Including Mango, Co-op, and Home Bargains: 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 L&G, Limited Space, Uber Direct, Flower Station, Company Shop, Pricer, THG Ingenuity, Very, Trek, Stuart, TradeKart, Forage, and Southeastern Grocers.

L&G

L&G has appointed Limited Space as media partner for a digital expansion initative within its retail and leisure portfolio.

The tie up will see Limited Space exclusively manage a large scale roll-out of digital media assets across 50 UK schemes in the L&G portfolio and includes 107 new D6 DOOH screens installed across the network as well as two premium large format landscape screens.

The initial phase of the roll-out, set to be live and operational from Q1 2025, will focus on three of L&G’s flagship shopping centres including Beacon Centre, Dolphin Centre, and Jackson Square, with a remaining network of retail and leisure parks scheduled to follow. Once complete, the 30 schemes will form one of the largest and most advanced digital networks within the UK’s retail and leisure sectors.

Denz Ibrahim, Head of Futuring & Place at L&G, says: "Our priority is ensuring our assets are future fit, relevant, and responsive. Digital integration is pivotal in transforming the consumer experience, and this partnership marks a significant stride in our mission to create dynamic, customer centric spaces. It will enhance value across multiple dimensions by diversifying experiences and revenue streams for our three key stakeholders: occupiers, consumers, and investors.” 

Reggae Land

Boxbar Tech reports that it will be supporting the Reggae Land festival this summer with a major automated, self-serve bar deployment at The Milton Keynes National Bowl, featuring 54 Points of Sale and 108 serving taps.

In a LinkedIn post, Boxbar Tech said: "With Chronixx, Capelton, YG Marley, Steel Pulse, Christopher Martin, Carroll Thompson, Janet Kay, Dawn Penn, General Levy, Abe Shanti, Channel One and many more all confirmed for a huge celebration of all things reggae music and Caribbean culture - we can’t wait! Cheers to our partners at JBM Music and the biggest ever edition of Reggae Land festival."

Walmart

Walmart has launched a new Walmart TV Studio within its recently opened home office campus in Bentonville, Arkansas, featuring a curved LED wall from Alfalite.

The installation consists of a 10x4-metre (13’x32’) Alfalite ModularPix Pro 1.5 ORIM 1/16 VP XR LED screen, equipped with Brompton processing, and serves as the centrepiece of the studio’s virtual production environment.

The 160-panel Alfalite LED wall is designed for seamless integration into extended reality (XR) and virtual production workflows, allowing Walmart TV (WMTV) - the retailer’s internal broadcast network - to create immersive video content with plenty of flexibility.

The curved screen delivers a resolution of 6400x2560 pixels and benefits from Alfalite’s exclusive ORIM technology, which, according to the company, enhances durability, improves viewing angles to nearly 170 degrees, and provides exceptional colour reproduction and brightness.

Flower Station

Inovretail, Uber Direct, and Flower Station have teamed up to assist Londoners in sending gifts, regardless of the occasion.

At the core of this partnership is Inovretail's Seeplus fulfilment management platform, which combined with Uber Direct's courier network, enables Flower Station to offer customers a fast same-day delivery option until shortly before store closure. 

This initiative ensures that Flower Station is well equipped to manage high demand periods with ease, enhancing the customer experience by offering real-time tracking and 24/7 support through Seeplus and Uber Direct.

Inovretail's Seeplus platform optimises the allocation of orders. It takes into account factors such as geographical location, store capacity, and inventory levels, allowing Flower Station to pick, pack and prepare orders for delivery within 30 minutes to meet the demands of various gifting occasions throughout the year.

Very

Digital retailer, Very, which is operated by The Very Group, has unveiled its new Beauty Inspiration Hub, a collection of educational and aspirational blog style content for its customers.

This follows the introduction of Very’s Beauty Studio earlier this year, which overhauled how customers navigated and experienced the retailer's beauty range.

The hub wouldn’t have been possible without the new cloud-based system, Skyscape. This is pitched as the biggest tech transformation it has taken on, involving the complete re-platforming of all the technology which powers the customer experience. Set to be completed this summer, the Beauty Inspiration Hub is the latest element to be launched.

It has been built with responsive, reusable and fully accessible components from The Very Group’s Fuse design system, all served and updated via the new Amplience content management system. Through engaging blog style content expert tips and trend spotlighting, Very aims to help customers make more informe purchases, bringing more of the instore experience to the digital world.

Sam Wright, Chief Commercial & Strategy Officer at The Very Group, comments: “We know our customers are busy and are looking for quick and easy ways to find the perfect products for them. Our innovative new beauty hub housed on Skyscape will allow us to give them inspirational and educational content in a convenient and easy way. This means customers can shop with greater confidence and more readily find the products they love."

“The vast majority of our customers who buy from our beauty ranges also buy from other categories. However, even though brand consideration for our beauty category is up, just one in seven fashion customers shop Very’s beauty ranges. We hope that the launch of the inspiration hub will educate our fashion first customers on the wonderful beauty ranges we have available.”

Mango

Mango has chosen o9 to enhance its planning capabilities and foster more data driven decision-making across its operations.

With approximately close to 2,850 stores in 120 markets, Mango operates in a retail environment characterised by demand fluctuations, evolving consumer preferences, and supply chain complexities.

To support its growth and improve operational efficiency, it is digitally transforming its merchandise financial planning (MFP), assortment planning, and demand planning capabilities. This initiative replaces fragmented, outdated systems with an integrated, AI powered, and data driven planning framework.

o9’s ability to work closely with the Mango team to address its specific needs in a practical way was a key factor in this collaboration. The o9 Digital Brain platform integrates key planning processes on a single platform, eliminating functional silos and enabling synchronised decision-making across teams.

The platform’s future-proof architecture allows Mango to expand planning capabilities, develop its own data science models, and scale the solution to support long-term growth.

EG America

EG America, a convenience store operator in the US, has selected PAR Technology to power the relaunch of its SmartRewards programme.

With more than 1,500 locations nationwide, EG America is tapping the PAR Retail loyalty platform for this.

“This relaunch represents a huge step forward for EG America and our guests,” says John Carey, President and CEO at EG America. “SmartRewards is more than a programme - it’s our way of saying, ‘We see you. We value you.’ Thanks to our partnership with PAR, we’re excited to create deeper connections and unforgettable experiences for every guest.”

Co-op

ACI Worldwide and Co-op have announced an extension of their payments technology partnership.

This will see Co-op continue to use the full range of solutions offered by ACI’s Payments Orchestration Platform, including in-store, online and mobile payment processing as well as end-to-end payments and fraud management.

Co-op operates around 2,400 stores in towns, villages and cities across the UK. ACI has supported it with the launch of several payment initiatives in recent years. For example, Co-op uses its point-to-point encryption and tokenisation technology to secure its payments data.

In 2024, the retailer moved its full stack of payments and fraud prevention software into ACI's multi-tenant cloud platform hosted in Microsoft Azure.  

Forage and Southeastern Grocers

Forage and Southeastern Grocers (parent company of Harveys Supermarket and Winn-Dixie) are launching SNAP EBT grocery delivery via DoorDash.

The tie up covers SNAP EBT recipients in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. SNAP beneficiaries can now use their benefits to order groceries for delivery from neighbourhood Harveys Supermarket and Winn-Dixie locations through DoorDash.

Harveys Supermarket and Winn-Dixie customers can log in to the DoorDash app, add their EBT card as a payment method and shop online for eligible items. The integration also allows users to check their EBT balance at checkout and deploy multiple payment methods to cover non-SNAP items.

“Forage was founded on the belief that everyone deserves convenient access to healthy, affordable food,” says Ofek Lavian, Co-founder and CEO at Forage, “By facilitating online SNAP transactions with partners like Southeastern Grocers, we’re closing the gap for underserved communities and providing essential groceries directly to their doorstep.”

Constructor

Constructor, an AI powered search and product discovery platform for enterprise e-commerce companies, has announced its Retail Media Suite.

This includes Sponsored Listings, an offering that aims to improve retail media performance by making online ads more attractive to each shopper. Now, retailers can serve personalised ads - integrated within search results, browse experiences and product recommendations - that learn from shopper interactions and complement (rather than compete with) organic placements.

THG Ingenuity

Pure Storage, a specialist in data storage technologies and services, reports its role in supporting e-commerce technology group, THG Ingenuity, to drive innovation and growth across its range of global consumer facing websites. 

The limitations of legacy data storage systems were hindering expansion plans and testing new solutions such as AI initiatives. THG Ingenuity needed cutting-edge infrastructure to support its growth plans, together with the reassurance of rapid recovery in the event of an outage. It was looking for an energy efficient solution, capable of helping it achieve a goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions across all operations. 

By adopting the Pure Storage platform across its 35 global datacentres, THG Ingenuity says that it has developed a powerful, efficient, and secure storage infrastructure that underpins its global operations and sets the company up for success as it continues to expand.

Stuart and TradeKart

Last mile solutions specialist Stuart has announced a new partnership with TradeKart, an on-demand delivery platform designed to support tradespeople.   

Stuart will power TradeKart’s last mile delivery operations. The tie up will enable businesses to meet ever evolving customer expectations in urban areas for quick, reliable and sustainable delivery service.  

“For tradespeople and their customers, waiting for essential tools or materials to arrive is a slow and frustrating process – and one that can grind entire projects to a halt,” says Cornelia Raportaru, CEO at Stuart.  

“In today’s society, we can order nearly anything to our doors within a day, so it seems only natural that this should be extended to essential building supplies. We are thrilled to be partnering with TradeKart to redefine last mile delivery in the trade sector, lending our expertise to support tradespeople and small businesses in urban areas across the UK.”

Company Shop

Surplus supermarket, Company Shop, has partnered with Pricer to roll-out the firm’s in-store solution based on electronic shelf labels (ESLs) across its entire UK store estate. 

Company Shop sells discounted surplus from over 800 brands, retailers and manufacturers to its members who meet specific criteria. Each year, it redistributes over 100 million items across multiple categories and prevents 122,000 tonnes of CO2 annually. 

Its assortment of shorter shelf-life goods changes rapidly, often multiple times daily, requiring frequent updates to product information at the shelf-edge. Additionally, its commitment to offering its members the best value meant store colleagues were conducting several manual pricing changes throughout the day.  

This required significant labour hours, and the installation of Pricer’s in-store solution for communication and digitalisation will create operational efficiencies, enabling store colleagues’ time to be used elsewhere.

Partnering with Pricer, Company Shop has ushered in dynamic pricing and markdown capabilities. The centrally controlled ESLs deliver automated real-time pricing updates direct to the shelf-edge throughout the day.

Heureka Group

GoWit has announced a retail media partnership with Heureka Group, a price comparison platform and online shopping advisor in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE).

Heureka Group operates in nine countries across CEE, reaching over 23 million visitors per month and collaborating with a network of over 55,000 online stores.

By integrating GoWit’s retail media technology across its online platforms in Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia & Herzegovina, it says it will connect e-shops and brands with target customers, helping them expand their market presence and gain a competitive edge across the region.

Initially launching the retail media networks in Slovenia (Ceneje.si) and Croatia (Jeftinije.hr) shopping markets, GoWit’s platform, GoWit RMA, will enable Heureka’s advertisers to leverage high impact omnichannel advertising solutions.

Home Bargains

Home Bargains reports the construction of a new distribution centre.

The contract for this has been awarded to McLaren Construction, with a ceremony taking place on Friday 21st March and it is expected to be operational mid-2028.

Completion is scheduled for October 2026. The facility will then hand over to Witron for installation of automated picking equipment. It will service 300+ Home Bargains stores.

The DC, located in Doncaster, will span circa one million ft2 and is designed to enhance logistics efficiency, create new job opportunities, and support Home Bargains’ expansion plans. The facility will incorporate sustainable building practices and will be automated, working in partnership with WITRON, utilising its latest order picking technology.

It has the same design as the retailer's DC in St Helens, which becomes operational in May 2025, with all product groups and logistics areas - from receiving to truck loading - integrated end-to-end into the automated overall process.

All processes are controlled by an intelligent warehouse management system from WITRON. The material flow includes 470,000 pallet, tray, and tote storage locations, 104 stacker cranes, as well as more than 15 kilometres of conveyor technology - all designed and manufactured at WITRON’s headquarters in Parkstein (Germany).

ReBound Returns and ESO RECYCLING

ReBound Returns has announced a partnership with ESO RECYCLING.

This will see retailers tapping its omnichannel returns management solutions utilise ESO RECYCLING's services to produce new materials from footwear items which can’t be resold.

ReBound handles over 100 million return transactions annually for various brands, combining intelligent technology and logistics capabilities to enable retailers to manage and monitor the full returns lifecycle.

ESO RECYCLING specialises in material recovery and recycling to transform waste into a resource. The company collects and recycles materials from the sports, fashion, and PPE industries, giving them a second life by diverting them from landfill.

Working with ESO RECYCLING has added non-resellable footwear to the list of items that ReBound can recycle. For example, when sports shoes are returned that cannot be resold, ESO RECYCLING transforms them into materials for projects that benefit society, such as shock absorbing playground surfaces or athletics tracks. The service is available throughout Europe.

Trek

Bicycle manufacturing specialist, Trek, has chosen Gr4vy, a cloud-based payment orchestration platform, to enhance its BOPIS transaction process.

Through its partnership with Locally, an online-to-offline shopping API solution, Gr4vy enables Trek to provide real-time inventory data from its network of retailers. This lets customers check stock availability on Trek’s website and complete their purchase in a single checkout.

John Lunn, Founder and CEO at Gr4vy, says: “Our goal is to give enterprises full control over their payment processes while removing unnecessary complexity. Ultimately, simplifying payments, so merchants can focus on what truly matters - growth.”