Immersive pop-ups and intelligent vending freezers: RTIH runs you through the week's coolest retail technology plays
RTIH Editor, Scott Thompson, brings you his top ‘future of retail’ systems launches and deployments from the past week, including Samsung, Outform, Coach, Quorn, Karakuri, Asda, Wayve, and Halfords.
Samsung
Samsung has launched an interactive and immersive pop-up roadshow in the UK, starting in Oxford, to highlight the ‘nightography’ camera and gaming capabilities of its new Galaxy S23 series.
The concept was created, designed and built by Outform.
Visitors were able to check-in to the experience by scanning a QR code through Outform’s PodDrop product, which entered them into a competition to win a new Galaxy S23.
The space then included a selfie booth with colour changing LEDs so that visitors could see the camera’s consistent quality in different light settings.
Photos could then be shared digitally whilst they received an instant print to take away, both of which were watermarked with the Galaxy S23 series name and Samsung branding.
Guests were also able to use the Galaxy S23 as a controller so that they could play the various games available on the device through Samsung’s 55” Odyssey Ark Gaming Monitor, giving them the opportunity to play on a bigger screen, entirely powered by the Galaxy S23 device.
In addition, visitors could explore Samsung Galaxy’s ecosystem of products through real-life demos supported by interactive screens to tell the brand story.
The pop-up then travelled to six other high streets and universities across Brierley Hill, Nottingham, Manchester, Cardiff, Southampton and Reading.
Quorn
Karakuri has announced a partnership with meat free brand Quorn.
This will see the latter utilise the former’s automated kitchen solutions, with the aim of “producing perfectly fried, high quality vegetarian and vegan protein alternatives from Quorn, in every QSR and fast casual kitchen”.
Quorn’s alternative meat products, such as nuggets, buttermilk fillets and wings, will be fried in Karakuri’s /FRYR solution.
Digital Sandwich project
A UK government backed consortium of food manufacturers, technology specialists and academics have announced the launch of Digital Sandwich following a two-year development project.
The platform has been developed to connect primary production and supply chains to retail to provide traceability and provenance of ingredients whilst increasing manufacturing productivity, improving processes and reducing waste across the supply chain.
The project serves as a national demonstrator of a digital agri-food supply chain, using sandwich manufacturing as the use case.
Designed to be an open platform, it has established a digital supply chain that paves the way for a wider ecosystem network and offers a low barrier approach so that supply chain organisations of all sizes and technological maturity can participate.
The project extends the use of IoT, blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to the ready-made food supply to ensure the traceability of every component ingredient in the supply chain – from primary production to retail.
The consortium of organisations behind the platform includes IMS Evolve, an IoT company; Raynor Foods, a sandwich supplier; University of Lincoln, University of Exeter, Digital Catapult, Sweetbridge, Crosspay, NetFoundry, INDUSTRIA Technology and R3.
It was backed by the UK government through its Innovate UK programme.
Baltic Petroleum
Baltic Petroleum, a gas station operators in Lithuania, has chosen Leafio technology for its convenience stores' inventory and merchandising operations.
This is a cloud-based solution that combines AI algorithms and automation of retail processes.
Running a chain of 84 petrol stations in Lithuania, Baltic Petroleum managers faced the need to unify approaches to stock replenishment and planogram creation.
They searched for in-depth, solid analytical tools for making informed managerial decisions.
Enter Leafio.
Selfly Store
Selfly Store, an intelligent vending company owned by Stora Enso, has announced the commercial launch of its latest product, the Selfly Freezer.
This is pitched as the first intelligent vending freezer on the market.
It is the latest addition to the Selfly Store Model 3 product family, which offers a complete self-service solution through hardware, cloud-based software, RFID tags, and a service network.
Using RFID technology, it provides real-time item level data analytics with the aim of optimising sales and operations while reducing food waste.
Coach
Coach has opened a Coach Play store in Singapore.
This is the first Asia location in a new series of immersive concept stores.
It lines up alongside launches in Tokyo's Harajuku and Salt Lake City’s City Creek, with more to come.
In a LinkedIn post, Giovanni Zaccariello, SVP Global Visual Experience at Coach, said: “Coach opens Coach Play Singapore in a traditional Shophouse. This is the third in a series of concept stores leaning into localisation and community.”
“This immersive experience includes a bespoke facade, a digital immersive room celebrating our heritage, our first Coach cafe, a local craftsmanship bar featuring a vintage shop and a unique sonic and smell identity.”
Asda and Wayve
Asda customers can now receive their shopping via a Wayve self-driving vehicle in what is pitched as the UK’s largest autonomous grocery home delivery trial.
In partnership with Wayve, the year long trial will give the supermarket the ability to autonomously deliver groceries to a catchment area of over 170,000 residents across 72,000 households in London.
The self-driving vehicles will join its existing online delivery operation at the Park Royal superstore in West London and have the capability to drive themselves to customers’ homes.
Asda Park Royal customers can place their next-day delivery orders online as usual, choosing from the full range of online products and selecting a delivery slot that suits them.
The only difference is they could be randomly selected to have their order delivered in a self-driving vehicle.
During the trial, both an Asda colleague and supervising Wayve safety driver will be in the vehicle when making deliveries. Asda colleagues will load and unload the groceries at the customer’s home.
Asda (again)
Infobip has announced a partnership with Asda to launch what is pitched as the largest Rich Communication Services (RCS) business messaging traffic in the UK.
The initiative will help to support messaging across the online customer journey, including order confirmation, delivery times and substitutions.
The roll-out has made Asda the first major UK grocer to launch RCS business messaging in the UK.
This brings a mobile app’s functionality into the messaging platform.
It will enable Asda to deal with its customers via native messages apps, with no additional installation or downloading. The messages showcase its logo, brand name, and links.
Clevon and T-Mobile
Estonian-based company Clevon has picked T-Mobile as the preferred connectivity provider for its fleet of autonomous robot carriers (ARCs) in the United States.
Under the long-term deal, T-Mobile will provide IoT solutions for Clevon’s latest ARC — the all electric Clevon 1.
US retailers, grocery stores, logistics providers etc can use this for driverless deliveries.
“Today marks a significant milestone for us,” says Sander Sebastian Agur, CEO, Clevon.
“By choosing T-Mobile, we are partnering with a best-in-class wireless provider that will enable us to scale our mission to deliver the most reliable, safe and efficient autonomous delivery platform.”
“Together, we can make the promise of autonomous last mile commercial deliveries in the US a reality today.”
Halfords
Halfords has selected Juniper Networks’ AI driven wired and wireless access solutions in its stores, garages and offices.
The retailer says that it has invested heavily to accelerate its digital transformation, leveraging the benefits of Mist AI and the cloud to create better commercial services and a unified, omnichannel retail experience for its customers.
Halfords has reduced network related trouble tickets by 100% and has seen a 35% improvement in uptime in the garages and stores where the deployment has been completed.
Mist AI works in conjunction with Juniper Access Points to deliver Wi-Fi 6 and virtual Bluetooth LE services to Halfords’ staff and customer smartphones, Point of Sale devices, in-store video displays and other connected devices.
Juniper EX Series switches provide access to wired devices with AI driven automation and insights for provisioning, troubleshooting and operations.
Marvis, a virtual network assistant driven by Mist AI, provides actions for fault identification and self-driving network operations for correction.
Halfords plan to further boost its network with the modernisation of its WAN, which connects its 1,400+ stores, auto centres and mobile service vans.
To achieve this, it is also planning to deploy Juniper’s AI driven SD-WAN solution, which leverages the same cloud and Mist AI engine as its new wired and wireless network.
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