Starring Picnic, RTS 2025, and ImagineCreate AI: RTIH’s most read retail technology articles from last week
Check out the articles on this here website that caught your fancy last week, including Puma, Google Cloud, Honeywell, Qualcomm, New Seasons Market, Amazon, and the 2024 RTIH Innovation Awards.
Travis Kalanick's digital food court Picnic is now serving San Francisco and Mountain View
“It’s just like using a food delivery app, but we bring everyone’s order together at the same time,” according to a Picnic spokesperson.
The LA-based venture is now serving San Francisco and Mountain View. It’s the next big thing, according to Brittain Ladd, a supply chain consultant and former Amazon executive.
Picnic’s business model aligns with City Storage Systems’ stated goal to make food delivery “more affordable, higher quality and convenient for everyone.” The wide selection and low prices are driving business to CloudKitchens and Otter - also part of City Storage Systems (CSS), he noted in a LinkedIn post.
2024 RTIH Innovation Awards: don’t delay, enter today!
There are only four weeks left to submit your entries for the 2024 RTIH Innovation Awards.
Deadline for submissions is Friday, 25th October.
The awards, sponsored by CADS, 3D Cloud, Retail Technology Show 2025, and Business France, celebrate global tech innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.
It’s free to enter and you can do so across multiple categories.
Key 2024 dates
Friday, 25th October: Award entry deadline
Tuesday, 29th October: 2024 shortlist revealed
30th October-6th November: Judging days
Thursday, 21st November: Winners announced at the 2024 RTIH Innovation Awards ceremony, to be held at RIBA’s 66 Portland Place HQ in Central London.
Ocado customers left fuming as online grocery retailer says sorry and cancels deliveries at last minute
Ocado customers took to social media to vent spleen after the online grocery retailer cancelled deliveries at late notice earlier this month.
In an email sent to customers, Laura Harricks, Chief Customer Officer, Ocado Retail, said: “We’re very sorry, but we’re unable to deliver your Ocado order. Of course, you won’t be charged for this order.”
She added: “You can rebook the same order if you like. Just log in to ocado.com as normal and select ‘Rebook’ to choose a new date and time.To make it up to you, here’s a £20.00 voucher. It’s valid until 16/12/2024. Thank you for your understanding. Sincerest apologies.”
New Seasons Market follows Instacart DoorDash moves with Amazon same-day grocery delivery service
Portland, Oregon-based neighbourhood grocer, New Seasons Market, is now available on Amazon for online shopping and same-day grocery delivery.
To celebrate the launch, all Prime members will receive free delivery on their first three orders from New Seasons Market.
"We’re thrilled to partner with Amazon as a pivotal step toward broadening our service offering and delivering the utmost convenience to our valued customers,” says Nancy Lebold, New Seasons Market CEO.
“Recognising the rapidly changing landscape of grocery shopping, we're embracing industry leading platforms, including that provided by Amazon, to ensure that our community has access to the freshest, most sustainably produced and highest quality products with the ease of online shopping and fast delivery.”
Puma taps Google Cloud’s Imagen on Vertex AI solution to create immersive digital shopping experiences
Puma and Google Cloud have announced an expanded partnership aimed at enhancing the digital shopping experience with generative AI.
Using Imagen 2 on Vertex AI, Puma says it can now create dynamic and personalised product imagery that is improving click-through rates and accelerating the time-to-market for its digital campaigns globally.
It has the ability to generate relevant imagery, such as new background images that are tailored to the product, customer, and region. While the technology is available globally, Imagen on Vertex AI enables marketers in individual Puma regions to tailor content to their specific market needs.
For example, while shopping online, customers from Japan may see a lifestyle shoe worn on the streets of Ginza or a trail running shoe on the foothills of Mt. Fuji.
Beyond image generation, Imagen on Vertex AI also becomes a tool for image editing, aiding Puma content editors with time-consuming editing tasks, such as shadowing, composition and color accuracy, resolution, and product positioning.
Since migrating its e-commerce ecosystem, including Puma.com, to Google Cloud earlier this year, Puma has experienced significant benefits across its online shopping portfolio.
Retail Technology Show 2025 website goes live as leading event makes move from London Olympia to ExCel
The new Retail Technology Show website has gone live, ahead of the 2025 event, set to take place at London ExCel on 2nd-3rd April.
Retail Technology Show 2024, which took place at London Olympia in April, welcomed over 12,500 retail professionals to its two-day event, an increase of attendee numbers by +28% year-on-year.
Described by Charles Tyrwhitt’s Nick Wheeler as “eye opening”, the organisers (Nineteen) delivered their biggest innovation showcase to date, with 400+ technology providers and innovators exhibiting across two exhibition halls.
Nourished’s CEO, Melissa Snover, pointed to the sheer breadth and depth of the technologies being showcased this year, commenting: “there’s a huge amount of different people from all elements of retail, and some incredible technologies coming out.”
ImagineCreate AI targets e-commerce brands with new AI image generation and try-on technology
ImagineCreate AI has announced a new suite of AI image generation tools, supporting its mission to fuel brands with more efficient and high quality methods of photo creation.
“No matter the size, every brand depends on product photography for their website, ads, and channels, yet producing professional-quality images has traditionally been a costly and time-consuming process, involving studio rentals, photographer bookings, photo editing, and reshoots,” says former Shopify Director Fatima Yusuf, Founder and CEO at ImagineCreate AI.
“It's why I’m thrilled to share this best-in-class AI image generation technology, delivering ultra-realistic images at a fraction of the cost. We’re on a mission to enable personalised, high quality image creation and unforgettable experiences for brands of every size with the power of AI.”
ImagineCreate AI’s fashion photography tool generates photoshoots from flat lay images to lifestyle images, on any model, anywhere in the world, in a matter of seconds.
This allows brands to personalise their images and quickly tap into evolving trends. This tool also allows merchants to customise apparel images based on their buyer’s demographics and preferences.
Honeywell teams with Qualcomm to develop retail focused artificial intelligence powered mobile assistant
Honeywell is working to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) enabled Multi-Modal Intelligent Agent for its mobile devices powered by Qualcomm Technologies. The agent will allow workers and customers in the distribution centre and retail industries to interact naturally with their handheld devices through voice, pictures, and barcodes.
Workers will be able to enter data into the technology and then receive practical answers to queries like, "Do we have the gluten-free variant of this product in stock?" or "Where can I find this particular item in the store?"
Depending on the question, users will receive responses in the form of an image, video, spoken response, text answer, or a combination of several modalities.
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