Featuring Rep AI, Adyen, and Reboxed: our biggest retail technology articles on LinkedIn this week
We’re big fans of LinkedIn and are busy building an amazing community of retail tech enthusiasts on the social media platform. As we head towards the 20,000 followers mark, these are the articles that are currently on their radars, including STRATACACHE, Gander, fabric, Bambuser, Reward, Amazon, Nuqleous, and Victoria Beckham.
Rep AI bags $8.2 million in funding for development of company’s AI powered online retail sales tool
Rep AI Technologies has raised $8.2 million in funding. Led by Osage Venture Partners (OVP), the investment will fuel further development of the company’s e-commerce sales tool.
Built leveraging a proprietary combination of behaviorial AI and large language models (LLMs), the tool enables merchants to provide personalised sales assistance at scale. It can be integrated with existing tech stacks.
OVP says that it selected Rep AI for its strong market traction and compelling value proposition.
Over 500 merchants worldwide are using its solution. Joining OVP in this round are Flashpoint Ventures and Oryzn Capital.
Comment: Chris Riegel, CEO and Founder of STRATACACHE, talks the new hot digital media opportunity
This year, over $140 billion will be spent on digital retail advertising globally.
Amazon likely captures more profit from its advertising services than through the fulfilment of products. Retail media is being hailed by many as a gold rush, and with these numbers, it is obvious why.
Many retailers are opening up their businesses to drive more opportunities to reach key audiences (and even more importantly key new revenue pools) through retail media advertising.
Seeing this gold rush, one could argue that a frontier that has yet to be fully explored and mined is the store itself. Since the end of the pandemic, online growth has plateaued, and still 93% of all retail dollars are spent in a physical store.
With their in-store offering, retailers can give advertisers something both illusive and extremely lucrative: accurate, attributable, and immediately actionable data on what drives a shopper conversion and how effective their advertising spend is.
Amazon teams with Grubhub and Aramark Collegiate Hospitality on latest JWT store in college space
Amazon has announced the launch of its 34th Just Walk Out technology powered store in the collegiate space.
In a LinkedIn post, Madison (Kelly) DeFranco, Senior Technical Business Development, Just Walk Out Technology at Amazon Web Services (AWS), said: “Thrilled to launch University of Virginia Gaston's Market powered by Amazon Just Walk Out technology in the beautiful new Gaston Hall - just in time to welcome back students.”
She added: “In partnership with our friends at Grubhub and Aramark Aramark Collegiate Hospitality, this marks our 34th store in the collegiate space. It takes a village, and I am so grateful for the the hard work of our AWS team and partners to get this store open.”
Damien Corcoran finishes interim COO engagement at food waste technology specialist Gander
Damien Corcoran has left food waste technology firm Gander where for the past eight months he has served as Chief Operating Officer.
In a LInkedIn post, he said: “The time has come for me to finish my interim COO engagement with Gander.”
“I am so proud of what the team has achieved in the last seven months; evolving their specialist technology to establish a strategy of channel integration partnerships.”
He added: “Gander’s mission of preventing food waste in retail, whilst also ensuring that humans can find perfectly good food at a discounted price, embodies higher purpose. My best of luck to the team in the Isle of Man, Australia and Brazil as they continue with the momentum we have created together.”
“I continue to support Gander as a brand advocate, working with partners to extend the mission of preventing waste in retail.”
Corcoran’s CV also includes stints as Retail Stores Director at Sainsbury’s and Vice President International at Whole Foods Market.
He has now started a new position as Chair - Charity Forum at Isle of Man Chamber of Commerce.
Tom Adams departs Cash App to take on Chief Technology Officer role at Dutch payment company Adyen
Tom Adams is set to join Adyen as Chief Technology Officer (CTO). He will be succeeding Alexander Matthey, who after a decade of building the FinTech firm will end his tenure later this year.
“As we look at the opportunity ahead, we find ourselves in a key position to solve for the continued complexity that we see in the payments landscape,” says Pieter van der Does, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Adyen.
“With Tom’s experience in building and leading a global engineering organisation, as well as driving product innovation at scale, we look forward to his contributions as we advance the benefits of our single platform.”
Adams will join from Cash App, a consumer business vertical of Block, where he served as Head of Engineering for four years.
As CTO, he will oversee the strategic and technological vision of Adyen’s single platform which encompasses payments, data and financial products.
Headless and composable commerce platform specialist fabric appoints new CRO and CCO
fabric has announced the appointments of Matt Kaminski as Chief Revenue Officer and Jay Topper as Chief Customer Officer.
The company’s headless and composable commerce platform, applications, and APIs support merchandisers, operators, and developers within brands and retailers with the aim of creating a much more modern commerce experience.
Customers include Chico’s, Debenhams, Pier1 Imports, and Crate&Barrel.
Kaminski comes to fabric from Power Factors where he was Chief Sales Officer, and before that, spent eight years with Salesforce, most recently serving as VP of Enterprise Sales.
Topper was previously at Chico’s FAS, where he most recently held the role of Chief Digital Officer, and FTD, as Chief Digital Officer and EVP Chief Technology Officer.
They will line up alongside Christelle Flahaux to bolster the fabric executive team. Flahaux was appointed EVP and Chief Marketing Officer last November.
Prior to fabric, she was senior VP of Brand, Growth, and Experiences for Automation Anywhere, Head of Marketing at FortressIQ, and Chief Marketing Officer at Host Analytics.
Reboxed launches circularity-as-a-service platform for brands and retailers to boost recommerce efforts
Circular economy startup, Reboxed, has announced the launch of ReboxedOS, an out-the-box solution for consumer electronics recommerce.
It says that the platform helps brands launch and scale co-branded resale, launch trade-in and recycling programmes quickly, and easily to boost revenue and sustainability.
Founded in 2019 during the first Covid lockdown by friends Phil Kemish and Matt Thorne, London based BCorp, Reboxed is on a mission to rehome 100 million devices.
Launched initially as a direct to consumer marketplace place for tech, after being approached by retailers they created a suite of services that aim to “revolutionise how brands and retailers approach recommerce and turn returns into revenue”.
ReboxedOS is an all-in-one circularity-as-a-service solution that allows businesses to integrate resale, trade-in, and set up recycling programmes, without having to invest in building their own infrastructure.
Reboxed has thus far helped clients in the telecom sector such as Three Mobile to launch a refurbished technology offering to customers of SMARTY, its sim only brand.It has also partnered with Lebara Mobile and Airtime rewards to scale circular economy solutions for their customers.
Reward announces two director appointments as company enhances its products and services to retailers
Reward, which specialises in customer engagement and commerce media, has announced two director appointments in its retail division.
David Wightman has been appointed to Retail Director of Partnerships and Sales.
He has over two decades of international experience in senior commercial roles, specialising in global sales, revenue growth and operational leadership.
Formerly COO at GIG Retail, where he led the Retail Media division of Asda, he has also held prominent positions at GroupM, South China Morning Post, GiveMeSport, and Mirror Group Newspapers.
Also stepping into the role of Retail Director of Partnerships and Sales is Josh Sullivan.
Since joining as Head of Business Development in 2022, he has been instrumental in forging new retail partnerships with industry giants like British Gas, Sainsburys, Boots, Asda, John Lewis, and Sports Direct.
Prior to Reward, he honed his expertise in retail media as Sales Director at Skai, an omnichannel marketing platform.
Retail analytics and supply chain optimisation firm Nuqleous hires Sam Jenks as Director of Corporate Development
Nuqleous, a B2B SaaS solutions firm specialising in Big Data, retail analytics, space planning, and supply chain optimisation, has announced the appointment of Sam Jenks as Director of Corporate Development.
“Sam Jenks is joining our team at a pivotal time in our growth journey,” says Garrett Levey, Co-CEO at Nuqleous.
“His deep experience in growth investing and his ability to foster strong partnerships make him an invaluable asset as we continue to expand our platform and broaden our market reach.”
“His expertise, particularly in guiding software companies through similar growth stages and executing integrations that rapidly deliver innovation, will ensure our customers experience swift and tangible value from our expanded offerings.”
Before joining Nuqleous, Jenks was a Growth Investor at Sorenson Capital, where he focused on product oriented B2B software companies, particularly in sectors such as cybersecurity, application developer tools, and AI.
Prior to Sorenson, he also held investing roles at Susquehanna Growth Equity and M33 Growth. During his career, he played a key role in successful investments and growth strategies for companies like ZenQMS, Traceable, OrderMyGear, and Bestpass.
Victoria Beckham deploys Bambuser shoppable video solution and kicks things off with denim refresh
Victoria Beckham has partnered with Bambuser as it looks to create a seamless shopping experience through video commerce, starting with the brand’s newly launched denim collection.
This will be showcased through high quality video, available on Victoria Beckham’s website and social media channels.
“We're excited to introduce video commerce for the launch of our denim collection and push the boundaries of how fashion can be presented and experienced,” says Kate Hurrell, Head of E-Commerce at Victoria Beckham.
“By integrating our social channels with our e-commerce platform, we're providing our customers with an immersive and convenient shopping experience.”
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