount that might have been expected if there was no Covid-19 pandemic, which drove huge volumes of orders online due to the lockdowns.
This analysis is drawn from the IMRG Online Retail Index, which tracks online sales for 200 retailers on a sample size of £23 billion in 2022.
In 2019, the year before the pandemic, growth for the total online market was +5% year-on-year (YoY).
In 2020, the year when the lockdowns first started, it rocketed up to +35%; a rate of increase so vast that many retailers struggled to cope with such a sudden upturn in volume.
Since then, growth has been negative each month since April 2021 (with the exception of November 2022, when it was less than 1%) and 2022 as a whole was down -10.5% YoY.
23%…Data released by WeChat, the social media platform owned by Tencent, shows offline payment transaction volume of users during Chinese New Year increased by 23% year-on-year (YoY), reaching a peak on the last day of the holiday.
360…Amazon UK workers have announced a week long strike at the company’s Coventry warehouse.
More than 350 staff at the West Midland fulfilment centre will walk out on 28th February, 2nd March and from 13th to 17th March. This builds on them becoming the first Amazon workers in the UK to strike, on 25th January, in their fight for £15 per hour.
64% of e-commerce marketers haven’t measured their customer engagement processes in the past month, and 17% have never measured them at all.
That's according to new research from SALESmanago which surveyed 250 e-commerce marketers across Europe. This also found that 48% don’t think customer engagement metrics are important.
When asked about the main barrier to monitoring and understanding success metrics, a lack of internal resources was identified as the biggest hurdle (24%).
This was closely followed by a reluctance and lack of understanding from seniors (21%), as well as a lack of internal processes to measure customer engagement (20%). 35% think they need to improve the way they measure customer engagement and loyalty.
400…Wilko has rolled out a Click and Collect service to its 400+ stores.
Online purchases can be collected from stores in as little as three hours, at no extra charge.
This is an extension of a service that the retailer began offering from approximately 70 locations last year.
1…The first autonomous Carrefour Flash store has opened in Latin America.
Tapping Go2Future miniGO technology and using cameras on the ceiling and sensors integrated into the shelves, this is a 50 square metre store located in Argentina, in the town of Pilar, a province of Buenos Aires.
Via an app, the products that customers choose are automatically loaded into a virtual cart and payment is made upon leaving, without the need to use a traditional checkout. It is also possible to buy online and pick up in-store or request home delivery.
“We are excited to be able to implement innovative purchasing alternatives in Argentina,” says Pablo Lorenzo, CEO at Carrefour Argentina.
“We listen to our clients and customers and we know that speed and simplicity are essential characteristics when going to the stores. We seek to be up to the task and we hope that in Carrefour Flash they will find an ideal shopping experience.”
1…HelloFresh is trialling its own delivery fleet, pitched as a first in the UK recipe box provider category.
The six-month trial is operated out of the Beehive distribution centre in Nuneaton and will initially cover the Birmingham and the West Midlands conurbation area.
It offers customers in these areas the opportunity to select a premium 30 min delivery slot, with a simplified process for second delivery if the first delivery attempt is unsuccessful.
HelloFresh already delivers directly to customers in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, France and Australia.
30…Signifyd has announced the 2023 winners of its Most Influential in E-commerce award.
“It’s always a great day when we can recognise the extraordinary work of outstanding e-commerce leaders. But actually, we are the ones who are honoured to be working in the same industry and toward the same goals as this incredible group of creative leaders,” says Signifyd CEO Raj Ramanand.
“History has shown us that new challenges will appear, sometimes with little warning. Based on this year’s honourees and past honourees, I have no doubt e-commerce and retail leaders are up to the task.”
This year’s winners launched ambitious mobile apps, built stouter risk intelligence operations in the face of fraud innovation, expanded internationally, created richer loyalty experiences and launched creative ways to help customers discover the products that served their needs.
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