AI doubts, digital threats, and surplus food milestones: the retail technology week in numbers
Do you like numbers? Do you like retail technology news? Then this is the article for you. Including Duvo, TFG London, Bain & Company, M&S, Morrisons, Lidl GB, Omnisend, Marklo, Ikea, Miracly, Pricer, Orange, and Frasers Group.
561...Pricer has been selected by Orange, a telecommunications operator in France, to digitalise its retail store network. The project encompasses 561 stores with an average size of 120 m² over the next two years.
The agreement covers the complete deployment of Pricer’s electronic shelf label (ESL) solution, including hardware, infrastructure, attachment solutions, installation, and cloud management via the Plaza platform under a long-term maintenance contract. It includes annual recurring SaaS and maintenance revenue. Orange chose Pricer following pilot programmes across multiple store locations.
28% of UK consumers do not trust artificial intelligence in retail at all, as retailers such as Morrisons introduce new technology to the weekly shop, according to research from e-commerce marketing platform Omnisend.
The company surveyed 1,086 Brits for this. 29% are concerned that AI will lead to job losses on the high street. 27% feel their activity is being tracked by supermarkets, while 53% believe loyalty schemes such as Tesco Clubcard and Sainsbury's Nectar monitor their spending habits.
The findings come as Morrisons trials Instacart's AI powered Caper smart trolleys at a Preston store, becoming the first UK retailer to introduce the technology. Elsewhere, Lidl extended its Lidl & Go trial to another 37 stores during July, allowing customers to scan products through the Lidl Plus app and track their spending and savings in real-time
55% of respondents have used a scan-as-you-shop device in a supermarket. Among those who have tried the technology, 70% used it to save time at the checkout, while 24% tapped it to help stick to a budget. A further 5% wanted to reduce the amount of interaction they had with supermarket staff. Just 8% of all respondents said scan-as-you-shop devices make them feel as though their every move is being tracked, while 20% said the technology makes their weekly shop more efficient.
$5 million...Marklo has announced $5 million in seed funding led by Forerunner, with participation from Freestyle Capital. It has also opened its public beta. Marklo is an agentic marketing platform for brands running on Shopify that, according to those involved, understands what is happening across the business, identifies the next revenue opportunity and proactively builds the work for marketers to review and approve.
Used by DTC brands including Away, Clare V., Monica + Andy, Maya Brenner and Latico Leathers, Marklo is pitched as knowing what a brand has sold, what it has marketed, what's in stock and what's coming next, and what's happening outside the brand: what competitors are promoting, what's trending on social and where the category is moving. It reads all of it to determine which campaigns to run next, then builds the work itself: the calendar, the content, the approvals and the team handoffs that used to happen by hand.
"Every tool in a brand's stack is getting AI, but each one only sees its own corner of the business," says Jessica Herrin, Founder and CEO at Marklo (who previously founded Stella & Dot Brands). "Great merchants don't work that way. You can't decide what to market next without knowing what sold, what's in stock, what you've already promoted, what's coming, and what the rest of your category is doing. Marklo sees all of it, spots the next opportunity and gets the work moving."
$32 million...Duvo, an automation platform that gives teams an AI workforce for their day-to-day operations, has announced a $32 million Series A led by Balderton Capital, with participation from existing investors Index Ventures, Northzone and Credo Ventures. The round brings its total funding to $48 million and will fund its expansion, starting with retailers and CPG companies.
Michael Green is also joining from Databricks as Senior Vice President, Go-to-Market. He previously served as a Senior Vice President at Salesforce. Spencer Insolia recently came onboard as Managing Director, US. He was previously President at Kmart and a Managing Director at Accenture. Christoph Schwaiger, former CEO at Aldi South Holdings, has also signed on as Senior Advisor for Europe.
"For a while I measured AI in heads, counting how many people an agent could replace. It's the wrong unit," says Tomáš Čupr, Co-founder and CEO at Duvo and Founder and Group CEO at Rohlik Group. "At Rohlik, the gains I'd point to came from work nobody had the hours for. Our planners used to check about eight at-risk products a day per market for shortages. Now every signal gets checked, around the clock. We think of it as raising the GDP of every employee: more value from the people a company has, not the same value from fewer of them."
$2 million...Miracly, a GEO and AI operating system for marketing teams and agencies developed by The Wild Ventures, the company behind Scandinavian home decor brand Wild Palace, has announced a $2 million pre-seed round led by Beenext Ventures and Lotus alongside a Swedish family office, with existing investors including Stefan Lindeberg, Founder at VC firm Creandum; Alex Bouaziz, Founder and CEO at Deel; Thomas Ekman, Founder at 6GAI and former CEO at Axel Johnson publ, Dustin and Tele2; Hedda Baverud Olsson, Founder and CEO at Lassie, and Parham Benisi, Partner at Pophouse.
The company publicly launches this week. Pre-launch it has landed customers including Dreams, Acclime, Pixi Beauty, Andy Okay and Duellix.
“We’re seeing an incredible demand for Miracly’s AI marketing platform. Companies all over the world are impacted by decreasing organic traffic from Google and increasing cost of performance marketing,” says Bjorn Bergstrom, Co-founder at Miracly.
“We started out with GEO analytics and AI content generation, but are rapidly becoming a holistic AI marketing platform based on the demand and opportunity we’re seeing in the market. Marketing and agency teams are becoming hybrid marketing and tech organisations and need to develop incredibly quickly to keep up with the changes. Miracly is here to guide them through this shift into an AI first era with completely customised recommendations and agentic flows.”
$248.9 billion and $10.8 trillion...The owner of fashion brands Hobbs, Whistles and Phase Eight, TFG London, was this week hit by a cyber attack affecting some of its IT systems. The company identified the incident on Sunday 11th October and said it was investigating with the help of external cyber security specialists. Stores remained open, but some website functions were unavailable while the investigation continued.
TFG said there was no reason to believe payment information was at risk, although the investigation into the extent of the breach is ongoing. The incident came a week after Asos disclosed that an unauthorised party had accessed some personal data, including customers’ names and contact details. H&M is also investigating claims it was targeted by cyber criminals.
Susannah Streeter, Chief Investment Strategist, Wealth Club, says: “Corporate defences are looking dangerously thin amid an onslaught of cyber attacks against businesses. This spate of infiltrations into retailers’ systems should serve as a brutal alarm call for organisations grappling with increasingly sophisticated digital threats. Big names are littering the landscape, with Marks & Spencer badly affected last year, Asos still reeling from its breach and now household names Hobbs, Whistles and Phase Eight brought into the cyber attack wave with the attack on TFG London’s IT systems."
"It comes hot on the heels of an audacious attack on supermarket refrigeration systems in France, which saw hackers remotely manipulate cooling controls, sending temperatures soaring and leaving hundreds of stores facing spoiled food, fires and potentially millions of euros in losses. The scale of the threat is staggering, with Gartner forecasting that global spending on information security will reach $248.9 billion this year, while Cybersecurity Ventures has estimated that cybercrime costs have expanded to $10.8 trillion annually.”
She adds: "That gulf underlines the enormous financial damage cyber attacks can inflict and raises questions about vulnerabilities in systems. The amount being spent on protection is surging, with forecasts that there will be a much bigger shift away from reactive detection and response strategies towards pre-emptive solutions, reliant on advanced AI tools. It demonstrates the considerable opportunities ahead for firms at the forefront of cyber defence. It is clear that pressure is mounting on businesses to strengthen their defences as attacks become increasingly sophisticated."
"Cyber security can no longer be treated as a back office IT issue or a cost to be trimmed when budgets come under pressure. Organisations need to be shoring up their defences before attackers find a way in, rather than scrambling to contain the damage afterwards. Retailers are particularly attractive targets, sitting on valuable customer data and relying on interconnected systems to keep everything from online orders to supply chains moving. The consequences of a breach can stretch far beyond stolen information, hitting sales, disrupting operations and eroding customer trust."
15...UNiDAYS, a verification platform for students, is partnering with M&S. The tie gives its student community in the UK access to 15% off M&S’s clothing, home, and beauty ranges. This is available for purchases made online.
Richard Stoker, Affiliate Partnerships Manager at M&S, says: “Partnering with UNiDAYS is a brilliant way for us to introduce more students and recent graduates to M&S and help them discover the style, quality and value we offer across clothing, home and beauty. With an exclusive 15% discount, they can make their money go further as they prepare for university, settle into student life or take their first steps into the world of work.”
Alex Gallagher, Chief Strategy Officer at UNiDAYS, says: “We’re delighted to partner with M&S and help open up one of Britain’s most iconic heritage retailers to students and graduates across the UK. For more than 140 years, M&S has been known for its quality, style, and exceptional value, and we’re excited to make its fashion offering more accessible to the next generation of shoppers.”
4,000,000...Morrisons reports a milestone in its Too Good To Go surplus food partnership. In a LinkedIn post, Rami Baitiéh, CEO at Morrisons, said: “Every second, 80,000 meals go to waste globally. It's a statistic that should make everyone in the food industry pause.”
“When you face numbers of that scale, it is easy to feel that individual action doesn't matter. But at Morrisons, we believe the best way to drive real change is by making it simple, affordable, and rewarding for our customers to make a difference. That is why I'm incredibly proud to share that we have officially saved 4,000,000 meals from going to waste since our partnership with Too Good To Go began in 2019.”
He added: “For those who haven't used it, Too Good To Go is an app that connects people with surplus, unsold food before it gets thrown away. By offering Morrisons Surprise Bags on the app at less than half price, we are ensuring perfectly good, fresh food stays out of the bin while helping households enjoy high quality groceries at a fraction of the cost.”
“Last month, we welcomed Chelsea Kerr from Too Good To Go to our internal event, Teamtalk, and together we celebrated this massive milestone. Behind this achievement is the amazing effort from our colleagues who pack these bags daily, and our customers who step up to rescue them. A huge thank you to everyone involved. To continue this great work, we'll be bringing our new Chilled Surprise Bags, which we're trialing in 25 London stores, to the rest of our supermarkets in the coming months - watch this space!”
6,500 and 179...Ingka Group has launched an Ikea Douyin official flagship store in China. The new digital touchpoint will offer more than 6,500 Ikea products across 179 categories, with delivery available in 301 cities across China.
The move brings the retailer in to the short-form video and content commerce platform (a sister platform to TikTok under ByteDance). The store will complement its existing stores, website, app, WeChat and other e-commerce channels in China.
Lydia Song, Ikea China Acting CEO and President and CSO, says: “People in China are increasingly moving between inspiration, discovery and shopping in ways that are highly connected and increasingly digital. Douyin E-commerce gives us an opportunity to meet people in a new context, learn what resonates with them and make Ikea more accessible to more people. This is not simply about adding another sales channel. It is about understanding how we can become part of people’s everyday lives in new and relevant ways.”
Parag Parekh, Chief Digital Officer at Ikea Retail, comments: “Retail is increasingly about being present wherever and whenever people want to meet us, while making those experiences feel like one connected Ikea. What is particularly interesting about new platforms like Douyin E-commerce is the opportunity to learn. They help us understand how inspiration, interaction and commerce are coming closer together, and what that could mean for how we continue to develop the Ikea omnichannel experience.”
$85 billion...US retail sales over the Black Friday through Cyber Monday weekend are expected to top $85 billion, accounting for 8.5% of 2026 holiday sales, according to Bain & Company research. Sales growth during the weekend is set to rise 8.75% year over year, outpacing Bain's total holiday season growth forecast of 4.5%.
Using proprietary credit card data from Pyxis, Bain's consumer intelligence division, its report finds that Black Friday is likely to remain the leading sales day of the holiday season as consumers continue to treat it as the official kick-off. In fact, 64% of consumers surveyed will be out in force on Black Friday, up from 55% in 2025. Cyber Monday has also continued to gain popularity and is expected to crack the top five sales days this year, as more shoppers say they will do their holiday shopping online. 44% of consumers surveyed plan to shop Cyber Monday, compared to 41% last year.
Bains’s survey of US consumers finds that 70% plan to shop Black Friday and/or Cyber Monday, up from 64% last year, and more than 90% are looking to do so on either those days or another major sales event. The final two weekends before Christmas carry just as much weight, however. In 2025, six of the top ten sales days landed in that window. Overall, Bain forecasts US holiday sales will top $1 trillion for the first time, driven by in-store sales and rising e-commerce.
"Black Friday and Cyber Monday are becoming increasingly important battlegrounds for retailers, especially as US consumers prioritise value and deal heavy shopping days," says Aaron Cheris, Global Head of Retail at Bain & Company. "Retailers that capitalise on these crucial sales days with personalised promotions, can’t miss events, and targeted campaigns will set themselves up well for the rest of the holiday shopping season."
1...Frasers Group, whose brands include Sports Direct, House of Fraser, and Flannels, reports that Antrim in Northern Ireland has become the first of its warehouses to go live with a Microsoft Dynamics 365 warehouse management system (WMS).
In a LinkedIn post, Jakob Vestergaard, Product Manager - Warehouse at Frasers Group, said: "Two years of work. One major milestone. We're live. As the first warehouse in the group to adopt D365 WMS, Antrim marks an important milestone in our wider warehouse transformation journey."
"Over the last few years, Frasers Group has invested heavily in elevating our stores. This programme is about taking the next step by elevating the warehouse operations that power them, creating a more scalable, visible and consistent platform to support our stores, brands and customers. This achievement would not have been possible without the dedication of teams across the business and our partners."
He concluded: "Go live is a major achievement, but it isn't the end of the story. Over the coming months we'll continue working with our warehouse teams, Microsoft, Binary and InterRadish to refine the solution, introduce additional capabilities and build out the global warehouse template that will support future warehouse deployments across Frasers Group. This is the first step in a much bigger journey. Looking forward to what comes next."
