Walmart goes big on drones, GenAI and DSLs: 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 Holland & Barrett, Sam’s Club, Big 5 Sporting Goods, Giant Eagle, Mastercard, Avolta, and Yours Clothing.

Walmart

Walmart has announced drone delivery, Generative AI powered shopping assistant and digital shelf labels initiatives

It began trialing drone delivery in 2021 and has completed over 30,000 deliveries to date.

Earlier this year, it announced the largest drone delivery expansion of any US retailer, bringing this to up to 75% of the Dallas Fort Worth (DFW) population.

As a next step, Walmart is focused on bringing the experience directly to the Walmart app.

Starting later this month, customers in DFW will begin to be notified of the new ordering capability through the app if they are eligible for drone delivery based on the address associated with their account.  

The integration will be done in phases as more drone delivery sites launch and drone providers receive additional regulatory approvals to fly more goods across greater distances.   

Holland & Barrett

MRI Software has announced a partnership with Holland & Barrett, a UK health and wellness retailer that has over 1,000 stores across the UK and Europe.

By leveraging AI driven technology from MRI OnLocation for Footfall Analytics, Holland & Barrett will gain  insights into store performance metrics within its portfolio as well as visibility relative to the broader UK market.

Watsons

Watsons, the flagship health and beauty brand of AS Watson Group, is investing in opening and upgrading over 2,200 O+O (Offline plus Online) stores across 15 markets in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

The company expects to have over 3,800 new and refitted O+O stores by the end of 2024.

Sam’s Club

Sam’s Club has announced a milestone for an initiative enabling members to shape and contribute to Member’s Mark, the retailer’s exclusive private brand.

The Member’s Mark Community emerged from stealth with 50,000 actively participating consumers.

People provide input on products before they reach clubs – from voting on exclusive flavours to testing and trialing new items.

MixIn by Endeavour and Zitcha

The retail media arm of Australian drinks and hospitality business, MixIn by Endeavour, has partnered with Zitcha, to facilitate its off-site media across Meta’s Managed Partner Ads (MPA).

MixIn General Manager, Martyn Raab, says the tie up will allow suppliers to “close the loop” on seeing how their Meta brand spend impacts their ad performance.

“By leveraging Zitcha and the measurement from MixIn, brands can see the performance of their activity to deliver real insights and campaign measurement,” he comments.

“It means suppliers will be able to buy their Meta social media campaigns via MixIn and see which audiences viewed and responded to those campaigns. Suppliers will then be able to see if customers went on to purchase a product from the advertised brand through Endeavour Group channels such as BWS or Dan Murphy’s.”

“It demonstrates a high return on investment through sales data at an anonymised cohort level.”

“And one of the great things about this partnership is it protects the data of our consumers by never sharing personal information - the platform just sees them as an anonymous user.”

True North Energy

True North Energy, which has fuel and convenience stores with 171 company operated locations across Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Michigan, has announced the launch of a new truerewards loyalty programme and mobile app (the latter being powered by Rovertown).

“True North is excited to add the truerewards loyalty programme to our customer journey,” says Bailey Lyden, VP of Retail at truenorth convenience stores. “This initiative brings tremendous value to our most loyal guests, and it sets us apart in a competitive digital landscape.”

Leveraging PDI’s loyalty technology, truerewards offers members such benefits as an initial savings of $0.25 per gallon on the next fuel purchase after enrolment. Members are also rewarded for in-store purchases, unlocking additional savings of $0.05 per gallon with each $25 spent inside the store.

Avolta and utu

Avolta, the world's biggest airport retailer, and FinTech firm, utu, are launching a pilot that aims to maximise duty free shopping opportunities at Milan's Malpensa and Linate Airports.

This will offer travellers 25% more spending power by turning VAT refunds into duty free vouchers redeemable in Milan.

An estimated $4 billion in VAT refunds processed at airports goes unclaimed each year.

The Avolta x utu programme is claimed to be the first to capture this at scale, capturing VAT refunds that might otherwise leave the country, as an incremental sales driver for Avolta’s airside retail stores.

utu caught the attention of Avolta in 2023 at its NEXT Global Innovation Challenge, a showcase seeking innovative ideas to elevate travel retail. Selected as a finalist from over 140 entrants, it bagged a funded project with Avolta.

Good Food Holdings

Good Food Holdings is implementing SymphonyAI’s connected retail software, including CINDE demand performance, store and shelf performance, and merchandising, to drive informed actions faster than ever before across store, shelf, merchandise and supply chain for its US West Coast banners.

With five distinct food retailing brands, Good Food Holdings turned to SymphonyAI to improve enterprise wide insights and on-shelf availability.

The California-based retailer will use SymphonyAI CINDE demand performance, store and shelf performance, and merchandising, including master data management to unify data while supporting multiple item hierarchies across its Bristol Farms, Lazy Acres Natural Market, Metropolitan Market, New Seasons Market, and New Leaf Community Markets locations.

Using SymphonyAI AI-based supply chain capabilities including Demand Forecasting AI, store replenishment, fresh and kitchen management, and distributed order management, Good Food Holdings says it will achieve connected forecasting and availability to ensure shoppers have consistent access to the items they want across every store.

Big 5 Sporting Goods

Big 5 Sporting Goods is joining FreedomPay’s platform as it looks to bring enhanced commerce security and capabilities to its 424 stores across the United States.

“Big 5 is excited to start this new partnership with FreedomPay,” says Michael Shinagawa, CIO  & SVP, IT at Big 5 Sporting Goods Corp.

“This collaboration will allow us to continue our commitment to providing exceptional value and service to its customers.”

The tie up aims to give customers a fast, frictionless, and secure checkout experience in-store, enhanced by FreedomPay’s data driven platform to enable loyalty and incentives.

“Together, FreedomPay and Big 5 Sporting Goods are creating a more seamless customer experience,” says Nate Ware, SVP Sales & Digital Development at FreedomPay.

“FreedomPay is tapped by the top retail brands around the world to transform payments and we’re excited to partner with Big 5 Sporting Goods to bring a next level experience to their customers.”

Yours Clothing

Yours Clothing, a UK retailer specialising in fashionable and affordable plus size clothing, is enhancing its storefronts with digital signage. 

With over 100 stores across the UK and Ireland, Yours Clothing worked with AnyPlace Media Group to enhance customer engagement.

The goal is to create an inspiring narrative, drive footfall, and elevate the overall customer experience. This initiative is a part of a broader marketing strategy to leverage captivating advertising campaigns.

AnyPlace Media Group has installed digital screens with a brightness level of up to 4,500 nits, exceeding the typical range of 250-500 nits found in most standard TVs and monitors. 

Backlit posterboards in the retail outlets display windows have been replaced with either 65” or 75” high bright digital screens, made to withstand direct sunlight and showcase messaging around the clock. 

Prada Group

Adyen has announced a new partnership with Prada Group to innovate the payment experience in-store.

The latter is leveraging Tap to Pay on iPhone in its US and Milan stores with additional markets going live in the near future.

Adyen supports Tap to Pay on iPhone which enables the Group to accept all forms of contactless payments – including contactless credit and debit cards, Apple Pay, and other digital wallets – with no additional hardware or payment terminal needed.

As a result, customers no longer need to queue at a register, and instead can checkout directly with their sales associate in-store.

"We are working on scaling our omnichannel solutions on the platform to connect each sale across all channels. We need to make everything seamless. We believe Adyen is the right partner to help us collect and manage all our payments data efficiently,” says Cristiano Agostini, Prada Group Chief Information Officer.

Giant Eagle

Bridg, a division of Cardlytics, reports that Giant Eagle’s Leap Media Group, the regional grocer’s in-house retail media network, has joined the Rippl data and media network – a purpose built collective between regional grocers, convenience stores, and their advertisers.

Powered by Bridg’s cookie less identity resolution technology, Rippl aims to significantly enhance regional retailers’ first-party data and provide advertisers with a single access point to a national footprint of 70 million+ individual shopper profiles (loyalty and non-loyalty) with SKU-level purchase data and enriching attributes..

Using previously unavailable insights, advertisers can now tailor audiences based on actual product preferences, effectively execute single campaigns across multiple retailers, and consistently measure campaign performance across an aggregated landscape that is now the fifth largest provider of grocery and convenience store first-party, verified shopper data in the United States.

Makip

Tokyo, Japan-based sizing technology specialist, Makip, has launched its latest innovation in the UK - FaceChange.

This allows online shoppers to virtually try on items of clothing they want to purchase by using AI to replace the faces of the online models.

Users upload an image of their face, and FaceChange then replaces the online model’s face with their own - allowing them to see how they would look wearing the item.

This is the latest development of Makip’s online sizing technology, Unisize. The FaceChange AI technology has been used in Japan since 2023 and, according to Makip, is proven to increase conversion rates by over four times. 

DriveU.auto and Serve Robotics

DriveU.auto, a provider of connectivity platforms for autonomous vehicles, and Serve Robotics, a provider of autonomous delivery robots, have announced the deployment of the former’s connectivity platform on the latter’s commercially deployed robotic fleet. 

Serve says it will leverage DriveU's platform to enhance the performance of remote monitoring of its autonomous delivery robots, adding to the suite of tools Serve utilises as it works to deploy up to 2,000 robots on the Uber Eats platform.

Serve evaluated DriveU alongside competitive offerings and determined that its platform provides reliable, low latency and uninterrupted connectivity that allows robots to share real-time telemetrics, access cloud computing, and enable remote supervision in edge cases.

It also values DriveU’s native support of the Nvidia Jetson platform, which provides hardware accelerated video encoding and decoding, reduces network bandwidth and latency, and results in better video quality.

Mastercard

Mastercard has announced the expansion of its global Biometric Checkout Programme in Latin America (LAC).

With partners Ingenico, Fulcrum Biometrics, Fujitsu Frontech, and Scanntech, it has launched an in-store biometric payment experience at Tienda Inglesa’s Red Expres in Uruguay.

This is the first Biometric Checkout Programme pilot that allows shoppers to pay with their palms and the second pilot in the LAC region. 

Red Expres shoppers can register their information, payment credentials and biometric on-site and  pay for their goods by placing their hand over a sensor at the payment terminal. The programme allows for faster payment and shorter lines at checkout, and integrates with loyalty programmes.

Ship Essential

Local fulfilment company, Ship Essential, has announced the opening of its downtown LA fulfilment centre. 

The 36,403 square foot space is located at 2535 East 12th Street in the heart of the Arts District within The Box Yard DTLA. Ship Essential, which is founded in 2020 and headquartered in Brooklyn, New York. has signed lifestyle clothing brand Madhappy to anchor the West Coast expansion.

“We are pumped to lead the urban fulfilment movement and what better location to tap into fashion and retail than downtown LA,” says David J. Sitt, Ship Essential founder.

“With hubs on both coasts, we can offer brands reduced shipping rates  while maintaining our high touch edge over commodity based competitors.”

AssetFloow and Wincanton

AssetFloow, a Portuguese company specialising in behaviorial and predictive artificial intelligence, has announced a collaboration with Wincanton, a logistics and supply chain management firm in the UK.

AssetFloow, which was founded in 2021, develops solutions that analyse and predict behaviours and consumption patterns, helping companies make informed decisions and plan with greater accuracy.

Through the tie up, Wincanton will tap AssetFloow's analytics to optimise inventory management, improve demand forecasting, and increase the efficiency of logistics operations.

"We believe that our behaviorial and predictive AI technology will bring a new era of efficiency and predictability to logistics, enabling Wincanton to offer even more reliable and customer centric services," says Katya Ivanova Santos, CEO at AssetFloow.

"This collaboration represents an important step in our mission to provide AI solutions that create real value for businesses.”