The weekly Retail Tech Roundup compiles technology news across the supply chain, textiles, manufacturing, retail, e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment sectors.
Fit Technology
My Size/Sweet Fit
My Size, a developer of smartphone measurement technology solutions, has integrated its MySizeID technology into Sweet Fit, an interactive virtual fitting mirror.
Sweet Fit uses augmented reality technology to scan a person’s figure and display a virtual outfit. With the integration of MySizeID, shoppers can select the appropriate apparel size for a specific brand, based on real-time body measurements. Sweet Fit is currently available in France, with plans to expand internationally.
“Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, fitting rooms in retail stores are currently shut down across France. By using MySizeID, customers can receive very precise size recommendations for articles of clothing they wish to virtually ‘try on,’” said Florence Moine, CEO and founder of Sweet Fit. “As a result, retail stores now have a contactless solution for customers that want to see how an article of clothing will look and fit on them.”
My Size is expanding its footprint in France, with two French fashion brands, La Pièce and Habillez-moi, integrating MySizeID into their e-commerce websites to increase customer loyalty and reduce returns.
The company also has opened a new subsidiary in Moscow to meet the growing demand for its measurement solutions and gain a stronger foothold in Russia and adjacent markets.
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PLM
Centric Software
Camper, a contemporary footwear brand from the island of Mallorca, Spain, that creates approximately 500 shoe models each season and 4 million pairs per year, reduced product development time, centralized all product data, boosted quality control and streamlined all stages of product development with Centric PLM.
Juan Enrique Jiménez Esquitino, head of supply planning at Camper, said the shoe company previously struggled using outdated software not designed for the footwear industry, and needed a platform to track product development and gain full visibility from ideation to product launch.
“We used to store our product information in hundreds of Excel sheets. There was a lot of back and forth with our manufacturers because we didn’t have any visibility on the status of our products or the actual costing of raw materials,” Esquitino said.
Camper says Centric PLM offers more accurate costing and margin foresight, and reliable, real-time data for strategic planning.
The four-month implementation also came when the entire Camper organization had just been restructured, and Centric PLM played a vital part in bringing more visibility to the new processes and assignment of roles. Camper says it will further leverage the solution by expanding it to its suppliers overseas and continuing to support global growth.
Customer Experience
Bazaarvoice/Curalate
Bazaarvoice, a provider of product reviews and user-generated content (UGC) solutions, acquired visual commerce company Curalate for an undisclosed sum.
Curalate’s software is designed to turn images into digital storefronts with the goal of creating compelling online shopping experiences. The company’s 1,100 clients include Lululemon Athletica, Monsoon Accessorize, Sperry and Lilly Pulitzer, adding to Bazaarvoice’s 6,200 global brand and retail partners. Curalate’s digital storefronts generated 2 billion visits and drove almost $1 billion in incremental e-commerce revenue.
Curalate co-founders Apu Gupta and Nick Shiftan will remain on board, joining the Bazaarvoice team in leading the vision for visual commerce.
The acquisition adds to Bazaarvoice’s social commerce services as a growing number of consumers shop on social media apps, especially while stuck at home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Consumers are increasingly referring to images and videos within reviews to be able to buy online with confidence,” said Keith Nealon, CEO at Bazaarvoice. “As shoppers turn to e-commerce in unprecedented numbers due to the COVID-19 outbreak, empowering them with access to this type of UGC has become more important than ever. Our acquisition means brands and retailers can take advantage of the huge consumer appetite for visual content and social shopping.”
This is the second year in a row that Bazaarvoice has acquired a company with services complementing its own offering. In 2019, the company acquired Influenster, a product review platform, to strengthen its UGC and word-of-mouth platform for retailers and brands.
Yotpo
E-commerce marketing platform Yotpo has been selected as a partner for the UPS Customer Technology Program (CTP), enabling thousands of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) access to solutions for ratings and reviews, visual user-generated content (UCG) marketing and customer insights.
With Yotpo’s e-commerce marketing platform, qualifying UPS SMB customers can select from a suite of marketing technology solutions designed to build trust and loyalty across digital channels. The CTP program provides Yotpo and other e-commerce offerings at a discount, with the intent on enabling SMBs to better compete with larger, well-funded e-commerce brands and merchants.
Yotpo’s customers can leverage UPS small business discount shipping rates and exclusive deals.
Founded in 2011 and now providing technology to more than 9,000 direct-to-consumer brands, Yotpo is the latest business to join the UPS Customer Technology Program, joining the more than 35 other vendors since the program’s launch in 2003.
The UPS offering helps pre-screened, qualified SMBs purchase hardware, software, peripherals and packaging solutions at a discount from technology vendors that also work with UPS. This helps SMBs that are UPS customers better compete by growing revenue, introducing efficiencies and reducing costs.
Medallia
Medallia, a provider of customer experience management solutions, announced that its Medallia Experience Cloud now integrates into the Adobe Experience Platform (AEP). The integration is designed to give brands comprehensive insights into the customer journey to deliver personalized real-time experiences that increase purchase frequency.
Customer feedback from Medallia Experience Cloud specifically integrates with behavioral data in Adobe Experience Cloud to deliver a single view of each customer’s complete journey, providing insights into attributes such as what digital ads were served to them online, what they purchased, their in-store and call center engagements and verbatim feedback from their experience.
“Imagine if a customer leaves a curbside pickup and reports a poor experience, the store manager would immediately receive a notification in the Medallia mobile app,” said Steve Vierra, senior vice president, global channels and alliances for Medallia. “Never-before-seen insights such as verbatim feedback from Medallia and purchase history, segment and other valuable behavior data from Adobe Experience Platform are all visible in a single mobile view. Armed with this information, customer-facing employees can take real-time action to fix issues and drive revenue-generating experiences.”
Marketplaces
Mirakl
Mirakl, an e-commerce marketplace solutions provider, has debuted an application designed to streamline Mirakl Marketplace integration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. The Mirakl Marketplace Connector for Salesforce Commerce Cloud aims to reduce the cost, effort and time of adding an online marketplace into existing e-commerce sites by connecting the tools and data required to build, manage and grow a platform business.
The new Mirakl connector combines the power and functionality of dozens of APIs into a single, plug-and-play package so that organizations can get a marketplace operating and reduce the burden of ongoing maintenance.
The connector is designed to enable a frictionless buying experience, fewer out of stocks and higher average order values that can drive increased revenue and profit. The connector provides full integration with Mirakl Catalog Manager to aggregate catalogs from third-party sellers and enrich the quality and presentation of product information, all while expanding the existing Salesforce catalog with the option to include multiple offers per product from multiple sellers and in various conditions.
With the connector, users can enable mixed shopping carts in Salesforce that combine first-party and multiple third-party product sales.
Foot Traffic Analysis
Placer.ai
Real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield has partnered with foot traffic analytics platform Placer.ai to help its retail clients make data-driven decisions about their store portfolios.
By adopting Placer.ai, Cushman & Wakefield wants to equip its professionals to demonstrate key statistics about a property and its tenants to clients, including the nearby competitive landscape, consumer foot traffic, engagement metrics, cross-shopping locations and more. The firm will deploy the platform across the U.S.
“In the current environment, it is imperative that tenants and property owners—especially in the retail sector—understand where they have the best chances of success and how a location can optimize the goods or services they offer,” said Barrie Scardina, head of retail for Cushman & Wakefield in the Americas.
By harnessing data from tens of millions of mobile devices, Placer.ai applies the latest in artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data analytics to generate insights and behavioral predictions for any location or store.
Adopting Placer.ai analytics further showcases Cushman & Wakefield’s emphasis on technology strategy. Recently partnering with Matterport Capture Services to offer clients turnkey solutions to scan commercial properties in 3D, the firm has put an emphasis on working with innovate companies to deliver innovative tools that generate insights and create value for clients.
Autonomous Checkout
AiFi
AiFi, a cashierless checkout startup best known for its NanoStore, a fully automated popup retail experience, will deploy 330 new and retrofitted autonomous stores globally by the end of 2021.
AiFi’s Orchestrated Autonomous Store Infrastructure and Services (OASIS) technology platform can be used to retrofit existing retail spaces with autonomous capabilities, enabling shoppers to walk in, grab what they want and leave. The system charges them automatically. The OASIS system will be deployed in the new and retrofitted stores, which span 800 square feet and 10,000 square feet.
The new stores will be primarily located across the U.S. and Europe, with expansion to other parts of the world planned for the future. AiFi says that it is already powering 10 stores in locations around the world including California, Texas, Amsterdam, Paris and Shanghai.