The weekly Retail Tech Roundup compiles technology news across the supply chain, manufacturing, retail, e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment sectors.
Virtualization
Gen V
Commercial photographer Shavonne Wong recently launched Gen V Agency, a virtual modeling agency showcasing lifelike 3D virtual models designed to give clients new ways to promote their apparel, accessories and brand messages. Wong personally designs the Gen V models—each of which features a unique aesthetic and personality such as “exotic Lunah,” “free-spirited Lilium” and “sophisticated Kade.”
Clients review the selection of models and hire the one or ones that best fit their needs, much as they would a human model. From there, Gen V handles all details of the simulated photo shoot to meld the 3D model with the client’s products or messages, even creating the settings. According to Wong, virtual models allow for more flexibility and creativity as they are instantly available for work and adjustments to their makeup, measurements, poses and attire can be made with the click of a mouse.
“My goal is not to replace real life models but to provide brands and clients with options. Some brands will benefit from human models and some will enjoy the flexibility and creativity of creating a virtual model for their message. And most will utilize a combination of both. The goal with Gen V is to give brands more choices, not fewer,” said Wong. “Let’s face it, technology has opened the door wide to amazing possibilities across all industries. Virtual models are an absolute game-changer in the fashion industry.”
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RFID
Detego
Detego has become a member of the GS1 US Solution Partner Program, a designation signifying a commitment to delivering services and solutions that enable quick, efficient and accurate GS1 Standards implementation.
The Detego RFID software platform is designed to allow retailers to track and manage their products from source to store in an effort to reduce labor costs and increase sales. As a GS1 US Solution Partner, Detego aims to deliver sustainable solutions to the industry and reach more retailers and logistics partners looking to unlock the power of RFID.
The GS1 System of Standards, the most widely used information standards in the world, uniquely identifies products, services, assets and locations worldwide to support supply chain visibility and efficiency.
Installment payments
Affirm
“Buy now, pay later” platform provider Affirm has partnered with Bonobos so that customers can now pay for their purchase over three months, without late fees. Approved shoppers can immediately pay with Affirm at checkout on Bonobos.com on orders over $100.
While Affirm doesn’t carry the late fees its competitors typically come with, the platform offers interest rates within a range of 10 percent and 30 percent based on customers’ credit.
Bonobos joins Affirm’s network of more than 6,000 retail partners, which includes more than 900 fashion brands like Oscar de la Renta, Eddie Bauer, Rag & Bone and Fred Segal. Affirm at checkout drives overall sales, increasing average order value by as much as 85 percent. So far, as many as 5.6 million customers use the Affirm platform, which says it approves on average 20 percent more customers than its competitors. Sixty-seven percent of its loans are from repeat customers.
ERP
Sunrise Technologies/Microsoft Dynamics 365
Sunrise Technologies revealed that Outdoor Research has selected Microsoft Dynamics 365 as its ERP solution. Sunrise, a global provider of Microsoft Dynamics 365 business applications and cloud services, will serve as Outdoor Research’s implementation partner.
Founded in 1981 in Seattle, Outdoor Research designs and manufactures technical apparel and gear and personal protective equipment for outdoor sports, lifestyle, tactical and medical communities. The company offers products both online and at its Seattle retail store, and through retailer and distributor partners across the globe.
After years of growth, Outdoor Research searched for a new business application to support its e-commerce and retail channels, as well as the company’s growing tactical division, before selecting Sunrise.
Sunrise delivers global, Tier 1, supply chain solutions and support designed to enhance Microsoft business applications throughout a business’s lifetime.
Search optimization
Algolia/Salesforce Commerce Cloud
Algolia, a search-as-a-service platform, has integrated Salesforce Commerce Cloud, which is designed to enable retail clients to adopt a unified headless architecture that can create product-based experiences on every channel, whether it’s websites and mobile applications or voice-enabled technology and kiosks, to drive more customer engagement and conversions.
Algolia’s integration for Salesforce Commerce Cloud offers a headless commerce solution aimed to increase productivity with personalized search and discovery, visual merchandising, and a user-friendly dashboard with advanced analytics—all without high overhead and engineering costs.
With personalized browse and discovery, retailers can build experiences that allow shoppers to browse the catalog with personalized category pages, advanced navigation and filters. Retailers can power their multi-channel experiences using Algolia’s API clients, front-end libraries and extensive documentation.
With the integration, retailers can use a visual drag and drop interface to merchandise products, pin items and hide results, and leverage a user-friendly dashboard to create synonyms, manage the relevance and personalization algorithms, launch A/B tests and more.
Additionally, users can tailor front-end experiences to reflect and amplify the unique brand and best appeal to consumers.
Fraud protection
Signifyd/CTI Digital/Supercharged Commerce
Signifyd, CTI Digital and Supercharged Commerce announced a partnership that combines Signifyd’s fraud and abuse prevention expertise with the experience of two digital agencies out of Europe.
With the partnership, Signifyd provides a Commerce Protection Platform for clients of CTI Digital and Supercharged Commerce. The platform includes three major components, including Revenue Protection, Abuse Protection and Payments Compliance.
Revenue Protection is an automated solution designed to instantaneously sift fraudulent orders from legitimate orders, while Abuse Protection is aimed at protecting against false claims for chargebacks such as item not received (INR) or item significantly not as described (SNAD). It automates chargeback management and offers. Both services offer a financial guarantee.
The third component, Payments Compliance, provides a Seamless SCA solution and future-proofs a merchant’s payment systems in the face of evolving regulations, such as PSD2, which is designed to create a more integrated European payments market that makes payments safer and more secure.
The platform also provides retail leaders with valuable insights through its Agent Console, Decision Center and Insights reporting modules.
The U.K.-based CTI Group recently launched a new commerce agency, Supercharged Commerce, “to deliver full-throttle commerce that is simple, convenient and affordable for growing businesses.” The combination of CTI Digital and Supercharged is designed to create an agency ecosystem with breadth to serve e-commerce, not-for-profit organizations, trade bodies, public sector agencies, higher education providers, construction businesses, professional services companies and leisure organizations.
CTI Digital provides digital strategy, web design, development and digital marketing services. In launching Supercharged in July, CTI Digital brought together a team of certified Magento, BigCommerce, Shopware and Shopify experts who also specialize in progressive web apps and headless commerce.
Artificial intelligence
RichRelevance
RichRelevance has launched Deep Recommendations, a set of advanced personalization technologies that do not need historical events and behavioral data to immediately generate relevant product recommendations.
With Deep Recommendations, retailers and brands that regularly introduce new products can expose shoppers to these products instantly. In addition, categories such as fashion and home furnishings where shoppers look for “visually similar” or “visually complementary” products can break through the clutter with relevant and high-conversion visual AI-based recommendations.
The new approach is supposed to solve two problems within e-commerce. For one, it removes constraints associated with traditional recommendations, which often don’t work for retailers and brands with sparse data, such as seasonal products, fast changing catalogs and long tail products. It also helps product discovery by catching user preferences through a product’s visual features and textual description.
Deep Recommendations is powered by Xen AI, which extracts and combines feature vectors found in product text descriptions and catalog images, behavioral data, derived affinities and stated preferences and matches in real-time with shopper intent to create relevant, high-conversion recommendations. This is designed to help customers not only get what they are initially looking for, but also inspires them to discover contextual recommendations to fulfill their needs across their shopping journey.
Results from more than 30 early adopters and customers have revealed that Xen AI Deep Recommendations have created an average lift of 40 percent in engagement and 80 percent higher attributable sales, in comparison to standard recommendations prevalent in the industry today.