Walmart No Boundaries hits Zepeto: 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 Ulta Beauty, Rokt, Shinesty, Wunderkind, Primark, Grubhub, Vinoteket, McDonald’s, Uber, Trinny London, Côte, Lucy & Yak, M&S, Vince, and Teamwork Commerce.

M&S

Marks and Spencer is bringing self-checkouts to its store changing rooms so that shoppers won’t have to join two queues when trying on and buying clothes.

The retailer is planning to roll-out self-service tills in 180 of its clothing stores by early 2028.

Operations Director Sacha Berendji told The Telegraph: “We’d like customers to be able to walk straight into the fitting room with no queue, try on what they’ve chosen, then pay there and just walk out.”

“Shoplifting is a major problem in this country, but there are things that we’re all doing to mitigate some of those losses.”

The new tills have thus far been introduced in 28 recently revamped stores.

Walmart

Walmart’s young adult clothing brand, No Boundaries, has officially launched on Zepeto, an Asian avatar centric social universe.

In a LInkedIn post, Sawhorse Productions said: “Our team is thrilled to build on our work with Walmart to engage younger audiences by activating this rapidly growing UGC platform.”

“The NoBo drop includes ten virtual versions of pieces from the line’s fall collection. And we brought the community in by collaborating with Zepeto creator, Xexi, to design limited edition items. We also created a twisted prep photobooth backdrop, knowing that Zepeto users love the in-game photo booth function.”

It added: “Sawhorse is passionate about helping brands navigate the immersive/gaming space. Is Zepeto new to you? It’s a platform to watch - ultra fast growth, truly global user base and a highly engaged community.”

Ulta Beauty

Rokt has partnered with Ulta Beauty to expand the company's retail media network and boost the guest experience ahead of the 2024 holiday season.

Under the partnership, UB Media will add non-endemic ads to its advertising ecosystem for the first time, enabling brands whose products and services are not sold online by Ulta Beauty itself to present relevant offers and messages to the company's guests in the transaction moment.

"We're pleased to partner with Rokt to continue strengthening the power of our UB Media business while enhancing our overall guest experience," says Brandi Pitts, SVP of Marketing and Media at Ulta Beauty.

"We're committed to providing a personalised, elevated end-to-end experience for our guests, and this partnership will enable Ulta Beauty to build on that capability by delivering messages from premium brands and service providers whose offerings are tailored for each of our online guests."

Shinesty

Wunderkind, an AI powered performance marketing and identity platform, has released results from its partnership with Shinesty.

Through identity resolution and triggered messaging, Wunderkind helped the brand elevate customer engagement, driving 10-12% of the company’s total revenue. 

Shinesty, with its playful fashion like Ball Hammock pouch underwear, aimed to expand into the women’s market while preserving its distinct brand voice.

By leveraging the Wunderkind Identity Network, it identified unknown visitors, converted them into known contacts, and delivered personalised, humour driven emails and texts. This integration optimised the customer journey, enhanced engagement, and boosted text revenue performance by 1.5x.

The collaboration with Wunderkind also enabled Shinesty to harness gamification strategies, like an interactive spinning wheel featuring a pickle stopper, which significantly boosted first-party data acquisition.

With every engagement point tailored to Shinesty’s humorous tone, Wunderkind’s triggered messages consistently outperformed competitors, driving a 5.6x lift in abandonment revenue. 

Primark

Primark has launched a Click and Collect service at the retailer’s flagship Birmingham High Street store.

In a LInkedIn post, Amy Anson, Department Manager Level 2 at said store, commented: “It’s been an exciting few weeks, training all our colleagues in the ways of working, setting up our new Click and Collect area and seeing how our ever growing company expands further, to offer customers another way of shopping in our amazing stores. We can’t wait to get started!”

Primark’s Click and Collect service is expanding to all of the retailer’s 184 stores in Great Britain by the end of 2025, following an 18-month trial.

Formerly the site of a shopping centre, since it opened in 2019 Birmingham High Street has held the Guinness World Record for the world’s largest retail fashion store at 160,000 sq. ft.

Co-op

Co-op has partnered with Quadient. It says that the collaboration to supply Parcel Pending by Quadient lockers aligns the retailer’s footprint in the heart of local communities with the growth in consumer demand for safe, secure and convenient parcel lockers.

Parcel Pending by Quadient is used for deliveries and returns from carriers, including Royal Mail, DPD, Evri, and UPS, as well as for new services like convenient key drop-offs with Keynest.

More than 30 of these lockers will initially be installed at Co-op stores, with the potential for the partnership to grow. The first lockers will be seen this month at Co-op stores in Bedford; Bradford; Guildford; Keighley; Liverpool; Stockport; Swinton and Telford.

George Hayworth, Head of Q-Comm Development, Co-op, says: “We are delighted to partner with  Quadient. Safe, secure and convenient parcel lockers are one of the ways in which we make things easier and deliver enhanced convenience for our member-owners and customers.”

“With our stores conveniently located in high streets and transport hubs, university campuses and residential developments, parcel lockers can help local residents and time-pressed consumers pick up or return parcels at a time that is convenient to them, quickly, easily and conveniently.”

Grubhub

Koddi, which specialises in retail and commerce media technology for enterprises, has announced a partnership with Grubhub to grow its marketing platform to include additional strategic advertising capabilities.

Koddi’s technologies provide the infrastructure for Grubhub to offer its merchants enhanced pre-checkout advertising capabilities including automated optimisations that continually fine-tune budgets, bids and more to drive higher performance, detailed reporting and self-serve campaign creation.

Grubhub’s merchants can access tools like bid automation, advanced targeting and granular performance reporting. They also gain insights into key performance metrics such as share of voice, time live, and ROAS by audience segment. Additionally, the custom built interface makes it easy to view campaign performance and access deeper insights.

“Grubhub is a valuable marketing channel for merchants to grow their sales and reach our tens of millions of customers. We’re excited to expand the services we provide our partners to include greater advertising capabilities,” says Adam Krueger, Director of Merchant Ads and Engagement at Grubhub.

“With ads, merchants can get in front of customers at critical moments of purchase intent to boost sales and achieve their business goals. Koddi’s tailored advertising solution has already resulted in our partners seeing higher conversions from impressions to sales.” 

Vinoteket

Vinoteket, an online retailer in the Swedish wine market, has chosen SCAYLE as its new e-commerce platform to support business growth following its merger with Winefinder in 2023.

SCAYLE will combine the retailer’s two brands into one unified backend.

Vinoteket stocks close to 1,000 wines from around 20 countries, over 70 different regions and 100 grape varieties, delivering to customers’ doorsteps in Sweden and Denmark. 

Following the 2023 merger, it has become crucial for Vinoteket to create individual brand experiences for both Vinoteket and Winefinder from one global platform.

SCAYLE’s headless platform means it will have the freedom to personalise its new websites to showcase each brand. It also provides the scalability needed for Vinoteket to expand into other brands and countries, as well as the upcoming launch of a mobile app.

McDonald’s and Uber

McDonald’s UK & Ireland has extended its partnership with Uber Direct, Uber’s white label delivery solution.

Uber Direct, which utilises the Uber Eats courier network, will be a big part of McDonald’s push to grow delivery orders through its app. Its technology allows people to track delivery from their local restaurant to their door and access 24/7 customer service if additional support is ever required.

Simon Duffy, Delivery Director, McDonald’s UK & Ireland, says: “We’re building a digital ecosystem that empowers us to create more personalised experiences and connect with our customers throughout their McDonald’s journey like never before.”

“As part of this journey, we are excited to continue our partnership with Uber Direct, our trusted MyMcDonald’s app delivery partner. Together we can continue to delight our customers by allowing them to order their McDonald’s favourites straight to their door.”

Kroger

Avery Dennison is set to begin working with The Kroger Co. to build a better associate and customer experience through RFID inventory automation technology.

The collaboration makes item level digital identification possible, with the aim of enabling more frequent and more accurate inventory information to maximise freshness, reduce waste and improve the associate experience.

“Kroger’s customers and associates are at the heart of everything we do,” says Jordan Poff, Vice President of Retail Operations at Kroger. “Our work with Avery Dennison will improve inventory visibility, which means products will be on the shelves when our customers want them, while enabling our associates to spend more time with our customers.”

The collaboration will begin in the bakery department, implementing RFID embedded labels on each item.

Trinny London

Trinny London, a beauty brand founded by Trinny Woodall, has boosted its data operations using Fivetran's platform. By automating its data processes, it says that it has gained the equivalent efficiency of an entire data engineering team, resulting in annual savings of up to £260K.

The company has expanded from an e-commerce platform to a retail presence across the UK, Ireland, Australia, and the US. However, its previous data stack was overwhelmed by its growth, and existing data integration processes were outdated and inefficient.

Trinny London also needed to migrate its database from the US to the UK to comply with GDPR regulations. Given its reliance on an online presence, these data challenges presented a significant barrier to growth. To remain at the forefront of the beauty industry, it turned to Fivetran.

Farrow & Ball

Proximity has announced a partnership with Farrow & Ball, a British paint and wallpaper manufacturer.

The former’s tool connects and streamlines appointment booking, customer journey management, data capture and customer communications for Farrow & Ball.

Proximity has integrated a global appointment booking solution for Farrow & Ball Colour Consultants across multiple regions for both in-home and virtual consultations.

The tool also offers a customer 360 view, manages tasks throughout the customer journey including pre and post appointment actions, provides detailed reporting, and enables multi-channel outreach via email, SMS, and WhatsApp.

Rebecca Gleave, Global Head of Retail at Farrow & Ball, says: "We are delighted to have launched Proximity for our Colour Consultants and retail teams globally. Proximity gives us the ability to interact with our clients at every stage of their colour consultancy journey and we are looking forward to realising the commercial benefits that Proximity will bring."

Mercaux

Mercaux, an in-store unified commerce and CX platform, has launched its new Store Associate KPI Dashboard, a solution designed to provide retail teams with real-time performance data.

This tool provides store associates with insights into their key metrics, helping them prioritise tasks to align with broader store goals. For managers, the dashboard offers visibility into individual and team performance, enabling timely support and coaching.

TrusTrace

TrusTrace, a specialist in product traceability and supply chain compliance, has unveiled its Deforestation Compliance Solution, designed to help companies meet and prove shipments in alignment with the EU’s Deforestation Regulation (EUDR).

The recent decision to delay enforcement until 30th December 2025 provides a window for companies to thoroughly prepare and ensure their supply chains meet the standards ahead of the deadline.

The EUDR aims to prevent deforestation by ensuring products entering the EU do not contribute to deforestation or environmental degradation.

To comply, companies must provide full traceability to the plot of land, and ensure their EU-bound products are free from deforestation related practices. This is poised to have significant impacts across the retail industry, as widely used materials like rubber, wood, and leather fall within its scope.  

Vince

Fashion retailer, Vince, has deployed Teamwork Commerce’s Point of Sale (PoS) solution at its flagship store in London. 

Previously, it used a traditional PoS system characterised by complexity, limited mobility, and necessitating extensive staff training. To meet evolving consumer and business needs, Vince required a solution with a user-friendly interface that unifies commerce and helps associates deliver seamless customer experiences. 

The Teamwork Commerce offering is a cloud-based mobile PoS retail software. It runs exclusively on iOS devices and allows associates to serve customers from anywhere in-store, without being tied to a traditional physical PoS terminal.

It will be integrated with Adyen’s payment system and Teamwork Commerce gift cards.

Côte

French brasserie chain, Côte, has selected inploi technology to promote jobs and support the organisation’s objective of reaching a broader talent pool.

inploi’s platform also provides reporting and analytics of Côte’s hiring funnel and attraction spend.

The latter’s team previously spent up to 20 hours per month compiling reports manually, and lacked the analysis to  answer crucial hiring questions. With inploi’s analytics software, they have real-time visibility of all hiring  data, from click to hire.

To date, Côte has relied on legacy credit-based job boards which have been the primary source of job applications. However, this process has been marred by inefficiencies. It did not have immediate access to all of the data needed to understand what the true ROI of its job board spend was, in addition to its time to hire data, and robust applicant conversion numbers. 

Lucy & Yak

British independent clothing brand, Lucy & Yak, has leveraged artificial intelligence (AI) powered fit recommendations from True Fit.

It is using the company’s Fashion Genome offering, spanning over 82 million shoppers (active users) and 20,000+ brands, which delivers fit recommendations to online customers, based on their unique size and fit preferences. 

Since implementation, True Fit has generated over 294,000 fit recommendations for Lucy & Yak’s customers, which has boosted both conversions and revenues. Revenues per True Fit user have grown +541%, while conversions of the same cohort using the technology on Lucy & Yak’s site have more than doubled (+245%).

Lightspeed Commerce and Uber

Lightspeed Commerce and Uber are partnering to directly integrate Uber Direct and Uber Eats marketplace into the former’s platform.

This will enable Lightspeed merchants to list their menu offerings on and take orders from the Uber Eats marketplace, which is accessed by millions of monthly active platform consumers; and take orders from their own branded website through Lightspeed’s Click and Collect solution Order Anywhere, then access delivery via Uber Direct, allowing them to pay only the associated delivery fee without the added cost of developing their own custom delivery fleet.