News English — ecommerce

Fabric cuts 40% of staff Fabric recently announced it was laying off 40% of its staff and changing its business model (source). STIQ has tracked Fabric for a few years and this is our view of the announced changes: FABRIC: Website | LinkedIn | Crunchbase | YouTube | WarehouseAutomation Fabric was founded in Israel in 2015 under the name "Commonsense Robotics". In 2019, the company changed its name to Fabric (source).   (formerly known as) The original business model appeared to target grocery customers with fulfilment equipment with Fabric operating as a vendor of material handling equipment. A lack of traction among grocery customers may have...

This blog post outlines STIQs view of the new product releases in Ocado's January 2022 Re:imagined event and includes comments from STIQs presentation with Credit Suisse (equity research team) on January 31st, 2022. Agree? Yes/No? We invite your comments on this blog post!   On Wednesday January 26th, 2022, Ocado Group updated the world on some of its more recent developments. These broadly fell into hardware and software developments: Hardware 600 Series Bot On Grid Robotic Pick Automated Frame Load Software Swift Router Orbit Flex 600 Series Bot The new upgraded bot featured a 3D printed chassis, what STIQ believe to be wireless charging plate...

The view of all vendors is that automation will become more important as a result of Covid-19. While this is not unexpected, should vendors be more cautious? Economic activity has ground to a halt in much of the world. Grocers, medical device suppliers and pharmaceutical manufacturers appears to be the only winners in our Covid-19 pandemic world. More specifically, eGrocery has been one of the main beneficiaries of Covid. However, these companies have been so successful that they have had to limit access to their sites. Source: FT.com, March 28, 2020 The outsized demand for online grocer's services has led...

1 RWB remains the number one event for cross border trading on marketplaces despite the understandable cancellations from participating marketplaces from South Korea and China. Coupang would have been an exciting addition to the many exhibiting marketplaces at the conference, but we are looking forward to seeing them in 2021 instead! 5 The conference has now been running for five years and 2020 saw the extension of the conference from a one day event to a two day event, inculding some very exciting content including data analytics and augemented reality. 7 The number of years Gerald Ratner spent in bed...

Ecommerce Expo, 26 Sep, 2019 Olympia, London, United Kingdom STIQs verdict (of 5 possible): Event link: Ecommerce Expo EcommerceExpo is collocated with two other shows in the Olympia trade show halls in West London and frequently has a queue of people outside waiting to get in. This year we were invited to participate in one of the many ongoing presentations at the show. While these are frequently overcrowded, the talk we participated in was perhaps only 40% full (audience). I was invited to talk about ecommerce fulfilment robotics when the other panellists were talking about PUDO which may have been...