AI First Company

Transforming Europe’s Retail Ecosystem

Merchant Blog / Von /

There’s a certain feeling of nostalgia that comes with attending ShopTalk Europe in Barcelona for the first time – it’s like being transported back in time to the K5 Future Retail conference in Berlin in 2017 or earlier Adobe Commerce (Magento) events. The excitement, the energy, the anticipation of what the future hold for retail.

It’s a feeling that’s hard to put into words, but it’s one that washes over you as you walk through the huge and beautifully decorated conference hall, taking in all the latest trends and innovations in keynotes, panel discussions, interviews and workshops on 5 colorfully themed stages, as well as various pre-arranged and serendipitous one-on-one meetups. It’s a throwback to a time, when anything felt possible and the future was full of promise. With all the AI hype going on at the moment, though, it actually feels exactly the same: anything seems possible with AI democratizing «super»-intelligence. So let’s continue to reimagine and reinvent the retail industry, shall we?

Embracing the AI Revolution?

To be honest, it’s not really fair to dismissively refer to the excitement around AI as «hype» – that’s just what the skeptics like to say. In reality, what we’re seeing is nothing short of an AI revolution. The technology is advancing at an incredible rate, and its existing and potential near-future applications are truly mind-boggling. So let’s not downplay it with sarcastic labels – let’s embrace this revolution and see where it takes us.

One of my K5 highlights back in 2017 was the keynote of Amazon insider Tahir Hussain, who explained the mechanics and principles with which Amazon works. On the first day of ShopTalk Europe 2023, Stefano Perego who joined Amazon in 2011 as Managing Director of Amazon Italia Logistica, talked with Reuters European Retail Correspondent Helen Reid about the early days of Amazon in Europe. 12 years ago he embarked on an adventurous journey that started with manually and laboriously picking up hundreds of units from online orders with an offline cart.

Now with robotics and AI technology, one hundred units are being completed with a throughput time of just 20 minutes. Stefano currently has 750,000 mobile robots deployed in his business unit, that’s across 300 Amazon facilities. Just as many as human employees. Over his career, 700 additional types of jobs have been created at Amazon. Having just launched a new logistics center in Zaragoza and another one planned for Girona, he will be creating an additional 3000 human jobs in Spain in 2024.

Enabling D2C

Also on the main stage, Kirsty McGregor from Vogue Business spoke to Zalando co-founder Robert Gentz about the foundations of Zalando’s future success. He explained that Zalando started as a retailer and was focused on controlling their own operations and risk budget. However, they eventually realized that in order to grow and be relevant, they needed to align themselves with the efforts of brands. They opened up their platform to enable brands to drive their own direct-to-consumer (D2C) business and use their logistics network to fulfil orders. This approach is aimed at driving enablement for brands and aligning on experiences that they can jointly offer to customers.

It’s always impressive to see what the top dogs are up to and how some of them still manage to innovate despite having become large corporations. It’s even more fascinating, though, to look at early-stage startups to see where the industry is headed.

ShopTalk Startup Pitch

Many of the startups who participated in the ShopTalk startup pitch on day one utilize AI technology to address important challenges in retail. In a series of fast-paced, 3-minute presentations, 10 early-stage startups showcased how they are transforming the retail industry. The judges and audience rated each pitch, and the top six startups progressed to Round 2. Here, the panel of judges asked each founder/CEO pointed questions about their solutions. The judges and audience again rated each finalist. The Judges’ Choice Winner was Hyran, an all-in-one AI platform that helps brands respond to consumer demand, increase profitability, and reduce waste. The Audience Choice Winner was Sociate, who replaces the search bar with their advanced AI that sees and speaks. Hold onto your hats, folks, because I’m about to give you the lowdown on all 10 of these amazing startups!

Data Driven eCommerce Story Reviews

radd. is an ecommerce intelligence platform for boosting user generated content via authentic, personalized and shoppable video product reviews that can also be broadcast LIVE directly on the online store.

  • Boost your customer engagement by embedding smart story videos
  • Unleash your brand power amplifying your content and customer reach
  • Drive new quality traffic to your store via a smart new video-marketing tool
  • Personalize your stories according to customers› shopping history

radd. is available as a Shopify app starting at 150 USD/month, but it can also be integrated with other ecommerce platforms with one line of code.

The Circular Commerce Platform

Rentle lets you make your products rentable thereby empowering sustainable commerce in 40+ countries.

  • Transform your idea into sales and bookings — whether you are a new or existing business entering circular commerce.
  • Sell and rent online and in-store, and have everything seamlessly connected in one platform.
  • Rentle helps you expand from unit sales to selling services, from selling ownership to selling access.

Rentle for WordPress lets you easily add an online rental storefront to your WordPress website. It can even run alongside other e-commerce plugins. Just install the plugin and use one of two options to embed.

Immediate Delivery

Quiver is a UK-based startup that enables ecommerce sites to offer immediate delivery and same day delivery within a 7 mile radius of their fulfilment centre, covering over 75% of homes in London.They provide integrations with Shopify, Magento and WooCommerce as well as an API.

  • Estimated delivery time is continually updated so you know when they’ll be there.
  • Need to change delivery time, address or contact details? No problem!
  • See the CO2 emissions you’ve saved for each delivery.
  • Have a friendly neighbour or a concierge? Provide them with delivery instructions.

Magical Shopping Online & In Store

Audience Choice winner Sociate’s advanced AI technology offers benefits to both customers and retailers. The traditional search bar is replaced with an AI-powered tool that quickly and accurately identifies what the customer is looking for, whether it’s in text or image form. This technology is designed to be easy and efficient for retailers to use, as it doesn’t require any data labelling. By simplifying the search process, this technology provides an improved and more seamless experience for customers, while helping retailers increase sales and elevate their brand.

Their curious AI technology is designed to generate and ask the best questions to encourage customers to share relevant information, enabling the AI to make highly accurate recommendations. The AI system’s active learning capabilities ensure it can keep up with evolving customer needs, trends, and language, without requiring extensive AI tags or labels.

AI-powered Inventory Optimization

Syrup’s inventory planning and optimization platform solves a brand or retailer’s most expensive problem: accurately determining inventory needs for thousands of color-style-size-location combinations.

Syrup’s founders James Theuerkauf and Ferdinand Stockmann have seen first-hand the profitability, workflow and sustainability implications of poor inventory decisions. So they set out to build a predictive inventory optimization platform that combines the best-in-class data ingestion with sophisticated AI and Machine Learning models that deliver faster, more accurate inventory forecasts.

Picture by Keagan Henman

All-in-One Web3 Management Platform for Brands

METAV.RS is an all-in-one Web3 platform to help brands and agencies manage their Web3 strategy in a centralized way. It can be complex for brands to do a first move into the Web3 and the Metaverse so METAV.RS is here to help with great Web3 Tools and dedicated support.

Utilizing NFTs and metaverse solutions to develop digital transformation strategies can significantly impact industries like tourism and entertainment. These technologies can offer a variety of benefits to customers, such as exclusive access to premium services and collectibles that commemorate unique experiences. By implementing NFTs, businesses can enhance the overall experience of tourists and visitors, while also increasing brand revenue and customer loyalty. This approach can help businesses differentiate themselves from their competitors.

The Fabricant Studio collaborates with Puma brand, Pictury by METAV.RS

Do Video Better

Primis is a video ad tech company providing publishers with an engagement-based unit that recommends users video content they love, automatically skipping content they don’t interact with.

When a user is shown a video that interests them, they are more likely to stay on the page longer, thereby bringing in more revenue. According to Primis it all begins with engagement that leads to consumption.

Fix Marketing Attribution with Conversion Modelling

Machine Learning and AI are a huge trend in digital attribution for 2023. SegmentStream is a next-generation marketing analytics and optimisation platform. Up to 90% of your website conversions are not attributed to the initial traffic source. For years marketers have relied on using attribution and conversion tracking tools to track customer journeys using website cookies. However, knowing your customers’ complete path to conversion is no longer possible due to cross-device and cross-browser customer journeys, and modern cookie tracking restrictions.

Even the most sophisticated data-driven attribution models will always undervalue opening channels and overvalue closing channels. Marketers that rely on such tools, will continue making incorrect budget allocation decisions and struggle to achieve the optimal marketing mix with the highest ROAS.

SegmentStream’s conversion modelling platform is a next-generation solution to outdated attribution and conversion tracking tools that are no longer suitable for cross-device and cross-browser customer journeys, and modern cookie restrictions.

SegmentStream evaluates each website visit and predicts the user’s probability to convert in the future. When this probability is sufficient enough — SegmentStream creates a “modelled conversion” which is immediately attributed to the traffic source.

This guarantees that each traffic source gets the value it deserves even if the real conversion happens from another device, browser, or cookie.

The World’s most Powerful Retail Sustainability Solution

inoqo retail solution enables retailers, food and beverage brands as well a suppliers to assess and optimize the impact of thousands of products along the whole value chain. Their SaaS platform streamlines publicly available and private data into an AI-driven algorithm that makes it quick and affordable to measure the multi-dimensional impact of any food and beverage product. It let’s you assess your impact, optimise your ingredients and production processes, generate reports and receive recommendations for reducing your impact all in one place.

Collaborative and AI-Driven Supply Chain

And last but not least the Judges’ Choice Winner Hyran who is building an all-in-one AI platform that helps brands respond to consumer demand, increase profitability, and reduce waste.

Through his family’s knitwear manufacturing business in Pakistan, co-founder Dr. Ahmed Zaidi has seen first-hand the consequences of over production and long lead times. Ahmed completed his PhD in AI from Cambridge University, where he was formerly a member of faculty, applying AI techniques on forecasting and markdown pricing through his previous venture Catalyst AI. He is now setting his sights on solving fashion’s inventory problem at its roots by going upstream in the supply chain.

Conclusion

The benefits of using AI technologies also in small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) cannot be overstated. Overall, AI technologies have the potential to transform the way SMBs operate, enabling them to compete more effectively and grow their businesses. By leveraging the power of AI in personalization, supply chain optimization, customer service, and product development, SMBs can achieve new levels of efficiency, profitability, and success.

Credits

  • Main picture of Google’s Chief Brand Marketing Evangelist Aprajita Jain by Nick Weisser.
  • More articles from ShopTalk Europe:

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