Including AiFi, Cust2Mate, and TalkShopLive: June’s biggest retail technology plays at a glance
RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, deployments and pilots from June, including Auchan Retail Poland, Carrefour, Crocs, Asda, 7-Eleven, Poundland, Walmart, and Domino’s Pizza.
M&S
Marks and Spencer’s Online Suit Fit service is now live at its Hedge End store in Hampshire.
This is powered by Emplifi technology.
In a LinkedIn post, Amy Traves, In-Store Experiences Manager at M&S, said: “I have spent the last week with the fantastic suit fitting team at our Hedge End store to extend our online services to include Suit Fit.”
“We are excited to now connect our online customers via two-way video with the same expert advice and help from our colleagues as you would find in our stores.”
Customers can connect via the retailer’s suit and formalwear product pages or here.
This lines up alongside an online bra fit service and online furniture consultations offering.
Auchan Retail Poland
Auchan Retail Poland has launched the first fully autonomous store within its Auchan Go concept.
Located in Warsaw, the cashier free location is open 24/7 and features an AI powered solution from Trigo.
Poland becomes the first market where the Auchan Go store is fully operational for shoppers, following tests of the frictionless concept in France.
Deutsche Bahn
AiFi has announced the opening of its newest autonomous store within Berlin's Ostbahnhof Deutsche Bahn railway station.
The 24/7 ServiceStore is run by DB Station&Service, operated by SSP Deutschland.
While US-based AiFi has increased its European presence over the past four years, this newest location in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin, is the first one for public customers to launch in Germany.
"Our technology has been helping consumers avoid long queues and reclaim that critical time amid their travels, so that they can move through their days more swiftly and focus their time and attention on things that matter most," says Sander Garnier, New Business and Account Manager, Europe at AiFi.
"We are proud to partner with Deutsche Bahn to bring frictionless technology to shoppers and commuters in Berlin's Ostbahnhof railway station."
Ocado Retail, Co-op, and Aldi
Recycling tech firm, Polytag, and sustainable waste management company, Biffa, have announced a collaboration with Ocado Retail, Co-op, and Aldi.
Through monitoring analytics via the Polytag dashboard, the UK retailers will be able to access real-time data insights, such as where, when and how much packaging has been recycled.
Moreover, Polytag will enable Biffa to start to capture real-time data on packaging composition directly through its processing operations, informing recycling strategy, investment in sorting, recovery equipment, and the onward tracking of materials.
The businesses have joined forces as part of plastics, resource, efficiency and recycling charity RECOUP’s 26-week long ‘Bottle to Bottle’ project, in conjunction with label printer Interket UK, the UK’s largest dairy co-operative Arla Foods and Müller Milk & Ingredients.
This will see Co-op’s water bottles and Aldi and Ocado’s milk marked with UV 2D tags, printed by Interket UK, with a Polytag UV tag reader retrofitted onto the plastic conveyor at Biffa’s Teesside MRF in the northeast of England.
7-Eleven Australia
7-Eleven Stores, Australia is partnering with RELEX Solutions to automate and optimise its end-to-end supply chain.
RELEX’s tech will service 7-Eleven’s network of approximately 750 stores and three distribution centres throughout Australia, to help ensure the right amount of product is available for customers when and where they want it.
Part of 7-Eleven’s commitment to reaching its ambition of one billion customer moments per year by 2030, is the adoption of a fully integrated supply chain technology that enables planners to anticipate demand, and optimise inventory flows across the business.
Carrefour
A2Z Smart Technologies Corp.'s Cust2Mate subsidiary has announced completion of a pilot phase at Carrefour.
Since March, its smart carts have undergone testing at Carrefour's flagship hypermarket store in Ste Genevieve Des Bois, near Paris.
As part of the roll-out phase, Carrefour and Cust2Mate are looking to initially deploy smart carts in two of the former’s hypermarket stores in Q4 of this year.
Guillaume Cocovi, Director Strategy Transformation of the Carrefour Group, says: "We are seeing very, very positive feedback from customers at this store. Before launching this project, like any large company, we issued a call for proposals.”
“We looked at what was happening in the market, and Cust2Mate was the company that offered us the product that best matched our expectations and put the most effort into supporting us in the deployment. We felt it right away.”
“The relationship with the founders was very smooth, and the project started at full speed since the carts were already there. In just three months, the test could begin."
Domino’s Pizza
Domino’s Pizza is introducing Domino’s Pinpoint Delivery in the US, a new technology that allows customers to receive a delivery in such places as parks, baseball fields and beaches, just in time for the start of summer.
Customers with the Domino’s app can select the service, drop a pin on the map and get pizza delivered pretty much anywhere, the retailer says.
“We’re proud to be the first quick service restaurant brand in the US to deliver food to customers with the drop of a pin,” says Christopher Thomas-Moore, Domino’s Senior Vice President – Chief Digital Officer.
“We’re always striving to make customers’ experiences even better and more convenient, and Domino’s Pinpoint Delivery does exactly that.”
Crocs
Obsess has announced the launch of a new virtual Jibbitz shopping experience in partnership with Crocs.
Available via mobile and desktop web, this is pitched as a virtual storytelling arena centred around self-expression, personalisation, gamification and education to promote the brand’s flagship Jibbitz charms.
The experience includes the brand’s first ever 3D Jibbitz Customizer, a feature engineered by Obsess to provide consumers with a mix and match tool to create their own unique pair of Crocs with Jibbitz charms, which can then be purchased directly from the virtual experience.
Asda
Groceries from Asda’s Gillingham Pier, Old Kent Road and Sheffield Chaucer stores will now be fulfilled by electric vehicles, giving over 345,000 households in the store catchment areas access to a greener delivery choice.
The vehicles can run for up to 120 miles per charge, requiring seven hours recharge time.
Asda, which was named UK Retailer of the Year at the 2021 RTIH Innovation Awards, says that using these electric vehicles will save over 400,000 CO2 (kg) per year.
Customers in Cardiff Bay and Leith will also soon be able to have their groceries delivered by a fully electric fleet as the retailer has committed to turning a further two stores electric by the end of the year.
The move represents the first stage of Asda’s ambition to completely remove diesel vehicles from its grocery home delivery fleet by 2028.
These plans are part of its wider strategy to half its greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 as part of its Courtauld commitments.
Merkal
Spanish footwear chain, Merkal, and retail merchandising platform, Nextail, have announced a multi-year extension of their partnership.
This will include a full end-to-end implementation of Nextail solutions in 2024.
Unicoop Firenze
SES-imagotag reports that Unicoop Firenze (member of Coop Italia), which operates one of the largest supermarket chains in Italy, has selected the VUSION IoT Cloud platform for the digitisation of 110 stores.
This is driven by several significant external factors and internal requirements impacting its operations, such as inflation, supply chain efficiency, and satisfactory shelf-planning compliance.
The company identified the need to be able to address market dynamics and shifting demands quickly, to have the capacity for greater real-time pricing agility, and to be aligned with the growth of e-commerce.
Unicoop Firenze chose VUSION and its solutions as tools to monitor shelves centrally for product availability and ensure price synchronisation across all channels.
Walmart
Live commerce platform TalkShopLive has launched Shoppable Simulcast in the US.
This allows sellers to simulcast their shoppable livestreams to their Facebook business page as a Facebook Live, while keeping the shopping element intact.
Walmart, which has worked with TalkShopLive on over 150 live shopping experiences, was the first to activate the Shoppable Simulcast product with a live show on 20th June featuring The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond.
Drummond, who has held several shopping events with TalkShopLive, launched her new furniture line.
The livestream appeared on TalkShopLive, Walmart’s Facebook page, Walmart.com/live and The Pioneer Woman’s Facebook page.
Faherty
Faherty, a clothing and lifestyle brand, and Archive have partnered to launch Second Wave.
The new resale programme allows customers to buy and sell preloved Faherty clothing through a peer-to-peer marketplace site and will also list repaired and renewed brand owned inventory.
“We have always been committed to greater circularity and we are thrilled to partner with Archive to launch Second Wave,” says Kerry Docherty, Co-Founder and Chief Impact Officer, Faherty.
“The programme will give our customers multiple ways to shop for, enjoy and extend the lives of preloved Faherty items. Because long lasting quality is at the core of what we do, we believe our product only gets better with age.”
“Resale is a natural next step in our growth as a brand that has always taken its responsibility to our customers and the planet seriously.”
Lorna Jane
Australian activewear brand Lorna Jane has implemented the NewStore Omnichannel Platform in its 107 stores across Australia and New Zealand.
"NewStore is a critical component of our digital transformation strategy and the most forward-thinking, innovative retail platform available today," says Peter Clarke, Chief Technology Officer, Lorna Jane.
"We were able to rip and replace our old system and roll out NewStore across two countries and more than one hundred locations with a cutover of just one day, which is a remarkable achievement that demonstrates the platform's robustness and scalability."
Wilko
As part of its digital acceleration strategy, Wilko has gone live on Virtualstock’s marketplace and drop ship platform.
“We’re delighted with what we’ve been able to achieve with Virtualstock,” says Ben Exall, Digital Director at Wilko, a British high street chain which sells homewares and household goods.
“We know this will result in a reduction in ‘where is my order?’ calls to the contact centre through improved clarity of the orders on their journey to the customer. We can now also better track stock levels with greater visibility in the platform.”
bp
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.
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