GenAI tools, smart carts, and green coffee cups: RTIH presents the retail technology week in numbers
Do you like numbers? Do you like retail systems news? Then this is the article for you. Including Primark, Fujifilm, Faire, EE, Jisp, Nectar360, REWE Group, and Retail Technology Show 2024.
20,000…Fujifilm reports that its partnership with Primark has surpassed expectations.
The tie up, which launched in November 2023 with a PHOTO by Fujifilm concession at Primark’s Manchester Market Street store, allows customers the opportunity to purchase the likes of digital photo prints, frames and other photo related accessories.
In the first three months of the partnership from November to January, in excess of 20,000 digital prints have been sold,
400,000…Wholesale marketplace Faire says that it has facilitated 400,000 product orders from 50,000 retailers across the UK since its launch in the market three years ago.
Since 2021, Faire has helped establish 200,000 new relationships between British brands and retailers, and more than 20 of its UK-based brands have turned over £1 million in revenues.
The platform - which connects independent retailers with unique and exciting independent brands - lays claim to a retail customer base that totals four times the number of stores across the UK’s four largest supermarket chains combined.
The initiative replaces all the current devices used by the company’s guides in-store, allowing them to complete all sales, service and operational processes from one device.
It also delivers 200Mbps dedicated fibre lines in every store via EE’s BT Business SD WAN.
Along with a new cloud EPoS solution provided by Aptos, reducing infrastructure footprint. And new PED devices from Barclays, making everything wireless.
8…Jisp’s Scan & Save loyalty and rewards offering is now live with Sudheesh Pallikulangara, whose business Sudi’s Stores has eight sites across the northwest of England.
These are predominantly in the Blackpool and Lytham St Annes area, offering customers a broad convenience range and services. Scan & Save will bring discounts and loyalty rewards to help manage customers’ shopping budgets.
Sam Halliwell, Operations Manager overseeing the eight stores, says: “We’ve been researching the market and had seen the benefits Jisp Scan & Save could bring to a retail operation.”
“Given the cost-of-living crisis we felt it was the right time to bring it into our estate, both as a way of rewarding our customers with great deals and loyalty payments and helping to grow our sales and profitability.”
$20 million…Artificial intelligence and machine learning-based technology startup, Topsort, has raised $20 million in Series A funding.
The round, which is led by Upload Ventures and returning seed round investors, Quiet Capital and Pear Ventures, sees the company valued at $150 million.
Topsort says it will use the cash to further scale its clean advertising platform that’s “free of creepy third-party cookie tracking and privacy invasive data – a significant departure from the advertising world of yesterday and a leap towards democratising the same kind of auction-based advertising that garnered massive profits for giants like Google and Amazon”.
Topsort has worked with such retailers, marketplaces and brands as Poshmark, Cencosud, Unilever, Coca-Cola, L’Oreal, General Mills, Glovo (part of Delivery Hero), and Phillips. It previously raised $8.6 million in a seed round in 2022.
1…Matalan, a fashion and homeware omnichannel value retailer, has announced the launch of a new Generative AI (GenAI) tool.
Matalan has partnered with Kin + Carta on the GenAI and Large Language Model (LLM) offering, which creates detailed product descriptions for items listed on its website.
The move is pitched as the first time a UK retailer has used AI in this way and forms an important part of Matalan’s digital transformation journey.
The tool will be implemented across all departments, including clothing and homeware. According to a press release: “As well as making shopping online with Matalan even easier, it is expected to deliver a 4x increase in productivity.”
2…Retail Technology Show has announced that Nick Beighton, CEO at Matches and Secret Sales Chairman, and former Asos CEO, will deliver a keynote session as part of its 2024 conference programme.
RTS 2024 will take place at London Olympia on 24th and 25th April, with Beighton in conversation with retail analyst and influencer Andrew Busby, on day two.
110…German retailer REWE Group has inked a deal with Israeli startup Catch to test Catch AI, a platform that operates across the likes of smart carts, smartphones, and self-checkout kiosks.
In the first phase of the agreement, the solution has been implemented in 110 carts at supermarket REWE Center, located in Cologne.
Each cart will be equipped with a tablet delivering a smart personal assistant to shoppers.
This allows people to scan their handwritten shopping lists or digitally transfer their shopping lists using a tablet. It does not require registration or app download, enabling anonymity throughout the shopping process.
Catch was founded in 2022 by Shlomi Dayan, CEO, and Itai Lishner, CTO, both former executives at Trax.
1…Nectar360 has announced the launch of Branded Shops, pitched as a first of its kind offering available to clients on the Nectar360 eCommerce Media Platform.
Co-developed with CitrusAd, this gives clients the ability to build custom pages on sainsburys.co.uk to help customers shop their favourite brands, with the aim of increasing brand engagement and encouraging purchases that drive incremental sales.
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