Flagship stores and payments choice: 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 EE, Alibaba Group, Asos, AiFi, Red Ant, and Obsess.
4,230…EE has opened a new flagship store, The EE Studio, located in Westfield London, White City.
Focused on connectivity and technology solutions, the 4,230-square-foot location will also serve as a hub for the local community to work, learn and play.
The launch forms part of EE’s new strategy, which, the company says, “seeks to reinvent the role of retail in the telco industry, putting innovation, personal experience, and community front and centre”.
£858.9 million…Asos’ third quarter revenue fell 14% to £858.9 million, ignoring the effect of exchange rates, reflecting declines across all geographies
There was a return to profitability this quarter, with a £20 million swing in underlying operating profit, despite the fall in revenue.
Active customers fell by 0.8 million to 24.1 million in the quarter, reflecting a focus on profitable sales rather than growth. Around £200 million of cost savings have been realised year-to-date, with the group saying it’s on track to reach its full year target of around £300 million.
Asos raised around £80 million of funds by issuing new equity shares, as well as refinanced £275 million worth of debt, which have both helped to strengthen the balance sheet.
Full year guidance has been maintained, with sales expected to decline by a low double digit percentage and underlying operating profit anticipated to land in the £40-60 million range.
Aarin Chiekrie, Equity Analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown, says: “Asos’ top line continues to fall as the group prioritises profitability over growth. The plan to improve profitability involves removing unprofitable brands from the platform and re-evaluating the shipping and returns offer.”
“Costs are also getting stripped back, with the majority of the £200 million cost savings achieved this year being structural, which should provide long lasting relief to the headwinds that have inflated the group’s cost base. Investors reacted positively to today’s announcement and the shares jumped up by double digits on the news.”
“The drive to right size the disproportionately large level of inventory is making progress. There’s still work to be done on this front, but getting this excess stock off the books will provide some tailwinds to margins moving forwards.”
“Full year guidance has been maintained and the recent cash injection from the equity raise provides some breathing space to navigate any choppy waters ahead, but brings with it additional pressure to turn the group's fortunes around.”
1…Astra Tech, a UAE-based technology investment and development group, has launched its first fully autonomous store in Abu Dhabi’s Sky Tower.
Powered by AiFI computer vision technology, B Store also enables shoppers to pay for their purchases by using their faces.
Astra Tech acquired UAE FinTech PayBy last year, and this location uses the firm’s FacePay PoS technology for biometric payment authentication.
74% and 18%…Many of today’s beauty shoppers say brands don’t know them well enough to make the right recommendations, according to research by Red Ant.
Its survey of 250 people found that 74% feel retailers don’t seem to have access to enough information about them and what they like. 18% of that number believe retailers are focused on selling products rather than finding out what they need.
Most of the beauty customers surveyed buy products at least once a month (53%), with 51% seeing them as a necessity that they can’t do without.
-1.2%…Despite consistent declines in year-on-year (YoY) UK online retail revenue performance, in May the total market geared closer to positive territory growth (-1.2%), according to IMRG’s Online Retail Index.
It was a promising month for the market, as it rose +2.4% from April. King Charles III's coronation and three bank holidays are likely causes for this.
Growth so far in 2023 (Jan-May) is running at -2.8%, in line with the 3% IMRG forecast at the start of the year – if things continue in line with expectation positive growth should return by the final quarter of the year.
93%…While retailers are far more focused and active on diversity and inclusion than ever before, this isn’t yet translating into meaningful change, according to a new report by the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and The MBS Group.
Involving the responses of 48 retailers, covering about 40% of the retail population and 1.2 million employees, this reveals that 93% have implemented a strategy to improve diversity and inclusion across their business, and many have expanded these plans in order to focus on areas such as social mobility and disability.
Only two in five people in the UK rate their local high street as good or very good, according to the latest Legal & General Rebuilding Britain Index (RBI).
In fact, when factoring in the quality of local shops, cafes, eateries, banks, Post Offices and other amenities, London is the only region across the UK where more than half of residents (58%) were positive about their high street.
71%…The Payment Choice Alliance, an organisation that campaigns for the UK public to have the legal right to spend their cash when and where they choose to do so, has published research by YouGov.
A survey of 2,101 people conducted last week shows that: only 3% of the British public never use cash; 12% of people want the UK to become a cashless society and 69% oppose it.
71%, meanwhile, would support making it a legal requirement for British businesses to accept notes and coins. Only 7% oppose this idea.
300…Automated parcel machine (APM) service provider, InPost, reports that, after a trial, its lockers will be rolled out at approximately 300 bp service stations across the UK.
Prominent locations include Wandsworth, Glasgow, Ashford and Brentwood.
As a result, consumers will be able to collect a delivery whilst filling up with fuel, or return a parcel when picking up something for dinner at a forecourt M&S Food store.
As part of the trial thousands of parcels have been processed across five locations.
€6 million…EdgeTier, which helps contact centres improve the customer experience using AI, has raised €6 million in Series A funding in a round led by Smedvig Capital, with participation from Episode 1 and Act Venture Capital.
EdgeTier was founded in 2015 by Dr. Shane Lynn, Dr. Bart Lehane, and Ciarán Tobin, whose vision was to build “user-friendly, machine learning infused applications that move contact centres from data rich but information poor environments into a new era of efficiency and performance”.
The company operates in more than 20 countries across Europe and the Americas, processing billions of messages through its systems for the likes of Abercrombie & Fitch, LoveHolidays, Holiday Extras, CarTrawler, RyanAir, TUI Travel, Electric Ireland, Tipico, and Betclic.
500,000…Parkopedia has partnered with Plugsurfing to integrate the latter’s solution, Drive API, into the former’s in-car Payment Platform.
The aim is to make it easy for drivers to locate, start, and pay for charging at over 500,000 charge points across Europe and the UK, using Parkopedia data.
$6.5 million…UK payments startup Atoa has concluded a seed funding round of $6.5 million.
The company says the it offers small- to medium-sized retail businesses on the UK high street “a faster, cheaper and more secure alternative to accepting Visa and Mastercard card payments, using account-to-account payments”.
The round of funding was led by Valar Ventures, a US fund backed by the co-founder of PayPal, Peter Thiel.
Previous investors, including Monzo and Tide backer Passion Capital, and Singapore based Leo Capital also participated. This takes the total raised by Atoa to $8.6 million.
5…After launching in 2019 and delivering hugely successful follow up events in 2020, 2021 and 2022, the RTIH Innovation Awards return in 2023 with a discussion panel and awards ceremony to be held in a central London venue during November.
The fifth edition of the awards is now open for entries.
The event celebrates global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.
We received a record number of submissions in 2022, with winners including Sook, B&Q, 3D Cloud by Marxent, Compass Group, AiFi, Walmart, Ribble Cycles, Obsess, HyperFinity, Red Ant, Pets at Home, and TPP Retail.
Our winners and highly commended companies were announced at a sold out event in central London on Tuesday, 6th December.
For 2023, we are introducing new categories and expanding the awards ceremony in December to accommodate more attendees (further details on that will be revealed in the near future).
Scott Thompson, Editor and Founder of RTIH, says: “Our awards celebrate the dynamic, resilient and innovative retail sector and the companies and technologies that drive it forward.”
“Competition was tougher than ever in 2022, so to emerge victorious was no mean feat.”
“Congratulations to our winners and highly commended companies. I’m excited to launch the fifth edition of the awards. The 2023 event will be the biggest and best yet.”
Deadline for 2023 submissions is Friday, 27th October, with winners being revealed at the aforementioned event in central London during November.
40…J.Crew has announced the launch of an immersive virtual store powered by experiential e-commerce platform Obsess.
The 3D, shoppable experience celebrates the company’s 40th anniversary and takes the form of a beach house that features six rooms and a separate boathouse.
The J.Crew Virtual Beach House also offers interactive content highlighting the brand’s heritage, along with gamified elements and checkout.
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