Including Getir, Jigsaw, and Carrefour: Check out July’s most clicked RTIH retail technology articles

These are the RTIH retail systems articles that caught your fancy during July, including RELEX Solutions, Appliance, Vue Storefront, Contentstack, SES-imagotag, and Cust2Mate.

‘Woefully overvalued’ grocery delivery firm Getir chases hefty funding as UK departure rumours abound

Rapid grocery delivery venture, Getir, is looking to wrap up a major funding round that it hopes will kill rumours about its solvency.

According to a report by Sky News, the capital injection will be led by Mubadala, the Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund, although it is expected to involve a smaller sum than the $500 million reported several months ago.

The move comes amid rumours that the Turkey-based company may be about to put its British operation into administration and that it is about to pull out of the country.

Who is on the judging panel for the 2023 RTIH Innovation Awards? Read on and all will be revealed

The fifth edition of the RTIH Innovation Awards is now open for entries, with a judging panel made up of retail tech big hitters who have worked at the likes of Starbucks, Situ Live, Ted Baker, Boots, EY, IGD, Office Depot, and Selfridges.

The awards, sponsored by CADS, 3D Cloud by Marxent, and Goodays, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.

Deadline for 2023 submissions is Friday, 27th October, with winners being revealed at an exclusive event at the Barbican in central London on Wednesday, 29th November.

Entries are free and you can submit in multiple categories.

For FAQs and entry forms, click here.

Amplience brings in retail technology veteran Anthony Lye as new Chief Executive Officer

AI content specialist Amplience has appointed Anthony Lye as its new Chief Executive Officer.

He says: “Customers tell us they need agile solutions that embrace AI and allow each brand to dynamically generate persuasive content and media across various channels to create seamless customer experiences.”

“Ensuring all touchpoints provide the rich and engaging shopping experiences that delights customers and delivers performance is what we will provide.”

Lye comes to Amplience from Palantir Technologies where, as Global Head, he has been responsible for expanding its Apollo service and the company’s Growth Business Unit and its artificial intelligence strategy.

Prior to that, he was Executive Vice President and General Manager at NetApp, a data storage and management company where he built the Public Cloud Business Unit.

Other roles have included Board Member at Spoken Communications, EVP and Chief Cloud Officer at Guidewire Software, and he is also an Operating Advisor at Bessemer Venture Partners and is on the board of trustees for the University of Bath in England.

Jigsaw selects Voyado retail technology for personalisation, loyalty and sustainability push

Jigsaw has announced Voyado as its new solution for customer loyalty and marketing automation.

The tie up is Sweden-based Voyado’s first UK customer win.

"We've made great progress with increasingly personalised marketing that reflects the unique relationship we have with our customers. We're excited to bring Voyado's impressive technology onboard to take us to the next level by creating truly exceptional experiences online and in-store," says Nicole Mason, Marketing Director at Jigsaw.

"This is an important win for us in a challenging business landscape. Jigsaw is a unique and well loved British brand with a strong identity and clear sense of who its customers are.”

RELEX Solutions helps Getir ‘reap benefits of autonomous, adaptive, and unified supply chain planning'

Rapid grocery delivery firm, Getir, is partnering with RELEX Solutions.

This will see it gain an integrated suite of capabilities, including forecasting, replenishment and allocation, new inventory optimisation, clearance optimisation, and promotion forecasting. 

RELEX tech will be used in all of Getir’s stores and distribution centres worldwide to enhance product availability and freshness while reducing food waste. 

RELEX is also teaming up with delivery partner DemandTex, a consulting group that provides analytics and implementation services to retailers around the globe. This will play a significant role in implementing the solution and providing local support for Getir. 

SPAR ICS selects Vue Storefront and Contentstack for online composable commerce technology deployment

The SPAR Austria group - SPAR (including INTERSPAR and Maximarkt), Hervis and SES Spar European Shopping Center - is upgrading its INTERSPAR Austria online shop with composable commerce technology.

The group’s IT unit, SPAR ICS, selected Vue Storefront and Contentstack for this.

“We recognised the need for a more innovative e-commerce solution” says Andreas Kranabitl, Managing Director, SPAR ICS.

“The partnership with Vue Storefront and Contentstack allows us to leverage the latest web technologies, achieve superior performance, and provide an exceptional shopping experience to customers while maintaining the agility and flexibility to adapt to changing market demands.”

A2Z’s Cust2Mate subsidiary wraps Carrefour smart carts pilot and preps move to roll-out phase

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."

Four reasons why Just Walk Out tech powered Amazon Fresh stores have flopped in the UK

RTIH looks at the key factors behind Amazon’s underwhelming entrance on to the hugely competitive UK grocery retail stage.

Amazon UK recently announced it was shutting three of its London-based Amazon Fresh checkout-free stores, including its first which only opened two years ago.

The e-commerce giant said the move was down to 'optimisation decisions' about its 'portfolio of stores', but added that it still plans to open new locations in London this year, one of which will be in Moorgate.

Here’s our take on why Amazon now has just 17 Fresh outlets left - 16 of which are in London, and the other at Sevenoaks in Kent. Way off the original target of 200+ by the end of 2025.

Ikea rolls out SES-imagotag VUSION IoT cloud platform and electronic shelf labels across European stores

SES-imagotag has entered into an agreement with Ikea to deploy its VUSION IoT Cloud platform and smart electronic shelf labels.

The first part of the contract spans over 110 stores in six European countries.

The roll-out builds on a partnership forged between the two companies over the past years.

Co-op Group announces partnership with Zühlke UK as it looks to expand its technology capabilities

Tech consulting and engineering firm  Zühlke UK  has been appointed to provide a dedicated software engineering team to support the Co-op’s  110+  engineering  team.  

The Manchester-based Co-op Group has four units - food (UK’s fifth largest retailer), insurance, legal, and funerals (UK’s largest funeral provider) - each with a range of applications, some very new and some legacy.   

Platforms include: Azure, AWS, Terraform, Puppet, Python, Linux, Serverless Applications, Cosmos DB, Service Bus, Event Grid, and Table Storage .

The central Co-op  engineering team  provides support, maintaining and developing this wide range of applications across the business units.  

The appointment, worth a minimum of £8 million over three years, will see the Co-op’s  engineering capacity increased by at least 25% through Zühlke’s delivery centres  based in Porto in Lisbon, Belgrade in Serbia, and  Sofia in  Bulgaria. 

This team, which will be entirely dedicated to working with  Co-op, will initially be  for  25 core roles providing  software engineering,  platform engineering and quality assurance.