Noah Conference is a series of 'investors & businesses looking for investors' event throughout Europe (Germany, Israel, Switzerland, UK) founded by Marco Rodzynek, a charismatic ex-investment professional. This year's instalment was the 10th anniversary for the conference.
Note: This review does not cover any non-retail related technology companies. Visit the Noah Conference website to view the participating companies in Fintech, Proptech, Legatech, etc.
Our verdict: 
If you are looking for growth funding, Noah is the key event of the year collecting the cream of investors and companies looking for funding across a number of key sectors. The conference attracts investors from early stage to $150m+ growth capital.
All the companies mentioned in this blog are seeking investments. We would recommend contacting the companies directly if you are interested.
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Main stage presentations, Day 1:
Lesara (Germany)
Accessing trends and drive speed to market. Have relationships with fabric manufacturers and apparel makers. Time from identified trend to having an item on website is 10 days.
Limango (Germany)
EUR200m revenue. Family-centred ecommerce. Providing a curated marketplace focusing on families and their needs including kids clothing, family insurance, travel, etc. Key advantage is consignment campaigns which they runabout 5000 per year. Dropship model. Very lean business with limited funding and marketing spend at 5-6% of revenue. Core CRM focus with high uptake on new brand additions.
Picnic (Netherlands)
Online grocery business in Netherlands - "The Modern Milkman". Operate with 700+ electrical vehicles. USP is low cost groceries with 20 minute time slot. The company has developed its own proprietary technology.
Customer orders are aggregated allowing Picnic to place "forward orders". The company quotes 20% gross margin contribution after 2 years in a particular town. forecasting circa EUR200m revenue in 2018.
Michiel Muller, co-founder of Picnic on the main stage at Noah
Fessura (Italy)
Innovative sneakers from Italy currently developing a Bluetooth-connected shoe with under-foot pressure zones to track your foot health and more.
Zur Rose Group (Switzerland)
Online pharmacy business model. Covering OTC and prescription products as well as chronic diseases. M&A model.
Dr Martens (UK)
Digital first strategy. Backed by Permira.
Scandit (Switzerland)
Supply Chain to POS computer vision for enterprise applications. [see our report on Fashion Visual Search]. Backed by NGP Capital.
Samuel Mueller, CEO & co-founder Scandit and Bo Ilsoe, Partner NGP Capital. + The rumour at the conference was that Scandit's technology is rated by Amazon.
About You (Germany, spun out from Otto Group)
Personalised ecommerce with EUR1.6bn revenue (pre-returns!). See themselves as a competitor to Zalando and Amazon Fashion (used in their pitch deck).
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Startup Stage presentations Day 1
Farmy.ch (Switzerland)
ArtPiq
DailyDress (Germany)
A company providing a curated service based on the weather and other factors. This is of particular interest to Styleintelligence as we have interviewed their partner - Picalike - in the past for our Visual Search report.
Beelivery (UK)
A new take on delivery. The company has focused on the Grocery vertical form day 1 and is uniquely a "supply agnostic grocer". Download the app, buy your grocery and get delivery guaranteed within 15-60 minutes. Popular in London and active in 60 cities throughout the UK.
Hedoine (Germany)
Hosiery is the new business idea. However, this has already been done by numerous other startups including Heist London (£m's backed) who did a huge advertising campaign on the London underground (not sure about the ROI of this). The USP is run-resistant and seamless tights. 
- Networking, Day 2
A thought: Last year's Noah London included Farfetch and definitely more retail technology companies. However, the point of the conference is to match risk taking with growth companies so, perhaps that some of the larger companies exhibiting and talking at the show such as Gett, Adyen, Picnic and other are looking at an exit in 2019 (following the Farfetch experience)?
Waive (UK)
An interesting trend forecasting company. Listening on social media tracking early stage events before they become trends and predicting their developments. Apparently social media trends are in waves. However, forgot to ask the founder if social network's algorithms are influencing the predictions more than people posting on the networks?
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In General
From our conversations with delegates we got the impression that Noah London was somewhat smaller than previous years.