Including OnBuy, Gopuff, and Newegg: RTIH presents 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. Including JUXTA, Tredz, McDonald’s, Disney+, Primark, JP Outfitters, AiFi, and. CommerceHub.
JUXTA
JUXTA reports that its inaugural product, Nomad, an autonomous, portable micro store, is now available throughout the USA.
The startup says that Nomad will “help retailers take their brand beyond the traditional bricks and mortar convenience store, allowing them to get closer to consumers than ever before”.
OnBuy
UK online marketplace OnBuy has partnered with embedded financing platform YouLend.
As a result, business customers can apply for financing from £3,000 to £1,000,000, depending on eligibility, through their existing OnBuy seller account. The funds are available to spend on any business purpose.
There are no fixed monthly repayments. Instead, the funding is repaid by a small amount each time the seller makes a sale on OnBuy.
Tredz
Novuna Consumer Finance has partnered with UK-based cycling retailer, Tredz, to expand its credit options available online and in-store.
Customers purchasing a new bicycle online or in-store at Tredz’s two shops in Wales will have the opportunity to borrow from £250 up to £25k, spreading the cost over a maximum of four years.
Tredz will use Novuna's tailoring functionality which offers greater flexibility over terms, deposits, and loan amounts to work with customers to create payment plans to suit their lifestyle.
Shoe Carnival
Shoe Carnival is working with CommerceHub to make it easier to find, onboard and effectively merchandise new products from qualified brands that its customers like.
Shoe Carnival currently generates over $1.2 billion in annual revenue and is one of the United States’ largest family footwear retailers, offering a broad assortment with an emphasis on national name brands.
In addition to its nearly 400 stores nationwide, the company has a growing online business leveraging CommerceHub, a cloud-based commerce network that provides SaaS solutions.
“We’ve built our business on getting closer to our customers and understanding their preferences and style choices in a rapidly changing market, and we are incredibly optimistic about our future growth,” says Kent Zimmerman, VP of eCommerce & CRM, Shoe Carnival.
“We are strategically growing our sales in third-party-owned inventory through e-commerce, which enables us to better serve consumers by providing them with more styles and more selection while making it easy for them to have a great experience shopping with us.”
H&M Indonesia
H&M Indonesia has released results from its partnership with YOOBIC, an employee experience platform for frontline teams in the retail and hospitality spaces.
The retailer says that, adopted across its more than 60 stores and 290 frontline staff in Indonesia, YOOBIC's solution has significantly elevated employee engagement, communication, and productivity, as well as enhancing efficiency, compliance, and sustainability.
Lusso
Lusso, a UK-based luxury bathroom furniture and stone brand, says that it has increased revenue and in turn enhanced customer experience with the launch of a new e-commerce store.
The pureplay retailer first partnered with Visualsoft in 2014. It achieved a cumulative sales total of £100 million in less than eight years of trading with the help of the firm’s all in one solution.
In 2022, it re-appointed the company to upgrade its online store to showcase its broader product range while also reflecting its updated visual identity and offering customers a more streamlined, engaging experience.
Between October 2022 and January 2023, Lusso has seen a 33% increase in online revenue, a 5% rise in conversion and a 36% increase in orders compared to the same period in the previous year.
ShipStation and PULPO
ShipStation and PULPO have announced that their partnership is now live in the UK, France, Germany and North America.
The tie up sees ShipStation’s shipping solution integrate directly with PULPO’s WMS, allowing merchants to optimise their e-commerce and logistics operations.
Grubhub and Amazon
Grubhub Campus reports that Amazon's Just Walk Out technology is now available at Loyola University Maryland, the first Grubhub partnered campus to deploy the offering.
Students scan a QR code in the Grubhub app to enter a convenience store, and the technology detects what shoppers take from or return to the shelves.
They can then leave without having to wait in line and the payment will automatically be deducted from their meal plan, declining account balance or other stored payment methods linked to their Grubhub account.
"Our installation with Amazon's Just Walk Out technology is another example of how we are strengthening our relationship with our campus partners with cost saving technology and driving student adoption," says Eric Ferguson, Chief Operations Officer at Grubhub.
"The services and products we provide for our campus partners are designed to enhance and improve the dining experience, and we're excited to offer this innovative and frictionless technology to our campus partners."
McDonald's and Disney+
Ahead of the release of Marvel Studios’ Loki Season 2, the Disney+ series has teamed up with McDonald’s, which makes an appearance on the show’s timeline.
McDonald’s latest campaign, the As Featured in Meal, showcases a collection of fan favourite menu items that have appeared over the past few decades across film, television, and music, which also now includes crossing paths with the God of Mischief.
As part of this, the fast food giant has transported a Brooklyn, New York store back to 1982 as seen in the upcoming Loki season. This is running from Wednesday, 30th August through to Friday, 1st September.
Gopuff
Rapid grocery delivery big hitter Gopuff has announced the launch of its Ads platform in the UK.
“For two years, the world’s largest CPGs and most exciting emerging brands – from PepsiCo to Liquid Death – have leveraged Gopuff Ads to reach our young, engaged customers and drive incremental sales in the US,” says Daniel Folkman, Senior Vice President of Business at Gopuff.
“Now, we’re thrilled to introduce Gopuff Ads, a platform that has powered 4x return on ad spend for our US advertisers, to brands reaching UK customers.”
With Gopuff’s direct API integration into CitrusAd’s retail media technology, brands can target its UK customers via Sponsored Search, Sponsored Carousel and Promoted Product Placement ads.
The platform allows partners to plan, buy, measure, and manage their ads.
University of San Diego
The University of San Diego has retrofitted a Smart Market mini-convenience store located within its Knauss Center for Business Education with AiFi technology.
This allows shoppers to select food and drink items and walk out without waiting in line or scanning to pay.
Newegg
Newegg, an online retailer specialising in technology products, has deployed Geek+’s shelf to person picking system that uses autonomous mobile robots (AMR) in its Ontario, California, warehouse.
The robots operate within a designated area before lifting and carrying mobile shelves to workstations where employees pick and scan products to prepare them for shipping to customers.
The Geek+ system includes 24,360 storage locations for products within hundreds of shelves.
Primark
Primark’s new look website is now live across all five Central and Eastern Europe markets in which the retailer operates.
In a LinkedIn post, Maciej Podwojski, Head of Sales CEE at Primark, said: “The site showcases our widest ever selection of Primark’s ranges online, plus lots of exciting new features, better connecting the journey between searching online and shopping in our stores.”
He added: “Customers are now able to check stock availability in their local store before visiting, access a brand new wishlist function to save their favourite products, and sign up to a newsletter to receive all of the latest Primark news.”
“This will help to easily browse our great value everyday essentials and latest trends which are available in our stores across CEE.”
“A huge well done to everyone involved who has made this happen. I can’t wait to see the reaction from our customers.”
JP Outfitters
JP Outfitters, the parent company of The J. Peterman and The Territory Ahead brands, has selected Cart.com as its US fulfilment partner.
This will see the latter leverage its order and inventory management capabilities and 3PL expertise to manage operations at JP Outfitters’ fulfilment facility near Cincinnati, Ohio.
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