Amazon shutters eight Go convenience stores: 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 Ocula Technologies, Patchworks, Amazon, and the 2022 RTIH Retail Technology Innovations Report.
50…RTIH is pleased to announce the launch of its first ever Retail Technology Innovations Report, sponsored by Metapack.
Available for download here, free of charge, this highlights the top 50 retail tech plays of 2022 as decided by our Editor, Scott Thompson, and an independent advisory panel.
£10 million…Ocula Technologies has received new investment from Lloyds Banking Group and its FinTech Investment Team.
The SaaS startup aims to let retailers harness the power of AI to enable data driven decisions and quickly optimise its platform.
It says that it wants to give retailers without in-house data science teams, the ability to access the benefits of AI and not get left behind by the likes of Amazon and Alibaba.
Lloyds Banking Group’s investment is in the form of new equity capital and completes a funding round previously announced in November 2022.
Less than two years since its formation it values Ocula on a post new money basis at £10 million. The company has worked with retailers such as Hornby Hobbies and AO World.
5…The Eighth Notch (T8N), a technology platform focused on sustainable logistics for last mile deliveries, has announced the expansion of its board of directors.
In come Duncan Angove, CEO at Blue Yonder and board member at Honeywell, Sasha Brown: Partner at the Ecosystem Integrity Fund, board member at Ambient Photonics, For Days, Upflex, and Opti, and observer on the boards of Bluon and Energicity, and Miron Washington: CDO at Parts Town and previously the VP of Customer Experience at Home Depot.
They join the following members of T8N management to comprise a five person board: Jamie Sapp, CEO and Founder; Lenny Jordan, Head of Final Mile and Founding Member.
1…SPAR Switzerland and AVIA have opened the first 24/7 SPAR Express forecourt store operating without onsite personnel at Zurich’s Sihlqui bus terminal.
£4 million…E-commerce integration provider, Patchworks, has received a further £4 million in funding from Gresham House Ventures.
This follows investments totalling £4.8 million over the past two years, bringing the total investment to £8.8 million since the firm’s first round in August 2021.
Patchworks is investing the cash on enhancing its low code/no code self-serve integration platform, completion of its microservice, API first, cloud native roadmap and further improvements within the professional services and support teams.
£8.4 billion…UK online spending was up 7% n February to £8.4 billion, reflecting an increase in buy now pay later use and a 3.7% rise in food prices, according to Adobe.
Mobile spending accounted for 60.4% of purchases – a 9.9% YoY increase in share.
$1.8 million…Bookshop.org, an online venture that aims to support independent bookshops, has completed a $1.8 million (£1.5 million) angel fundraising round, which will be used to add audiobooks and eBooks to its UK platform.
30…Starship Technologies’ robots have started on-demand food deliveries at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
30 of them are now delivering from Wendy’s, Bojangles and Shake Smart and will add more campus eateries throughout March, with 10 onboard by the end of the month.
The school’s nearly 30,000 students and faculty can now use the Starship app to order food and drinks from campus retailers to be delivered anywhere on campus, within minutes. The service works in conjunction with the student meal plan.
8…Amazon is to close eight of its Go convenience stores in the US.
It will shutter two locations in New York City, two in Seattle, and in San Francisco, on 1st April.
Amazon says it will work to help affected employees secure other roles at the company.
“Like any physical retailer, we periodically assess our portfolio of stores and make optimisation decisions along the way,” says an Amazon spokesperson.
“In this case, we’ve decided to close a small number of Amazon Go stores in Seattle, New York City, and San Francisco.”
“We remain committed to the Amazon Go format, operate more than 20 Amazon Go stores across the US, and will continue to learn which locations and features resonate most with customers as we keep evolving our Amazon Go stores.”
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