The latest from Puma, Bestseller, and SAXX: 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 Amazon, Ikea, Pacsun, Emperia, Verifone, ShipStation, and UPS.
Joseph Joseph
OpenBlend has been chosen by houseware brand, Joseph Joseph to support employee experiences and drive retention.
Joseph Joseph says it was impressed by OpenBlend’s ability to facilitate manager-employee conversations that go beyond objective setting and performance ratings to include broader discussions around wellbeing, motivation, and development.
Headquartered in London, UK, Joseph Joseph employs 200 people around the world. The company’s product lines are available in major department stores and independent homeware retailers, as well as via the its e-commerce channel.
Puma
Orchard Road, Singapore now plays host to the first Puma flagship store in Southeast Asia.
Puma chose for this location the LUMOS LED display system, designed and developed by UK-based Esprit Digital.
Ikea
Meta and Ikea have partnered with Stockholm-based immersive tech company Warpin Reality to put on an interactive augmented reality experience for families visiting Ikea stores across Sweden.
Called The Little Adventure (“Lilla Äventyret” in Swedish), the AR game can be opened as a filter on Instagram and aims to increase interest and knowledge about life in the ocean, with children able to (virtually) swim with various sea creatures and learn about them.
It also encourages players to engage with themes like littering and pollution prevention, with all three companies involved committed to increasing plastic recycling (for instance, Ikea’s Blåvingad collection from last year).
Ikea Retail Sweden has become the first retailer globally to explore the Meta SPARK AR solution on such a large scale, with the campaign opening across 21 stores this month.
Verifone and Lacework
Payment solution provider, Verifone, has selected the Lacework Polygraph Data Platform as the company moves to a cloud native DevSecOps model.
Verifone is an electronic payment and Point of Sale technology provider to a number of retailers, including Spar and B&Q.
Its platform processes 12+ billion transactions annually, accounting for nearly 46% of the world’s non-cash payments. Given this scale, the company needed a dedicated security platform built for cloud native environments.
bodo and COAT Paints
bodo is partnering with COAT Paints to offer a sustainable delivery option in London.
This is available seven days a week.
Customers within the M25 can benefit from the same-day delivery service, while one-hour slots are available based on the address radius from Hackney. The qualifying postcodes will be presented to customers as an option at checkout.
RESPONSIBLE
RESPONSIBLE, a reCommerce circularity platform, has teamed with Sorted on overseas returns, solving new challenges brought on by Brexit and rising customer expectations.
RESPONSIBLE partners with premium fashion, streetwear and outdoor brands, such as RÆBURN and Haglöfs. It refurbishes and resells brand products, as well as buying back unwanted clothes from customers to refurbish and resell.
With Brexit rewriting the rules of logistics, Belfast-based RESPONSIBLE was confronted with the challenge of conducting returns from Northern Ireland to Great Britain without any roadblocks.
With its delivery experience platform, Sorted was not only able to close this gap, but simplify the returns process, cutting out complex and manual processes and automating the sending of return labels.
Cara & Co
North American bead and crafting retailer, Cara & Co, is adopting Inventory Planner by Sage for smarter seasonal forecasting.
In the years since the e-store launched from a basement in 2013, Cara & Co has experienced significant growth.
To coincide with its increasing order volume and the opening of a new HQ and warehouse space, the brand looked to also upgrade its inventory planning intelligence.
Inventory Planner provides real-time inventory planning and automated, integrated demand forecasting software for e-commerce stores.
In opting the tech, Cara & Co says that it has gained access to its full range of data fuelled inventory planning intelligence - including full inventory visibility, intuitive reporting, sales forecasting capability and purchasing recommendations.
Bestseller
Nedap has been selected by Bestseller to deploy its iD Cloud RFID platform across the retailer’s Vero Moda stores.
Bestseller completed the roll-out to 380 stores in January.
Austin FC and Amazon
Major League Soccer’s Austin FC has partnered with Amazon to equip the ATX Market at Q2 Stadium with Just Walk Out technology.
This makes it the first soccer specific stadium in the world to introduce the checkout-free solution.
Those visiting the aforementioned store can use their credit card at the ATX Market entry gates to begin their experience.
Once inside, anything a guest selects from the shelf is automatically added to their virtual cart, and anything placed back on the shelf comes out of said cart.
When fans are done, they will be able to leave the store without waiting in line to check-out. Upon exit, the credit card used at entry will be charged for the items they left the store with.
The ATX Market is located near The Zebra Gate at Q2 Stadium’s northwest corner.
Leyland SDM and Gophr
London-based decorating and DIY specialist, Leyland SDM, has announced a partnership with Gophr, offering its customers nationwide, same day delivery.
The partnership marks an expansion of Gophr Trades, a specialist delivery service for the construction and DIY industries as well as larger construction and related trade businesses.
Gophr will provide a same day service via a ship from store model, across Leyland’s 33 store estate, seven days a week with no limit on product type, size of order or distance from store.
SAXX
Men’s underwear and apparel brand SAXX has launched what is pitched as the first ever dedicated virtual store by an underwear company.
This is an immersive experience in the metaverse, powered by Emperia, that allows shoppers to browse three-dimensional items in a 360-degree showroom.
The store exclusively features underwear, tops and swimwear from SAXX’s DropTempTM collection, which uses proprietary evaporative fabric to cool the body.
Upon entering, shoppers are transported to an oxymoronic environment where it’s snowing in the desert, highlighting the cooling qualities of DropTempTM. A short pathway lined with shoppable product displays leads to an open air showroom.
More items can be found around the showroom’s swimming pool, including underwear, short and long sleeve tops, polos and hoodies with UPF 50 that can be worn in the water.
Shoppers are encouraged to “dive in” to the pool, which unlocks another retail area consisting of a variety of prints from SAXX’s swimwear line.
ShipStation and UPS
Cloud-based e-commerce shipping solution, ShipStation, has announced that UPS is live on its carrier services platform in the UK.
This gives UK merchants using ShipStation access to UPS’s domestic and international shipping services at discounted rates.
They will also have the option to drop off at a growing network of nearly 35,000 UPS Access Point locations across Europe.
Armani beauty
Visitors to the Berlin International Film Festival will be able to enjoy a new shopping experience, with Armani beauty opening a cashier-less pop-up store at the heart of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz.
From 16th-26th February, film fans and passers-by can test and buy a variety of fragrances and make-up products in a set up made possible by grab and go technology provider payfree and Avery Dennison, a specialist in digital identification solutions.
It is the second time Armani beauty has partnered up with payfree and Avery Dennison to implement an RFID-based check-out.
In November 2022, they showcased their cashierless pop-up store-concept in Dusseldorf – the first ever in the beauty sector.
Dimona
Dimona, a provider of gift store merchandise and souvenirs, has announced the launch of MishiPay scan and go and self-checkout technology at its Space Adventure Exhibition gift store in Boston, MA.
Customers can now experience a cashless shopping experience with no checkout lines or cashiers.
With MishiPay technology, they can scan items as they add them to their cart, and checkout using their mobile device. The self-checkout system allows customers to scan and bag their items at their own pace, without the need for assistance from a cashier.
The store is also equipped with two self-checkout kiosks to assist customers who can’t use their phone to checkout. MishiPay covers 100% of the store transactions.
Pacsun
Pacsun has launched its second virtual experience Pacsun Los Angeles Tycoon on Roblox.
The experience pays homage to the brand’s Southern California roots by offering the community the opportunity to build their own map of SoCal, including initial builds in Downtown LA, Santa Monica and Hollywood, with future expansions to come.
It comes almost a year after the release of PacWorld, Pacsun's interactive mall experience.
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