Online groceries growth comes with profitability challenges: presenting the retail technology week in numbers

Do you like numbers? Do you like retail systems news? Then this is the article for you. Including First Insight, Debenhams Group, Pricer, Fanatics, lululemon, Oh Polly, JD.com, Action, and MINISO.

3,000 and 157…Action, a Dutch non-food discount retailer, has opened its 3,000th store in Europe, which is also the 157th store in Italy, in the Italian town of San Rocco al Porto in the southern part of Lombardia.

Action pulls in an average of 18.7 million customers every week in 3,000 stores across 13 European countries.

“We started 32 years ago with a small discount store in Enkhuizen, the Netherlands. Ever since, we have been expanding from country to country. Two months ago, we opened a first store in Switzerland. Right now, we are preparing a first one in Romania in the autumn of this year as well. Opening our 3,000th in a country where our customers welcomed us so enthusiastically is extra special. The location in San Rocco al Porto in Lombardia is our 157th in Italy, just four years after we opened our first one,”  says Hajir Hajji, CEO at Action.

83%...First Insight has released the findings of its new Tariffs & Trust: Why Retailers Risk Loyalty with Price Hikes Study.

Despite the fact that 68% of the 306 brand and retail executives surveyed expect a negative reaction from customers, and 73% of 1,120 US consumers confirm they would be frustrated by price increases, 83% of executives plan to raise prices anyway.

Consumers say they’ll respond to retailers’ decisions with either increased loyalty or decreased trust: Nearly 80% would feel more loyal to brands that absorb tariff related increases, while nearly three in four would abandon their favourite brand for a cheaper generic if retail prices rise.

1...Braehead Shopping Centre is gearing up to officially welcome MINISO, the lifestyle brand’s first store in the West of Scotland, opening at 12pm on Friday 6th June.

This will be located on the lower level, near MAC.

To celebrate the launch, visitors can enjoy a live drumming performance, along with balloon giveaways and a special visit from Penpen the penguin mascot. Also, the first 200 customers who spend £5 or more will receive an exclusive goody bag worth £25, packed with fan favourites and cute collectables.

617%...Debenhams Group, home to Debenhams, Karen Millen, boohoo, MAN, and PrettyLittleThing, reports a surge in demand for western inspired fashion fuelled by the start of Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter tour, which opens in the UK this week.

Debenhams Group says its PrettyLittleThing site saw a 617% increase in searches for cowboy jackets in May 2025, as well as a rise in demand for cowboy hats (up 85%) and boots (up 53%). 

Boohoo reported a 166% increase in sales of denim tops last month and a 40% increase month-on-month in searches for denim shorts. Sales of suede jackets were also up 271% and sales of cowboy-themed t-shirts increased by 33%.

The top search terms on the Debenhams Group’s Nasty Gal site last week were “sequins”, with “western” and “cowboy” close behind, both seeing a 40% increase in searches compared to the previous week.

24...Wincanton has announced the first arrivals of 24 new electric powered trucks scheduled to join its logistics fleet this year. The move forms part of the company’s investment in the necessary solutions to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2040.

The multimillion-pound project will see Wincanton introduce battery electric trucks to its fleet. The trucks will hit the nation’s roads this summer. 

The new vehicles, supplied by DAF Trucks, Volvo Trucks and Renault Trucks, which will be able to operate at more than 40 tonnes, are expected to reduce Wincanton’s CO2 emissions by 2,400 tonnes per year.

10,000...Tennant Company reports that it has sold its 10,000th autonomous mobile robot (AMR).

It says that the milestone reflects growing adoption of robotic cleaning technology as organizations look to automation to drive consistency, efficiency, and performance across operations.

$20.5 million...dataplor, a provider of global location intelligence, has announced the close of a $20.5 million Series B funding round, led by F-Prime, with participation from Spark Capital, FFVC, Acronym Venture Capital, Two Lanterns Venture Capital, APA Ventures, dara5, and Alumni Ventures.

The cash will be used to accelerate its growth, expand its product offerings, and scale its global location intelligence products.

“Businesses around the world are realising how critical accurate, dynamic location data is to their strategy,” says Gaurav Tuli, Partner at F-Prime. “dataplor has built a truly differentiated solution that combines global scale, data quality, and compliance in a way we haven’t seen before. We’re thrilled to support their next phase of growth.”

70...NewStore reports that Kurt Geiger is now live on its Omnichannel PoS solution across more than 70 owned stores, outlets, and airport locations in the United Kingdom and the United States.

The roll-out spans the Kurt Geiger and Carvela brands, with the retailer replacing three legacy in-store systems with a mobile-based solution.

Store associates now have the ability to complete transactions and deliver seamless omnichannel experiences, including endless aisle, ship-to-store, and buy online pickup in-store and buy online return in-store, using only an iPhone or iPad.

67%...Retailers are shelving planned store technology investment to prioritise AI, according to research from Pricer.

A survey of over 100 senior UK retailers revealed that 67% plan to invest in AI at the expense of existing road mapped technologies within the store. The aim here is to improve operations and create efficiencies to mitigate against rising costs facing their organisations. 

Pricing automation and AI for customer service in-store were the top types of AI that 59% retailers plan to invest in over other technologies, according to Pricer’s research. This was followed by shelf-edge AI cameras (53%) and AI powered in-store content (47%). 

With 43% of retailers saying that extracting data and insights from in-store technology investments to drive future performance is one of their top challenges, this is also prompting retail businesses to turn to complementary solutions at the shelf-edge to deliver data to power AI within the store.

47% of retailers are considering combining electronic shelf labels (ESLs) with automation to capture data across inventory and fraud detection, followed by customer engagement (45%) and loss prevention (42%).

50%...UK consumers are nearly 50% more loyal to stores than the brands they buy, with in-store experiences and meaningful rewards driving long-term customer commitment.

That's according to research from Prezzee, which involved a survey of 5,000 Brits. The study found that 47% are loyal to the retailers they shop with compared to just a third that consistently purchase the same brands (33%).

The trend is most pronounced among older consumers, with 50% of over-55s expressing store loyalty versus only 22% being brand loyal. In contrast, millennials (aged 25-34) reverse the trend, being the only age group more loyal to brands than stores (47% vs 42%). 

When considering what impacts loyalty, customer service is key. 54% of consumers say poor service erodes their trust, followed by a drop in product or service quality (46%), increased prices (38%) and negative publicity (24%).

4,200%...Fanatics reports that merchandise sales in the 12 hours following Paris Saint-Germain’s UEFA Champions League victory were the highest in company history for an individual team win outside of the USA.

In case you mised it, Inter Milan got spanked five-nil by PSG in what was absolutely not a game of two halves, Brian.

More PSG merchandise was sold in the 12 hours following the win than in the previous three months combined. Immediately after the final whistle fans from 70 countries visited the official PSG online store to buy merchandise.  

Sales on the official online PSG store peaked in the hour after the club lifted their first ever Champions League trophy. Sales between 11:00pm and midnight CET on Saturday 1st June spiked more than 4,200% compared to total sales from the entire previous day (Friday, 30th May).

1...Oh Polly will this coming weekend open its first permanent retail store. It is heading Stateside for this, with Los Angeles the choice for its physical debut.

In a LinkedIn post, founder Mike Branney said: "Ten years to get to this moment and it’s very exciting to be doing something new again! 8001 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles."

1 and 2...lululemon has opened its first store in Istanbul, marking its official entry into the Turkish market in collaboration with franchise partners, Fiba Group.

The Canadian athletic apparel retailer's debut location at İstinye Park is now open, with a second store at Akasya launching next month.

200%...JD.com's 618 Grand Promotion kicked off at 8:00 PM  (UTC+8) on 30th May. In the first hour, GMV, total orders and active shoppers increased by more than 200% year-over-year (YoY). 20,000+ brands recorded over threefold growth in GMV YoY, according to the Chinese e-commerce giant.

JD Cloud technology continues to power the shopping event.

In the first hour of the promotion, usage of JD Cloud’s JoyBuild large language model (LLM) development platform surged 242% compared to the same period during last year’s Singles Day promotion. LLM capabilities have been integrated across the entire 618 event.

This year, JD Cloud opened five AI powered marketing tools to third-party merchants free of charge for the first time. Its digital representative technology has served over 13,000 brands, while Jingxiaozhi 5.0, JD’s AI powered merchant service platform now supports 900,000+ merchants.

Elsewhere, JD Logistics deployed its largest ever roll-out of technologies across its national infrastructure.

The company’s solutions, including its goods-to-person systems, autonomous delivery vehicles, automated rebin walls, AI Brain, and smart sorting systems, were implemented at scale with the aim of enabling speedy and accurate delivery in more than 400 cities.

$646 billion...Online is set to remain the fastest growing grocery channel globally through 2029. IGD’s latest Online Retail Trends Report reveals that this growth will add $164 billion in sales, bringing the channel’s total to $646 billion by 2029. It is also expected to gain the most market share of all modern grocery channels, increasing by 0.5% to reach 6.3%.

The report highlights that while Asia will lead in absolute sales growth, Australasia will see the fastest growth rate, and North America will remain a hub for innovation, with Walmart and Amazon continuing to dominate. However, this growth comes with profitability challenges. As online penetration deepens, grocery retailers are under pressure to manage rising operational costs and protect margins.