AutoStore and Bella Italia firsts: RTIH brings you 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 Ikea, Tesco, Vinted, Oracle NetSuite, Sainsbury’s, Mint Velvet, Retail247, Jigsaw, Paul Smith, and Primark.

Haugaland Storhusholdning

StrongPoint has installed the world's first AutoStore Multi-Temperature Solution with a frozen zone.

The inaugural site is Haugaland Storhusholdning, part the Norwegian food distribution group DLVRY, in a facility based in Sveio, Norway.

"Frozen greatly boosts our operational efficiency and creates a safer work environment for our employees," says Oskar Kirkeleit, CEO at Haugaland Storhusholdning.

"This installation is designed for maximum efficiency in food distribution. We are proud to be the first to implement an AutoStore solution with a frozen zone, which is now a part of the customer's daily operations.”

Ikea and Tesco

Ikea and Tesco are adding self-serve Ikea pick up lockers at Tesco’s Dereham Extra and Cambridge Newmarket Road Superstore as part of a trial between the two retailers. 

These are among just three locations in the UK selected for the trial.

Customers can order a wide range of Ikea products, from home accessories and homewares to furniture, for collection at their nearest automated locker, which is available 24/7.

Customers within 100km of the lockers will be able to make use of the service.

To select a collection, customers can choose the ‘Collect from an Ikea Store or Locker’ delivery option at checkout and select Ikea Lockers at either Tesco Dereham Extra or Cambridge Newmarket Road as the pick-up location.

Once an order has been confirmed, customers will receive an email and text containing a six-digit code to unlock the locker and collect their order.

Orders placed before 6:30am will be available from the same day, while orders placed after 6:30am will be eligible for collection from the following day. Collection slots can be booked up to five days in advance, subject to availability.

Our Vape Advocacy and Privately SA

Independent vape stores across the UK are now able to use an AI app that provides automated and accurate facial age estimation, removing guesswork from age checks and mitigating the risk of fines that can exceed £1,500.

Our Vape Advocacy (OVA) has partnered with Privately SA to offer its UK members the latter's AgeAI age estimation system. This is said to be 100% anonymous, with no images transmitted or stored, and GDPR (UK) certified.

“We want to proactively ensure that our members are doing their best to avoid selling to minors and Privately’s AgeAI is the ideal solution for our industry," says James Van Aalst, Our Vape Advocacy.

"We are delivering a bespoke version of AgeAI that is best in class and designed with vape retailers in mind. It is lightning fast at the checkout, greatly reduces friction between staff and customers, and is incredibly easy to set up. AgeAI automates the ‘refusals register’, making monitoring store compliance easier over time.”

Antigua Apparel

Antigua Apparel has selected PTC’s product lifecycle management solution, FlexPLM, to manage its product development process for its golf and sports licensed apparel business.

Antigua will tap FlexPLM to equip its design, development, and quality teams with a platform that centralises data, streamlines product development, and enhances daily efficiency and collaboration.

Additionally, FlexPLM will play a key role in managing the development and collections for Antigua’s sports licensed division, which includes a diverse portfolio of licenses such as NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, MLS, NWSL, US Soccer, top international soccer teams, MiLB, WNBA, NBA G-League, PBR Teams, NASCAR, and over 400 colleges and universities. 

Vinted

Vinted, an online consumer-to-consumer marketplace dedicated to pre-loved fashion, reports that it is using Oracle NetSuite.

With the tech, it has been able to take advantage of an integrated business system to consolidate financial processes, enhance operational consistency across multiple entities, and improve data visibility throughout its departments.

Founded in Lithuania in 2008, Vinted has grown to become a European leader, with millions of members across over 20 markets.

During this expansion, it became increasingly important for it to streamline its financial management, as it relied on eight disconnected accounting applications, making it challenging to achieve a cohesive and integrated view of its financial data.

Bella Italia

Italian restaurant brand, Bella Italia, has launched its first ever rewards app.

The aim is to. showcase new dishes, offers and competitions.

The launch is part of the ‘Feel Bella’ campaign, designed to offer a soothing escape from life's daily stresses, just in time for autumn. 

The app, which took six months to develop, unlocks deals like free dough balls on Tuesdays. It also allows customers to find the nearest Bella Italia whilst staying up-to-date with the latest menu launches and limited time only dishes. 

There is also a ‘Spin The Wheel’ section, where users can unlock exclusive discounts, perks, and freebies, along with the chance to win a £100 voucher every week.

Hibbett

Athletic inspired fashion retailer, Hibbett, has selected the Cequence Unified API Protection (UAP) platform.

Doing so has significantly enhanced its automated threat detection capabilities and enabled comprehensive inventory management, compliance, and API protection across all online and in-store brands.

Like many retailers, Hibbett operates in a hybrid IT environment, juggling both on-premises and cloud-based systems for its retail and online operations. After critical SaaS migration to Oracle Cloud and Azure Active Directory, the company prioritised robust API security.

This migration triggered a surge in API usage, highlighting the need for greater visibility to mitigate data loss, theft, fraud, and potential business disruptions. Maintaining business continuity was paramount.

Hibbett sought a security solution that could quickly discover and protect all internal and external APIs and enable the creation of custom policies for mitigating and blocking bot attacks without disrupting revenue streams or existing business partnerships.

This led it to Cequence’s UAP platform.

Clipper Petroleum

Clipper Petroleum has launched its new e-commerce channel through a partnership with Lula Commerce.

This introduces local delivery and pickup services across its retail locations in Georgia and South Carolina.

Founded in 1933 and acquired by Tom Bower Sr. and Bob Braff in 1974, Clipper Petroleum has grown to operating 23 convenience stores, six quick service restaurants (QSRs), and supplying fuel to over 300 dealer partner accounts across the US southeast.

Celebrating its 50-year anniversary this year, the company is now providing its customers with access to their favourite products through digital ordering platforms like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub.

Sainsbury’s

Sainsbury’s has announced a new multi-year partnership with SAP that will see the consolidation of its legacy systems, with the aim of achieving increased business agility through cloud-based solutions, as well as a simplified and cost optimised technology estate. 

SAP has been appointed to lead the design of the new solution in partnership with lead transformation partner Accenture and cloud provider AWS. 

By adding new capability and capacity to its commercial systems, the retailer says it will be able to manage products on promotion in increasingly flexible ways, allowing a more tailored value experience for our customers. 

The project will simplify and integrate Sainsbury’s systems and tools into one cohesive platform and create a single ecosystem for Sainsbury’s colleagues and suppliers to communicate.

Rhian Bartlett, Chief Food Commercial Officer at Sainsbury’s, says: “We’re excited to be working with a brilliant partner network in SAP, Accenture and AWS to completely revolutionise our commercial systems, which are the heart and lungs of our business operations.”

“This is a huge step forward in our Next Level Sainsbury’s plan, as we continue to invest in market leading technology that allows us to keep growing at pace and maintain our momentum towards becoming first choice for food.” 

Jigsaw

Jigsaw has deployed technology from returns management specialist Reveni.

In a LinkedIn post, Fernando Pedraz, Co-founder and CEO at Reveni, said: “Since their inception, Jigsaw has evolved into a bastion of British fashion, known for its elegant designs. Our growth from a small team to a category creator mirrors Jigsaw's journey of setting style benchmarks.”

He added: “They chose Reveni to turn returns into a loyalty lever by integrating our cutting-edge Instant Refunds which are increasing the repurchase rate. We've also streamlined Jigsaw's reverse logistics operations, elevating the shopping experience for Jigsaw's customers.”

Mint Velvet

Retail247 has announced the selection of Origin as the product platform for Mint Velvet.

The British fashion brand chose Origin to streamline its product data journey.

The first phase of deployment includes Channel Syndication. Origin connects retailers with their channel partners, streamlining the data sharing process and shortening the time needed to launch with a new partner.  

Martin Schofield, CEO at Retail247, says: “It’s fantastic that Mint Velvet have chosen Origin to manage elements of their product data.”

“We’re thrilled to be working with such an iconic brand and welcome them to our growing list of clients. This partnership highlights Origin's value in enhancing data management and efficiency, and we look forward to supporting Mint Velvet’s growth.”

Paul Smith

Paul Smith has announced a partnership with Centra.

It overhauled its digital flagship in 2022, transitioning to a headless front-end designed by agency partner Limesharp.

However, beyond the product pages, the customer experience fell flat with a slow checkout while the Paul Smith team faced several challenges streamlining and scaling its business because of its existing e-commerce platform.  

Originally looking for an order management solution (OMS) to facilitate multi-source inventory and global ship-from-store capabilities, the team realised this would present additional challenges.

Hannah Bennett, Head of Digital at Paul Smith, says: “We were considering investing in an OMS software but realised we would still have to upgrade the platform and our development team would then need to build and support those features. We’re a fashion brand; we need to be integrating solutions not building and maintaining software.”

Primark

Primark is continuing its deployment of self-checkouts. Its Truro, Broughton Park, Oxford Street East, and Chester stores officially went live with the tech last month.

And now Kerry Hooley, Project Retail Implementation Lead at Primark, reports that, last week, “we proudly launched our self-checkouts in Llandudno, Harlow, and Mullingar.”

She added: “It has been another fantastic week! We are prepared for another busy week ahead!”