Featuring Ikea, Tesco, and Sam’s Club: 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 Tesco Whoosh, Amazon One, Panera, Prada Group, Sports Direct, Amazon, foodpanda, Levi’s, and Flash Coffee.
Levi Strauss & Co.
Levi Strauss & Co. is gearing up to test customisable AI generated models through a partnership with Lalaland.ai.
It says that the tech would allow for products to be seen on a wider range of body types, skin tones, ages and sizes.
“While AI will likely never fully replace human models for us, we are excited for the potential capabilities this may afford us for the consumer experience,” says Dr. Amy Gershkoff Bolles, Global Head of Digital and Emerging Technology Strategy at Levi Strauss & Co.
“We see fashion and technology as both an art and a science, and we’re thrilled to be partnering with Lalaland.ai, a company with such high quality technology that can help us continue on our journey for a more diverse and inclusive customer experience.”
Tesco
Tesco reports that its rapid delivery service, Whoosh, is now available from 1,000 Express stores across the UK.
This first launched in May 2021 and is now available from half of Tesco’s estate of Express convenience stores across the UK, serving 55% of UK households.
The Hammersmith Olympia Express in London became the 1,000th location to offer rapid grocery delivery to the door when it launched recently.
Whoosh offers customers the chance to order food or snacks from a curated list of 2,500 to 4,500 essential products in as little as 30 minutes, with delivery set at £2.99 for orders that cost £15 or more.
Tesco claims that the immediacy of the service and convenience of home delivery is popular with customers looking for things like a quick and easy meal deal or last minute purchases.
It has been looking at ways to improve the customer experience, with new features on the app such as 15 minute delivery window estimates and live tracking of the rider on a map.
Joe Browns
UK-based retailer Joe Browns has partnered with MHR to streamline its HR processes through the latter’s People First solution.
Sophie Metcalf, Head of HR at Joe Browns, says: “Given our goal to double our team, we knew our existing HR solution was not up to the task.”
“After trialling People First and being impressed with its functionality and capabilities, it was obvious that we’d found exactly what we were looking for and we decided to sign a partnership with MHR.”
“We are looking forward to working together as we integrate People First into the business and develop our partnership over the next five years.”
BedKingdom
UK-based online retailer, BedKingdom, has selected Fresh Relevance’s platform to power personalised experiences for its customers across its website and email marketing.
ESW
ESW has announced its availability in the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, an online store providing applications and services for use on Azure.
Azure customers can now tap ESW’s suite of solutions to enable cross-border expansion, covering everything from compliance, data security, fraud protection, taxes and tariffs to checkout, delivery, returns, customer service and demand generation.
Globe Life Field
Two convenience oriented foodservice outlets are now open at Globe Life Field, home of the Texas Rangers – and they are the first in a Dallas area sports and entertainment venue equipped with Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology and Amazon One.
The outlets, which are branded Express Grill and operated by Delaware North, are located near sections 108 and 124.
Offerings include cheeseburgers, hot dogs, bratwurst, sausage and corn dogs, along with an assortment of packaged beer, spiked seltzers, soda, bottled water, chips, candies and sundries.
Those visiting the stores can insert their credit card or hover their palm at the entry gates to shop.
foodpanda
Gogoro and Cycle & Carriage Singapore (C&C) have announced a partnership with food delivery platform foodpanda involving a battery swapping pilot that will support smart electric two-wheel vehicles for last mile deliveries in Singapore.
Gogoro and C&C have partnered to introduce a new approach to electric refuelling for two-wheel delivery fleets using the former’s six second Swap & Go battery swapping.
Insights from the foodpanda trial will be used to guide next steps to accelerate the adoption of sustainable mobility in Singapore.
BaxterStorey
BaxterStorey has opened a new store leveraging Just Walk Out technology, making it the first hospitality business in the UK to adopt the Amazon checkout-free solution.
Located at the latter’s London headquarters in Shoreditch, Social Bee aims to offer a fast and frictionless shopping experience for employees by eliminating queues.
In a LinkedIn post, Craig Clarke, Principal, GTM - Just Walk Out Technology at Amazon, said: “Great to see this store launch and the collaboration from teams across Amazon and BaxterStorey.”
Flash Coffee
Frontline employee experience platform specialist, YOOBIC, has added Flash Coffee to its client roster.
Founded in 2019, Flash Coffee now operates 250 stores across six countries, with plans to further expand across Asia Pacific.
It says that, with YOOBIC’s tech, it aims to empower its employees to perform at their best and provide exceptional customer experiences by providing them with everything they need in one place.
Sports Direct
Sports Direct has opened a five floor Manchester flagship store, featuring inurface media’s AV solutions.
Said installation features 104 individual displays - 29 LCD and 68 LED displays, including the largest fixed indoor screen within a retail store in Manchester.
The store also contains 181 sqm of LEDs, which is almost enough to fill an entire singles tennis court, as well as five interactive tablets, two projectors, and interactive jump booths.
A 22.5sqm COB LED archway welcomes consumers into the location, followed by LED rafts and tickers - the displays comprise 35,841,664 LED pixels.
The jump booths will play on users' sporting competitiveness and measure just how high they can jump using body recognition technology. This then creates a slow motion playback and allows individuals to cement their positions on a leader board and take the content away with them.
Hang tough, meanwhile, is a bespoke unit that captures how long customers can hang, with displays featuring a countdown timer, personal score and a leadership board for all to see.
Prada Group
Prada Group and Adobe have announced an enhanced partnership spanning the former’s range of brands, including Prada, Miu Miu, Church’s, Car Shoe, Pasticceria Marchesi, and Luna Rossa.
Prada Group will leverage the Adobe Real-Time Customer Data Platform and Adobe Journey Optimizer, part of Adobe Experience Cloud, to combine vast amounts of existing data, with the aim of creating unified customer profiles and delivering personalised experiences across any channel in real-time.
Customers who have opted in will enable sales assistants to know when they visit a store and their preferences.
For example, a person who has researched a bag online may be invited to see the bag’s latest seasonal colours in person, where a sales assistant will be ready to provide a tailor made experience. After leaving the store, the customer will receive recommendations based on their purchase, in-store experience, and online profile.
Panera
Panera is boosting its MyPanera programme with palm recognition service Amazon One’s newly launched loyalty linking capability.
Panera is the first restaurant chain to offer this.
Those who choose to enrol in Amazon One and link their MyPanera account hover their palm over the Amazon One device, and a Panera associate will be able to welcome them by name. Guests can choose to use the service for loyalty linking, payment, or both.
This is launching at two Panera bakery-cafes in the St. Louis area (Town and Country and Bridgeton locations), and will become available at additional locations in the coming months.
Sam’s Club
Sam's Club, a division of Walmart and a membership warehouse club, reports that advertisers can now attribute in-club purchases to their search ads.
This, it claims, means Sam’s Club is among the first and possibly the only retail media platform to connect search and sponsored product ads to offline sales.
Because of the real-time nature of consumer search, advertisers have had longstanding challenges attributing sales to specific campaigns. In-store attribution was especially difficult.
Sam’s Club Member Access Platform (MAP) has real-time, first-party omnichannel data on member transactions, including in-club, in-app and web.
"Sam's Club MAP is opening up a new era of transparency and efficiency in advertising," says Lex Josephs, Vice President and General Manager at Sam's Club Member Access Platform.
"Now, because of our unique knowledge of our members, we’re able to offer true closed-loop attribution for both online and offline sales. This gives advertisers unmatched visibility into the results of their search and sponsored product campaigns at a time when they need to make fewer resources go further."
Ulla Johnson
Womenswear brand, Ulla Johnson, has partnered with Archive to launch Ulla Johnson PreLoved.
This facilitates peer-to-peer sales, with Archive’s technology automatically adding company approved photographs and item descriptions.
Customers who sell their Ulla Johnson pieces through the platform can choose the price (a recommendation will be provided) and whether to receive 70% of that back in cash, or 100% in credit for the brand.
A Heart's Desire feature, meanwhile, lets people put in requests for the Ulla Johnson team to source past-season items. The aim is to provide resale shoppers with a personal stylist shopping or VIP service type experience.
Ikea Egypt
Paymob and Ikea Egypt have announced a partnership to offer the latter’s customers a wider range of payment options.
This will see the introduction of the likes of digital wallets, bank offered easy payment plans (EPP) and consumer finance options, in addition to cards.
Agility Robotics
Agility Robotics has unveiled the next generation of Digit, pitched as the first human centric, multi-purpose robot made for logistics work.
Digit is designed to go where people go and do useful work safely in spaces designed for humans, starting with bulk material handling within warehouses and distribution centres.
Jack Wolfskin
Jack Wolfskin has teamed up with PPDS, the exclusive global provider of Philips digital signage, interactive displays, direct view LED and professional TV products, to install a series of LED and digital signage solutions inside its newly refurbished flagship store in Frankfurt.
The retailer partnered with PPDS and Hamburg-based integration specialist, pilot Screentime, on this project.
This included the installation of an immersive 7.5 m2 Philips L-Line 7000 Series LED wall into the store, used to engage customers and draw passing crowds inside.
To complement this screen, a 55” 4K Ultra HD Philips Q-Line digital signage display was strategically placed to showcase the sustainability features of the store and its products.
This was integrated into the store’s wider content system, which includes interactive touchscreens and storytelling experiences that aim to set the mood for adventure.
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