Loyalty programme fails, AI successes, and refundjacking rises: the retail technology week in numbers
Do you like numbers? Do you like retail tech news? Then this is the article for you. Including JD.com, KIngfisher Group, RTIH magazine, Thri5, StrongPoint, Ryft, HyperFinity, Fleek, Adobe, Royal Mail, StrongPoint, and Simbe.
1...JD.com reports that its first 101HOME store will open on 28th September in Jing’an District Shanghai. Building on the launch of an online flagship store in 2025, this is pitched as a premium lifestyle retail destination that brings together global design, home furnishing solution, smart technology, fashion, renovation services, dining, art and cultural experiences under one roof.
The retailer says that with its global sourcing capabilities, self-operated retail model and omnichannel infrastructure, 101HOME will offer a seamless “shopping upon seeing” experience, allowing consumers to explore new possibilities for their homes and discover the art of everyday living. Spanning approximately 12,000 square metres across four floors, 101HOME is designed to meet the evolving needs of consumers from age 0 to 101, across different life stages, household structures and lifestyles.
It brings together more than 1,000 full category home and lifestyle brands, including over 30 international brands making their China debut and more than 150 domestic and international brands making their JD.com debut. At the heart of 101HOME are 33 “Dream Homes”, designed for different living situation, family structures, lifestyles and interests.
The Shanghai store features spaces created by British designer Kelly Hoppen, and Japanese designers Shuhei Aoyama and Takashi Honma. Chinese designer Wang Heng (Ryan) draws on Song dynasty inspired aesthetics to create a three-generation family home. Consumers can step into fully designed home settings and see how furniture, lighting and furnishings come together, offering inspiration for their own homes.
11...The eleventh issue of RTIH magazine is now available, packed with must read interviews, thought leadership pieces, industry deep dives, and the latest technology innovations transforming the global retail sector.
With thanks to our supporters: 3D Cloud, Aptos, Hanshow, Everseen, Foundit!, Orquest, Datitude, Sitoo, Star Micronics, Retec, Retail Express, Broadsign, Fynd, and Sitoo.
£595 million and £635 million...Kingfisher Group, which owns B&Q and Screwfix in the UK and Castorama and Brico Depot in France and other markets, is using AI enabled productivity tools, including Fabric, to accelerate content creation, enhance SEO and improve conversion.
The FTSE 100 home improvement retailer lifted the lid on its AI and other tech initiatives as it raised its profit target despite seeing a heatwave driven drop off in sales at B&Q. It now expects to make a pre-tax profit of between £595 million and £635 million, having previously guided between £565 million and £625 million. Last year, it posted a £560 million profit.
Other highlights from its full year profit guidance and HY26/27 results include: group e-commerce sales reached 22% penetration. Group app sales now account for 29% of e-commerce sales, with app customers spending approximately 14% more than non-app users.
AI driven personalisation increased +16% generating approximately £100 million of sales, showing, Kingfisher claims, the growing value of its data and digital capabilities. Click & Collect sales were up +9% and home delivery sales +15%, supported by store-based fulfilment network and marketplace growth.
Screwfix Sprint (20 min delivery) was up +50% reflecting the growing demand for rapid fulfilment, particularly in Kingfisher’s City stores. Marketplace GMV rose +42% to £372 million, representing 18% of e-commerce sales. There has been investment in platform enhancements including Buybox, which helps customers find the best offer from multiple vendors by balancing price, merchant performance and delivery speed.
B&Q, meanwhile, continued to stump up cash for search and navigation capabilities, supporting improvements in online traffic and conversion. Natural language search is planned for implementation at B&Q in H2. The next phase of digital commerce will also include agent enabled shopping experiences.
$5.4 million...Thri5 has announced $5.4 million in seed funding following a pilot and roll-out with Wild Fork Foods. The round was co-led by Whitecap Venture Partners and Mistral Venture Partners, with participation from MaRS Investment Accelerator Fund (IAF), N49P and a group of retail and technology veterans.
Wild Fork has deployed Thri5’s AI technology across its store network in the United States and Canada.
“What I look for in any new tool is whether it connects what’s happening on the floor with what we plan centrally, and whether the team can actually trust the data. Thri5 does both. Adoption was fast because it told operators what mattered each day, not just what to look at,” says Radek Mazurkiewicz, COO at Wild Fork Foods.
Thri5 is built as an AI native execution layer that develops context across the enterprise, understanding what is happening across the business, how work gets done and where value is being lost. It continuously interprets signals across a retailer’s data and systems, identifies and prioritises the highest value opportunities, and connects head office priorities with field and store execution, orchestrating action across teams, systems and AI agents.
As work is completed, Thri5 learns from outcomes, building deeper operational context and improving how the organisation executes over time. Because it sits above retailers’ existing technology stack, it can coordinate execution across functions without requiring them to replace or migrate their core systems.
NOK 17 million...StrongPoint has signed a contract with VILLOID, a Norwegian online fashion platform for women. This will see it design and install its new Pio facility, created by AutoStore, a warehouse automation solution.
The contract value is approximately NOK 17 million, and the installation is expected to be completed by Q2 2027.
VILLOID is moving its fulfilment centre to a new location, and the new Pio system will be doubled in size as the retailer requires additional capacity to support future growth. When completed the system is expected to be the largest Pio installation in the world.
"Retailers like VILLOID are looking for partners that understand their fulfilment operations, not just automation. That aligns with StrongPoint's focus on customer intimacy, working closely with customers to understand their operations, improve operational outcomes, and act as a partner rather than simply a supplier. We look forward to supporting VILLOID on its expanding automation journey," says Jacob Tverabaak, StrongPoint CEO.
"We have had a very positive experience with AutoStore Pio over several years. World class logistics with same-day delivery has been a key driver of our strong and profitable growth, delivering on customers' expectations of exceptional fulfilment service. StrongPoint will be a valuable partner as we continue our expansion, and with the new, larger Pio system we look forward to the additional capacity as we scale toward our next milestones. The facility will be the largest AutoStore Pio facility in the world," says Jeanette Dyhre Kvisvik, CEO and Founder at VILLOID.
51 of the UK’s leading retailers are collectively missing out on £806.9 million in gross margin each year through loyalty programmes that fail to convert member engagement into genuine commercial return, according to HyperFinity research.
This finds that the average retailer is sitting on £15.8 million of untapped gross margin opportunity tied up in underperforming loyalty programmes. Crucially, the analysis shows this is not a crisis of customer loyalty itself, but a crisis of execution.
Recent consumer research from HyperFinity found that 91% of shoppers use their loyalty programmes on every visit or most visits, and 79% want more personalised offers. However, the intelligence to turn that participation into genuine commercial value remains largely untapped.
HyperFinity says it has identified three failure modes that appear most consistently across underperforming programmes: Redemption friction: where personalised rewards cannot actually be used by the customer; Value erosion: programmes dilute their value over time and customers no longer feel recognised or personally rewarded; App performance: where technical issues can undermine the loyalty experience at key moments of engagement. Between them, these three issues account for the vast majority of loyalty underperformance across the 51 retailers analysed.
Grocery and sports retail represent the largest sectors of untapped loyalty value in the analysis. In grocery, where loyalty programmes are near-universal and consumer expectations are high, the gap between programme promise and programme delivery is particularly pronounced. In sports retail, high basket values and strong brand affinity mean the commercial cost of underperformance is further amplified.
28%...Selling secondhand clothes is no longer just a way to make a bit of extra cash. New research from AI powered resale marketplace Fleek finds that 28% of resellers now do it full-time, with a further third actively working to turn their side hustle into a career.
Its report, compiled from millions of its platform’s real-time search and sales signals alongside responses from 339 resellers in 22 countries, found that the longer people remain in this space, the more likely they are to turn it into a full-time job, with just 14% of those selling for less than six months working full-time, compared with 53% of those who have been doing it for more than five years. It also found that almost two-thirds of full-timers say resale now accounts for the majority of their income.
Across generations, Millennial resellers are 81% more likely than average to cite flexibility or childcare as a reason for reselling, while Gen X sellers are more likely to view resale as a way to replace a job.
Resellers find it beneficial to spread sales across multiple platforms. Vinted is the most popular, with 65% claiming it earns them more money than any other platform.
27%...Refundjacking - where shoppers gain from a company’s refund policies - is becoming one of e-commerce’s biggest challenges. New research from fraud prevention platform Ravelin revealed 27% of people openly admit to abusing refund policies.
The research is based on a survey of 6,282 consumers, drawn from the UK (2,115), Germany (2,095), and France (2,072) who have shopped online in the last six months. 98% of attempts to take advantage of these systems are successful. 37% of UK consumers have engaged in, or plan to engage in, refund abuse, according to the major European markets surveyed, making the UK the highest rate of refundjacking - higher than France (33%) and Germany (25%).
Behaviours include gaming refund and return polices, falsely claiming goods never arrived, returning items after using them or sending back empty boxes or dummy returns while keeping the original product. Research shows that occasional abusers are earning an average of €/£390 per claim, where shoppers who abuse the policies more than four times a year can an average of €/£491 per claim.
The British Retail Consortium’s Policy Advisor for Finance, Chris Owen, comments “The growth of refund abuse is putting unnecessary financial drain on retailers at a time when margins are already under intense pressure. The result is lost revenue and higher costs, meaning everyone ends up paying more. It’s a serious problem which requires serious attention. The BRC is working with our members and others to tackle this growing problem.
3,000…Royal Mail has announced the acquisition of Quadient’s UK-based parcel locker network. Around 3,000 lockers will now become part of Royal Mail’s out of home network. The transaction is expected to close by the end of the calendar year. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
A Royal Mail spokesperson said: “Together with our existing lockers, parcel shops and parcel postboxes, this acquisition will further enhance our out of home network of 30,000 parcel points and strengthen our proposition for customers. This is an exciting step forward in making it even easier for customers to send, collect and return parcels in the way that suits them best, through lockers, shops and other convenient locations.”
The deal strengthens Royal Mail’s position and makes it a major player in a crowded UK parcel lockers market that also includes InPost, Amazon, and YEEP!
3,000...Simbe reports that it has surpassed 3,000 autonomous units under contract, which is pitched as the largest commercially committed fleet of shelf intelligence technology (as identified in the company's research).
In the decade since introducing Tally, an inventory robot, Simbe has been shifting from autonomous shelf digitisation to building a broader platform for the physical store.
Today, Simbe combines autonomous robots, computer vision, RFID, handheld and fixed sensing to continuously capture what is happening inside retail locations: from inventory availability and product location to prices, promotions, and merchandising conditions.
“Retailers are increasingly deploying physical intelligence across the enterprise,” says Deborah Weinswig, Founder and CEO at Coresight Research. “Simbe’s 3,000 unit milestone reflects that shift: trusted shelf-level data is becoming foundational to store operations, digital commerce, merchandising and supply chain decisions.”
Highlights include: More than 75 retail banners globally, including BJ’s Wholesale Club, Kroger, and SPAR; The first and only company to earn UL 3300 certification for a robot designed to operate in public; More than 90% of store managers working alongside Tally say the technology makes their jobs better.
149%...Adobe has released a new report, based on analysis of over ten billion transactions every month, revealing headline UK spending figures from January to August and how online shopping behaviours are shifting thanks to AI.
UK online spending has grown steadily in 2026 - up 3.9% YTD. Spending growth accelerated from early summer onwards, with June the highest spending month of the year so far (£10.6 billion, up 16.9% YoY), primarily caused by Amazon Prime Day occurring in June this year rather than July.
YoY growth in traffic to retail sites from AI sources peaked in August, up 149% YoY and up more than 1,400% compared with October 2024. Conversion rates from AI traffic sources (which, in the UK, overtook those from non-AI traffic for the first time) were 20% higher than non-AI channels in August.
700...Asda and InPost have announced a new partnership that will see up to 700 of the latter’s parcel lockers installed across the former’s UK store estate. This will give Asda customers a new way to send, collect and return parcels while they shop, and is pitched as one of InPost’s most significant UK retail partnerships to date.
The lockers will be installed across a mix of Asda superstores, supermarkets and Express locations.
Joseph Sutton, Director - Express, Fuel & Wholesale, says: "Our unmatched mix of services is a key part of what sets Asda apart, and we know customers increasingly value the convenience of being able to tick off multiple tasks in a single trip. We're delighted to be partnering with InPost to bring parcel lockers to up to 700 locations nationwide.
This roll-out gives customers a fast and flexible way to collect and return parcels, seamlessly fitting around their weekly shop and making everyday life a little easier."
£20 million...Manchester-based payments company Ryft has secured a £20 million Series B led by Gresham House Ventures. More than 6,500 businesses, including Epos Now, Chaiwalla, the Disasters Emergency Committee, Daytrip and Sprive, are now using its payment system. The investment, which takes the total raised to date to approximately £27 million, will support Ryft’s expansion across Europe and the US, while accelerating its product development and move upmarket.
As part of its European expansion, Ryft has applied for a full EU license from the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA). With this, Ryft will be able to passport its services across the European Economic Area. The round also featured participation from existing investors Pembroke VCT and Ingenii Capital.
Ryft’s CEO and Co-founder, Sadra Hosseini comments: “This round of investment means we can take what we’ve built in the UK into new European markets and compete on the global stage. Payments have been dominated by a small number of incumbents for a long time. We want to provide a powerful and efficient alternative to businesses, not just in Europe, but globally.”
