Including Rimi, American Golf, and Flying Tiger Copenhagen: November’s biggest retail technology plays at a glance

RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, deployments and pilots from November, including StrongPoint, Asda, M&S, Retail Insight, Emperia, Polytag, Ocado Retail, Boden, Peak, Boots, and Currys.

Rimi

Rimi (part of ICA Group), has placed an order with StrongPoint to supply and install its self-checkout solutions in the Baltic-based grocery retailer’s stores.

The value of the order is approximately EUR 2.3 million, excluding implementation and future technical support revenue. Delivery and installation are scheduled for 2025.

Rimi has been using StrongPoint self-checkouts for over five years, showcasing the solution’s proven reliability and customer convenience. The new order includes self-checkouts with cash handling capabilities, as cash management remains an important aspect of the checkout process in the region.

BP

Oil and gas company and forecourt retailer, BP, has renewed its partnership with Retail Insight, a provider of in-store execution software, for an additional three years in the UK.

BP provides fuel, food and beverages to motorists and shoppers across the UK, operating over 300 convenience stores as part of its partnership with M&S Food.  

Since partnering with Retail Insight in 2019, it has used the company’s AI powered solution, WasteInsight, for dynamic markdowns on goods nearing expiry, providing reduced prices to customers.

A cloud-based software solution, WasteInsight applies a machine learning model to provide dynamic markdown prices that encourage sell-through and reduce waste.  As well as enabling dynamic discounts, it also addresses expiration management, offers more efficient donations to charities and drives improved forecasting accuracy, allowing retailers to sell more while wasting less.

American Golf

American Golf has launched the Fluent Order Management solution.

It is replacing legacy systems with the distributed order management system, which will provide a real-time view of inventory.

The aim is to improve the customer experience by giving a real-time view of items available to purchase, mitigating cancelled orders and overselling. Customers will now benefit from an endless aisle experience, allowing them to place orders in-store, with fulfilment flexibilities to ensure orders are shipped in the most efficient and cost-effective manner. 

AyataCommerce, a technology services company and partner of Fluent Commerce, led the implementation. American Golf now has the capabilities of Ship from Store and Click & Collect, allocating stock in local stores to better serve customers. 

BOSS

BOSS (Hugo Boss) is releasing a new virtual store.

Developed by Emperia, using its Creator Tools platform, the immersive experience is aiming to encourage consumers to engage more deeply with the brand and discover, shop, and gift its range of 24/7 lifestyle products that include styles from the holiday collection alongside top gifting items in a gamified environment, with the aim of simplifying and infusing the process of finding the perfect gift with a bit of fun. 

Fully shoppable, the new BOSS Holiday Virtual Experience is centred around BOSS XP, the brand’s loyalty membership programme, while accessible to the general public.

The experience is set in a villa like setting with fully transparent walls, allowing visitors free movement, while exploring the various items, encouraging exploration and provoking curiosity; all leading to a holiday courtyard, accessible to loyalty members, called the Private Garden.

The Private Garden offers a glimpse into the benefits of becoming a BOSS XP member, including a raffle, event invitations, exclusive experience access, complimentary alterations and product sneak peeks, all animated and clickable, offering visitor education and reflecting the brand’s shopper appreciation.

Currys

Omnichannel technology retailer, Currys, has announced a range of upgrades to its UK&I stores.

It is switching from paper product pricing to digital labelling, known as ‘electronic shelf edge labelling’ (ESEL). This will arrive in 100 UK&I stores by the end of this financial year, with 60 going digital ‘pre-peak’.  

With clear labelling and easy to scan QR codes for further information, it seeks to make the in-store customer journey a lot smoother. ESEL will be managed by a centralised system which is also set to improve pricing accuracy and ultimately availability in stores for customers. 

The initiative has been driven by employee feedback that manual paper printing and labelling could become a real pain point for teams during busy trading periods.

Teams will now be freed up to spend more time helping customers. Currys has also introduced a digital queuing system across all its 298 UK&I stores. This new process will be fronted by dedicated ‘Sales Floor Leaders’ who will be on-hand to give customers a ‘warm welcome’ and be identifiable to customers with ‘Here to Help’ hi-vis. 

Integrated into colleagues’ ‘store-mode’ tablets that are used to process customer orders, shoppers can now join a digital line to speak to a tech expert.

M&S

Marks & Spencer (M&S) has renewed and increased the scope of its services contract with Diebold Nixdorf for an additional four years.

The agreement includes support services for the entire store estate, managed services for self-checkout technology and self-order terminals in the digital cafés, implementation services for M&S stores and distribution centres, and software services.

Diebold Nixdorf has provided hardware services to the UK retailer since 2019.

The scope of services expansion of the new contract, which applies to the more than 1,000 M&S stores in the UK and Ireland, aims to increase the productivity of both Diebold Nixdorf field service engineers and M&S colleagues – leading to higher availability of store IT and a reduction in calls placed to the helpdesk.

Flying Tiger Copenhagen

Flying Tiger Copenhagen is launching a new app with an accompanying Customer Club.

The latter is is a new initiative that’s part of its omnichannel strategy and it will be a key element in understanding customer preferences, delivering a better experience, rewarding loyalty and ensuring marketing efforts are more targeted and personalised.

The club was launched yesterday and customers that sign up to the app will be immediately rewarded with discounts ranging from 10% to 20% which can be applied to in-store purchases. 

Andre Filomeno, Senior Vice President for "Customer & Digital" at Flying Tiger Copenhagen, comments: “In 2023, we had around 100 million customers across our markets, and the majority of transactions happen in physical stores.”

“However, we are rolling out a number of initiatives to improve the experience, whether customers interact with us in the stores or digitally. Therefore, we are enhancing our customer experience across all platforms, making the new app a valuable addition to all of our channels and a key foundation of our omnichannel approach.”

Ocado Retail

Polytag has bolstered its partnership with Ocado Retail, with the online grocery retailer expanding its range of products that use the firm’s technology.

Over 60 of Ocado’s food, drink, and household product ranges now feature Polytag’s Digital Link QR codes, enabling consumers to delve deeper into product information and sustainability practices with a simple scan.

The expanded range of Polytag enabled packaging follows the success of the project Polytag ran with Ocado Retail in 2023 to deliver a nationwide digital deposit return scheme (DDRS) trial.

Over eight weeks, 20,000 20p rewards were given to consumers that had purchased - and recycled - Ocado's milk bottles via standard kerbside collection methods. Post-trial surveys revealed that 93% of the pilot users felt ‘positively’ towards the idea of a DDRS in the UK. 

The initiative will now see the online grocer package dry food and cleaning products in refillable containers to reduce single-use plastic and encourage reuse behaviours. Polytag’s QR codes will be used to educate customers on how to take part in the refill scheme and return their products.

Asda

Asda is piloting a self-service returns system where shoppers can deposit unwanted or faulty products and be automatically refunded.

A trial is underway at the retailer’s Ashton-under-Lyne store in Greater Manchester. Asda is also testing out a service allowing shoppers to buy tobacco and vape products without having to queue at the traditional kiosk.

In a LinkedIn post, Alexander Lacy, Senior Manager - Retail Front End Service and Back Office at Asda, said:“Self-service returns is live. Massive well done to all the people involved in landing our brand new self- service returns concept in our Ashton store in Greater Manchester.”

Boden

Peak, an AI platform that optimises product inventory and pricing, has partnered with Boden to optimise the trading capability of merchandisers.

The retailer has undergone a modernisation process over the last ten years, with its team continually looking for ways to build and maintain a best-in-class tech ecosystem.

As such, Boden turned to Peak to analyse its pricing structure, specifically selecting the company due to the speed of integration and its ability to go to market immediately given an integration with Snowflake.

Over a six-week period, Peak’s AI platform scrutinised Boden’s historic pricing and customer spending habits to pinpoint where the retailer could adjust to increase sales. Implemented alongside its planned sale moments - the brand uses markdown to clear seasonal lines through which it typically clears 10% of its stock - pricing recommendations resulted in margin gains and directly impacted profitability.

The intention is for Boden to adopt Peak’s AI platform more broadly as a key part of its integrated tech stack, optimising broader merchandising decisions as the landscape continues to shift for retailers.

East of England Co-op

East of England Co-op reports improved labour productivity whilst boosting customer service delivery in-store with an electronic shelf label (ESL) solution from Pricer. 

Having announced the roll-out of Pricer’s ESLs to its entire store estate in March, East of England Co-op now uses the solution, powered by the company’s cloud-based Plaza platform, to centrally manage and control pricing, product information and promotions across all its ESLs. 

Eliminating the need for manual updates, the ESLs deliver real-time price and promotions updates, reducing the risk of pricing errors and ensuring accuracy and efficiency in shelf-edge operations. The solution also drives overall store efficiency by enabling store colleagues to focus their efforts on custome -focused and value adding tasks that deliver store performance.

Boots

LiveRamp has announced a tie up with Criteo, and Boots is onboard as a launch partner.

Uniting Boots’ Advantage Card data with online exposure and offline sales data, the collaboration aims to provide advertisers with more transparent attribution across the retailer’s digital and physical retail environments for improved ROAS.

Ollie Shayer, Omni-Media Director, Boots UK and Boots Media Group, says: “I am proud Boots is at the forefront of this groundbreaking collaboration with two of our key retail media partners. As omnichannel behaviour among consumers accelerates, we now possess unparalleled insights into our customers' shopping journeys.”

“This powerful partnership empowers our brand partners to fully grasp the true omnichannel impact of their on-site activities on Boots.com, driving enhanced performance and deeper consumer understanding."