Chips, robots, and home runs: 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 Nando’s, Coach, The Very Group, OnBuy, Marks and Spencer, Whitbread, and American Eagle Outfitters.
Nando’s
Nando’s UK has become the first to trial Karakuri’s /FRYR automated fry line as it aims to deliver the perfect chips in its Park Royal restaurant.
This combines robotics, edge computing, and hyperscale data analysis to provide restaurants with production of up to 550 portions of chips per hour.
Cameron Roberts, Group Chief Operating Officer at Nando’s, says: “We want to deliver uplifting and memorable experiences for our customers, with delicious quality food and good value at the heart.”
“In testing Karakuri’s /FRYR, we wanted to see how we can further improve the quality, consistency, and availability of our chips, while meeting our environmental objectives of reducing food and oil waste and reducing energy consumption.”
FishpoolS
Fishpools, a specialist in home furnishings and accessories, has selected Fresh Relevance technology to power personalised experiences for its customers across its website and email marketing.
Coach
This year’s Metaverse Fashion Week (MVFW) ran through to 31st March.
Organiser and host Decentraland recently revealed the full lineup for the second iteration of its online event.
The agenda featured the likes of Coach, Dolce & Gabbana, and Tommy Hilfiger, and adidas.
Giovanni Zaccariello, SVP Global Visual Experience at Coach, said that his company’s space was “fully immersive and celebrates our most iconic bag Tabby”.
Inside the metaverse bag, people could explore the digital world of Coach, with the aim of “promoting community building, creativity and self-expression for attendees through digital wearables, artistry, and custom Coach emote-alls”.
Whitbread
Fujitsu has announced a five-year deal worth £57.9 million with UK hospitality giant Whitbread.
The contract, which starts in early April and builds on a 35-year relationship between the two companies, will see Fujitsu delivering outlet focused IT services which support the 35,000 employees across Premier Inn, Beefeater, Bar+Block and other brands.
Germany is an important growth market for Whitbread, with significant expansion underway and this contract will support this by providing outlet and corporate on-site support across the region, boosting region specific technical knowledge for help desks, and adapting support to align with Central European Time and local holidays.
Yliopiston Apteekki
Finnish pharmacy chain Yliopiston Apteekki has announced an expansion of its partnership with RELEX Solutions, provider of supply chain and retail planning tech, and workforce management solution specialist tamigo.
RELEX has provided Yliopiston Apteekki with a forecasting and replenishment solution for its 17 pharmacies since 2015 and a distribution centre since 2018.
The company will expand its use of the offering to include workload forecasting and shift optimisation.
tamigo will be its new mobile friendly workforce management solution, integrating time and attendance into existing HR and payroll systems, while also enabling the benchmarking of company wide KPIs.
CEVA Logistics and Geek+
CEVA Logistics and Geek+ are teaming up to supply consumers with footwear and apparel through the use of autonomous mobile robots (AMR) at the former’s Grobbendonk warehouse, located in Belgium’s Antwerp province.
The facility is now equipped with 27 Geek+ P-series picking robots and five workstations.
The robots feature a 1,000-kg payload and operate at a maximum speed of 2 m/sec. The goods-to-person solution devised by CEVA and Geek+ can handle daily volumes of more than 10,000 outbound items.
This builds on Geek+ robots being introduced in certain automated operations at a CEVA warehouse in Australia, one of the largest distribution centres in the southern hemisphere.
The Very Group
The Very Group, a digital retailer and financial services provider that operates Very, has extended its embedded marketplace partnership with Freedom Finance for a further three years.
The latter provides a range of credit services for customers of The Very Group across its family of retail brands, which also includes Littlewoods.
Using soft search technology and advanced matching, it helps people to unsecured personal loans from credit providers without harming their credit score while they search.
American Eagle Outfitters
American Eagle Outfitters is set to launch RADAR’s AI powered inventory tracking technology in approximately 500 American Eagle stores across the US over the next year.
RADAR uses a combination of RFID and computer vision to track and locate in-store inventory in real-time, enabling employees to know what product is in-store, and where, so they can more easily and efficiently serve customers, replenish items on the sales floor, and fulfil in-store and curbside pickup orders.
Tommy Hilfiger
Tommy Hilfiger has unveiled a new metaverse hub, powered by Emperia, launching simultaneously on Decentraland, Roblox, Spatial, DressX and Ready Player Me, as part of the brand’s Decentraland Metaverse Fashion Week 2023 presence.
Featuring DressX powered digital fashion, Web3 artist collaboration with Vinnie Hagar, AR features, photo booth, gamification, emotes and a community focused competition to create AI fashion, the hub is set in a monolith structure made of the ‘TH’ monogram, which will appear across all platforms.
The aim is to create a unified digital brand story, while allowing for seamless movement between the retailer’s own website and the various metaverses.
Natural Baby Shower
Natural Baby Shower, a retailer of eco-friendly and natural baby products, says that it has reduced shipping and label production costs while optimising the post-purchase experience for its customers, with a solution from Scurri.
A key objective was to improve the precision of label generation to ensure that each order could be processed more quickly.
The business also needed to reduce overspend on carrier services by making sure each parcel was charged at the least expensive postal rate.
OnBuy
UK-based online marketplace, OnBuy, last week went live with new payment services, Nuvei, PayPal, and Klarna.
In a LinkedIn post, Cas Paton, Founder and CEO at OnBuy, said: “So this week is a big week for OnBuy and me personally... what 12 months it's been to get here. This week we'll launch our new payment services and go live with Nuvei, PayPal and Klarna, which is going to be awesome. I can feel it!”
He added: “Since Christmas 2021 we announced we were going to do this. After planning, this project of moving OnBuy to 'Merchant of Record' (MoR) has been an all-consuming, hellish project, which has seen us park most other work, stagnate the business, and essentially completely rebuild the platform and the way we do payments, not only with customers, but with sellers as well.”
“It's the first time we've ever been this close to customers, sellers and really jumping into 'Mature Marketplace' territory. This move was inevitable, unavoidable, but a bit like going through marketplace puberty - annoying and cant wait for it to be over. There isn't a single person at OnBuy that hasn't been affected by this in at least a big way.”
Avery Dennison
Avery Dennison has announced updates to its atma.io connected product cloud.
The platform now manages over 28 billion items for brands across the apparel, retail, food, and healthcare sectors.
Artificial intelligence (AI) updates include the integration of ChatGPT for automating alert response.
Max Winograd, Vice President, Digital Solutions at Avery Dennison, says: “The goal of using AI technologies, including ChatGPT, is to increase efficiency by reducing the time people need to spend on repetitive, manual tasks.”
“Today, sourcing and supply chain managers spend a significant amount of time chasing information via email, typing out repetitive inquiries and follow-ups. With our generative AI, we are helping to speed up this process significantly, while maintaining the trusted, human connections among partners in the supply chain.”
M&S
CommerceHub is working with Marks & Spencer (M&S) on its digital transformation journey, equipping the retailer with its Commerce Suite solution.
This provides tools to help companies grow their online business.
M&S says it will be able to quickly onboard new suppliers, manage orders and handle returns more easily.
These capabilities enable it to offer more products to customers without the need for additional, owned inventory and increases the ability to respond quickly to changes in customer demand.
Tampa Bay Rays
American baseball team Tampa Bay Rays have brought a new checkout-free concessions experience to the Budweiser Porch located in Center Field.
The concept, called Short Stop, utilises technology from Zippin.
High resolution camera tech and shelf sensors eliminate the checkout process. Fans validate a payment type upon entry into the store, grab what they want, and exit the store.
Rimi
Rimi (part of ICA Group) has inked a framework agreement with StrongPoint to supply and install Pricer’s shelf edge automation and communication based on electronic shelf labels to potentially all its 300 stores across the three Baltic countries.
This is the result of a pilot project in Latvia run by StrongPoint for Rimi that tested the efficiency savings of the technology. Similar tests will be made in its stores in Lithuania and Estonia.
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