News English — retail technology

After a relatively long period of media speculation, Farfetch has finally filed an intention to list on NYSE (source). At the time of writing this blog there were no specifics on its pricing and the company is no doubt working the funding circuit hard to explore the level of interest and promote the pricing. While pricing is not known, there are a few other details that we know of. JD.com stepped in as an investor earlier in 2018 and have an option on about a third of the business. What is Farfetch? Farfetch is an aggregator platform for luxury fashion...

If you are into 3D this will be for you! Our recent visit to VR World Expo 2018 yielded little to talk about, possibly as a result of the limited amount of exhibitors. There were gaming applications, engineering and medical applications with haptic feedback robotics, etc. While many of these applications have advanced a lot over the past few years and now offer global teamwork options in a virtual space, etc. new retail applications have been far a wide between. One company stood out from the rest though: Astrivis Astrivis is a 2 year old startup from Switzerland which started...

Definitely worth visiting!  Retail Without Borders 2018 #RWB18 is one of the better conferences for its networking opportunities. It is not one of the largest conferences, neither the best quality speakers (most often co-sponsors), but if you are looking to talking and networking with your peers this is definitely worth a visit. The fact the conference is held in the QE2 centre just opposite Houses of Parliament add is a bonus and very easy access. The event is organised by We Are Pentagon The main theatre at #RWB18, ex-Alibaba speker Al Gerrie, CEO at ZigZag Global    

Customer feedback is normally an intrusive piece of research, post action/purchase /eating/etc. asking customers to press a button, answer questions to a person, write answers on a tablet, etc. What if you could measure customer delight in real time and compare between your outlets? This is what Being More Digital Ltd in London are getting close to offering retailers and restaurants (among many other use cases). Their technology is simple on the surface insofar it analyse your customer's expressions and translate this into a 'delight index'. Their project has received government funding and is now on the lookout for further...

On our recent visit to NRF2018 we saw the new piece of EPOS hardware Square payments had just recently released and at TDC18 we noticed Hermes new hardware for its partner stores. In addition to this we also read about Just-Eat's development of a hardware platform for its partner restaurants. All this is pointing to increased competition for retailer's and hospitality businesses IT estate - but what does it really mean? Will EPOS and ERP-light suppliers experience a declining market? To what extent is hardware and EPOS used as a way to 'tie in' customers and partners? Our take on...