The weekly Retail Tech Roundup compiles technology news across the supply chain, manufacturing, retail, e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment sectors.
Logistics
Oracle has debuted new logistics management capabilities within Oracle Fusion Cloud Supply Chain & Manufacturing (SCM). The updates to Oracle Fusion Cloud Transportation Management and Oracle Fusion Cloud Global Trade Management help organizations reduce costs and risk, improve customer experience and become more adaptable to business disruptions.
A recent Oracle survey found that 87 percent of people have been negatively impacted by supply chain issues over the past year. Oracle Transportation Management and Oracle Global Trade Management are seeking to help organizations address logistics management challenges. The new capabilities help customers improve order fulfillment accuracy, reduce logistics costs, enhance the customer experience, and manage risk associated with unforeseen changes across their supply chains.
A new machine learning algorithm in Oracle Transportation Management called Intelligent Transit Time Predictions will enable users to evaluate the potential impact of both macro-level interruptions (including extreme weather or airport delays) and network-level disruptions (such as labor and capacity shortages). This can help customers more accurately predict delivery times and lower costs associated with delays, expedited shipments, and additional safety stock.
Oracle’s enhanced shipment features enable supply chain leaders to simplify and automate transportation processes for shipments. New capabilities include automated spot bidding and the ability to combine and track multiple shipments in Oracle Transportation Management, and automated global trade analysis on trade agreements in Oracle Global Trade Management. By automating and simplifying these previously manual processes, the new capabilities can help customers reduce human errors, freight costs and shipment delays.
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The transportation management and trade management solutions also now include a multi-language digital assistant—Oracle Logistics Digital Assistant—that can enable organizations to provide faster and more accurate information and standardize responses to inquiries in their customers’ native languages. By offering high-quality, global customer service without the need for additional IT resources, organizations could reduce operational costs and respond to customers, regardless of geographical location or language.
Additionally, Oracle has integrated Advanced Transportation and Global Trade Analytics within the two platforms. The advanced analytics capabilities enable customers to access, analyze and interpret accurate transportation and global trade data. These features can help increase cost savings, improve logistics planning and enable better-informed business decisions.
Veho
Veho, a next-day package delivery firm, has announced a $170 million Series B led by Tiger Global with SoftBank Vision Fund 2 participating at a $1.5 billion valuation. The funding comes just six weeks after the company closed a $125 million Series A round then valuing the company at $1 billion. To date, Veho has raised $300 million.
E-commerce brands that partner with Veho have seen economic benefits such as 40 percent increases in customer lifetime value (LTV), the company said. With the additional capital, the company plans to accelerate new market launches, build national coverage in 2022, while simultaneously expanding its warehouse automation capabilities.
The company also plans to scale its recently launched doorstep returns program nationally, and continue investing in the customer experience with features such as a real-time transportation visibility (RTTV) program. The doorstep returns service allows consumers to have packages picked up from their doorstep with the click of a button, eliminating trips out to shipping or packaging stores.
To support this rapid footprint and expansion, Veho expects to grow its headcount from nearly 500 employees today to 2,000 by end of 2022, including hiring more than 150 additional software engineers, and invest in corporate development capabilities to evaluate opportunities for strategic acquisitions.
Veho aims to redesign package logistics entirely around the needs of e-commerce brands and their customers. With a network of company-operated warehouses, Veho facilitates next-day delivery from the brand’s distribution center all the way to the consumer’s door.
The company’s proprietary technology powers a platform that seamlessly matches demand for deliveries with crowdsourced drivers. These driver partners collect packages from Veho warehouses and can deliver them to consumers on dense last-mile routes, offering an operating model that enables 99.9 percent on-time delivery rates.
Veho can enable real-time rescheduling, address changes and personalized delivery instructions, and will provide live customer support through the entire delivery journey. In the first half of 2022, Veho says it plans to make the end-customer experience even more seamless, giving consumers greater visibility into and control of their deliveries. The new core functions are built to give the consumer confidence that they will receive their delivery where, when and how they want.
Existing investors, including General Catalyst, Bling Capital, Construct Capital, Industry Ventures and Origin Ventures, also participated in this round. Other notable investors in the company include The Mantis VC Fund, and the founders and CEOs of Allbirds, Everlane, Figs, Harry’s, Flexport and Warby Parker.
Delivery
Via.Delivery
Via.Delivery, a company setting out to build what it calls “the world’s largest alternative delivery location network,” has launched a new e-commerce fulfillment offering called Buy Online, Pickup Anywhere (BOPA).
This new offering, which uses a network of more than 66,000 commercial pickup locations worldwide, with more than one-third located across the U.S., enables pure play e-commerce vendors to give customers more options, including the ability to choose to have their packages delivered to any convenient location for pickup.
The company is helping online retailers that don’t have brick-and-mortar locations compete with Amazon and traditional retailers by giving them the technology they need to rapidly activate BOPA. Additionally, the company provides the delivery services required to ship those packages to the locations within its network.
Via.Delivery’s next-gen digital logistics and cloud-based delivery platform is built to simplify the activation of BOPA, ship orders to thousands of BOPA locations across the country, and automatically alert shoppers of shipping and delivery status. Via.Delivery’s API and Shopify plug-in also can enable e-commerce merchants to get up and running with BOPA, almost instantly.
More than 190 pure play e-commerce merchants currently use Via.Delivery’s technology platform. This option appears alongside the other shipping options on a merchant’s website. Customers are able to choose their preferred location from a list of local pickup points.
Alongside the platform debut, Via.Delivery also launched a quarterly shipping and delivery index to track BOPA adoption. The index shows that when shoppers are given the option to select shipping to an alternative delivery location at checkout, 18 percent do so.
The BOPA Index is based on an analysis of Via.Delivery’s customers’ transactions. Via.Delivery analyzed thousands of transactions from online purchases made in the 2021 fourth quarter, and conducted interviews with online shoppers to capture their motivation for using BOPA.
The index also found that 50 percent of online shoppers who choose BOPA versus residential shipping do so to save money, whereas 30 percent of online shoppers who use BOPA pick this delivery method either for security and protection against parcel theft, or for convenience.
The number one major U.S. city where BOPA adoption is highest is New York City. Four of the seven major U.S. cities ranked worst for package theft also rank among the highest for BOPA adoption: Portland, Ore; Seattle; Austin, Texas; and San Francisco.
Via.Delivery has been operating in Europe since 2019 and launched in the U.S. in 2021.
Omnichannel
Chico’s FAS/Fabric
Chico’s FAS, Inc. formed a strategic relationship with Fabric, Inc., a headless commerce platform for growth-focused brands.
This new Fabric-powered technology foundation includes omnichannel order management and inventory systems to power all forms of commerce across all company brands, including Soma, White House Black Market and the namesake Chico’s brand. Chico’s FAS is embracing Fabric’s modern modular architecture, enabling swift implementation across a host of consumer-facing innovations, while Fabric will be able to harness Chico’s FAS’ superior understanding of omnichannel boutique retail, resulting in a superior product for both companies. These best-in-class microservices and tools will help drive ship-to-store, same-day-delivery, social commerce, and virtual stylist program and other future innovations. Chico’s FAS will also leverage Fabric’s platform for inventory management, enabling a single source of truth along with superior accuracy and transparency across all three brands and improved customer experiences.
Chico’s FAS chief digital officer Jay Topper said Fabric’s technology solution aligned with the women’s wear company’s vision.
“We were drawn to their business-first thinking and modular architecture, which in today’s commerce world is a must-have,” Topper added. “We believe this relationship developed at the perfect time for both of our companies. From top to bottom, Fabric’s like-minded team could not be more culturally aligned to Chico’s FAS. Superior order management capabilities are at the center of today’s and tomorrow’s commerce solutions. There just aren’t many platforms out there that understand this and could check all our boxes, but Fabric did.”
Luxury fashion and accessories brand Vince has selected retail cloud platform NewStore to power its omnichannel shopping experiences.
With NewStore, omnichannel capabilities including mobile point-of-sale (mPOS), inventory management, store fulfillment and clienteling, are now live across Vince’s U.S. retail locations. Vince also offers a branded NewStore Consumer App, which is fully integrated into the NewStore platform.
Vince offers women’s and men’s ready-to-wear footwear and accessories through 51 full-price retail stores, 18 outlet stores, an e-commerce site and a subscription service. The brand also has multiple premium wholesale partners that distribute its products globally. With NewStore, Vince has unified its physical and digital channels, improving the customer experience and creating a level of service consumers have come to expect from a luxury fashion brand.
“Most retailers patch together various point solutions to create the illusion of omnichannel. Until NewStore, I hadn’t seen a platform that matched the expectations I had for our brands’ in-store and mobile experiences,” said Jack Schwefel, CEO of Vince Holding Corp. “NewStore has played an important role in transforming Vince’s retail operations because it allows us to bring the personalization and connectedness of ecommerce to our stores. We look forward to rolling out NewStore with Rebecca Taylor in the future.”
Since going live, store associate and manager feedback has been “overwhelmingly positive,” Vince said. For example, NewStore has made it easier for associates to fulfill orders using only an iPhone. Additionally, Vince can now offer omnichannel features, such as buy online pickup in-store (BOPIS) and endless aisle.
All of these capabilities are made possible by a pre-built integration between NewStore and Salesforce Commerce Cloud. By unifying customer, order, and inventory data across its in-store and online systems, Vince benefits from real-time visibility regardless of where and how a purchase is made.
This integration also serves as the backbone of Vince’s consumer app. The next phase of the implementation will focus on enhancing how Vince’s stores connect to its app. New features, such as Store Mode, will provide Vince’s customers with an even richer, more curated app experience that they can carry around in their pocket.
RFID
GS1 US
GS1 US has established a cross-industry Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) discussion group that seeks to address best practices for implementing Electronic Product Code (EPC)-enabled RFID to support supply chain and inventory management imperatives.
The company established its global GS1 Standards to provide a foundational data structure and systems interoperability to help drive use of technology across various industries, including apparel, general merchandise, retail grocery, foodservice and healthcare.
The standards create a common ground for businesses by identifying, capturing and
sharing vital information within the supply chain about products, locations, assets and more.
The RFID discussion group kickoff meeting will take place March 24, 2022, and thereafter the group will convene on a quarterly basis.
The initial meeting will three feature speakers: Matt Alexander, senior director, merchandising innovation, Walmart, will discuss the benefits of EPC-enabled RFID and challenges the technology addressed at the mass merchant. Dr. Bill Hardgrave, provost and senior vice president, Auburn University, will examine the industrywide benefits of EPC-enabled RFID; and Mark Roberti, founder and editor, RFID Journal, will share observations about the state of RFID today and future opportunities.
The RFID discussion group will showcase successful implementations, pilots and programs and provide insight into how RFID-based solutions address relevant business challenges. Attendees will learn how GS1 Standards serve as a foundation for RFID and identify needs that industry may want to address moving forward.
The group is open to GS1 US members participating in a GS1 US Industry Initiative (apparel/general merchandise, retail grocery, foodservice or healthcare) as well as members of the GS1 US Solution Partner Program.
Carbon neutral shipping
ESW
ESW, the cross-border e-commerce platform provider formerly known as EShopWorld, says it will provide 100 percent carbon neutral shipping to its clients, which include Gucci, Kering, Abercrombie & Fitch, L.K. Bennett, J. Crew, and other fashion brands.
The carbon neutral promise extends beyond just transcontinental air freight to include first, middle, and last-mile deliveries.
ESW’s offsets will be achieved through the funding of renewable energy production by supporting EcoAct-verified wind farm projects.
“We know that our consumers as well as our internal stakeholders value every effort made to help the environment,” said Zoe Donovan, digital and marketing director at L.K. Bennett. “Being able to provide sustainable deliveries through ESW’s carbon offsets are just one of the many reasons they are such a vital partner to our brand.”
Brands partnering with ESW can enter new international markets in as little as six weeks, with the tech provider claiming they can set up shop up to six times faster than if they attempted to do so on their own. During the process, brands can engage directly with customers and retain ownership of all the data collected throughout.
Location-based experiences
Radar
Radar, a geofencing platform that powers next-generation location-based digital experiences, has raised $55 million in Series C funding and now has a valuation of $365 million.
The round was led by New-York based global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors including Accel, Two Sigma Ventures and Heavybit, bringing the company’s total funding to $85.5 million.
New capital will be used to rapidly scale and extend Radar’s market lead through expansion of existing and new building blocks for the platform, grow the Radar team, and increase impact in key verticals, such as retail, quick-service restaurants (QSRs), logistics, travel, hospitality and entertainment.
The funding comes on the heels of a year of rapid growth for Radar, in which more than 10,000 developers signed up to build location-based experiences using the platform. The size of Radar’s enterprise customer base more than doubled—including its first customers in fleet tracking, delivery, gaming and healthcare.
Radar processes more than 100 billion API requests per year from over 100 million devices, with enterprise-grade security, privacy and support.
The company wants to take advantage of the growing popularity of location services to power business experiences. Radar cited Allied Market Research data showing that the location analytics market is expected to reach $31.13 billion globally by 2027.
The developer-first Radar platform offers deep levels of customization for industry-specific needs, allowing brands to adapt as new use cases emerge, like curbside pickup, contactless check-in and payments, fleet tracking, targeted push notifications and more.
Additionally, Radar says its platform can be adopted within weeks to power location services. Over the past year, Radar has introduced new product features to meet the moment, including Trips for curbside pickup and delivery tracking, Beacons for Bluetooth beacon detection, and a redesigned dashboard and developer documentation.
Today, Radar enables enterprises American Eagle Outfitters, Panera and T-Mobile, as well as startups, such as Afterpay and Sleeper, to integrate location into their mobile apps.
Radar integrates with other technology partners like Braze, Amplitude, Segment and Olo to power customer experiences and deliver value across marketing, operations, product, data and in-store teams. The company says it does not sell or share consumer data.
Buy now, pay later
ViaBill
Denmark-based buy now, pay later platform ViaBill has raised a $120 million equity and debt round led by London-based Fasanara Capital.
Jan Lytje-Hansen, CEO and co-founder of ViaBill, said the funding round will help the company expand its BNPL product beyond its current markets of Denmark, Spain and the U.S.
Lytje-Hansen noted that customers can download the ViaBill App, enter a limited set of data, and have ViaBill’s advanced credit decision engine immediately evaluate their creditworthiness. If successful, a virtual credit card is issued on the spot which the consumer can push to their wallet and use to pay as usual.
ViaBill has tested the shopping behavior of roughly 11,000 consumers over the fourth quarter, finding that on average, the shopping frequency has tripled for users having its virtual or physical cards.
Fasanara Capital joins international venture capital firms Headline and Blackfin in investing in ViaBill.
Anti-counterfeiting
Identiv
Identiv, Inc., a platform provider of digital security and identification solutions in the Internet of Things (IoT), has unveiled its portfolio of near field communication (NFC)-enabled status detection tags for advanced IoT security. Identiv’s range of NFC tags is available with NXP NTAG Semiconductors 22x DNA chip devices, adding capabilities for advanced anti-counterfeiting, new-to-market tamper detection and batteryless condition sensing.
The company’s NFC tag designs based on NXP’s new NTAG 22x DNA chip series enable a wide range of sensing solutions for customers in retail, smart packaging, supply chain control (e.g., blockchain), augmented user experiences and healthcare and pharma.
The portfolio secures everyday objects in mobile anti-counterfeit authentication applications and closed-loop systems, tamper proof medications, beverages and consumables, and can sense specific conditions such as moisture, pressure or fill level powered by an NFC field, all without a battery.
The sensing tags with conductive and capacitive capabilities are ideal for status-aware applications enhancing quality assurance along the supply chain, verifying fill levels for refill orders or patient compliance, and wet/dry sensing for smart wound recovery or skin patches.
The innovative status detection products enable advanced IoT security with a Secure Unique NFC (SUN) message authentication feature using AES-128 cryptography. SUN dynamically verifies message authenticity and integrity. Mutual authentication can further enhance security by protecting data against unauthorized access or malicious change attempts.
Identiv’s RFID and NFC solutions are designed to verify identities and security in the IoT and are embedded in billions of everyday objects, including medical devices, books, toys, athletic apparel, perishable and pharmaceuticals. The company’s identity devices, such as the new uTrust 3700 IG contactless smart card reader/writer, support its current portfolio of sensing tags.
Product data capturing
Scandit
Scandit, a provider of smart data capture solutions, has completed a $150 million Series D funding round at a valuation topping $1 billion. The round was led by Warburg Pincus, a global growth investor focused on scaling high growth companies, particularly in B2B software.
The funding round was included participation from Scandit’s existing shareholder base, including Atomico, Forestay Capital, G2VP, GV, Kreos, NGP Capital, Schneider Electric, Sony Innovation Fund by IGV and Swisscom Ventures.
To date, Scandit has raised almost $300 million to fuel its global expansion, enabling smart devices to capture data on the edge from barcodes, text, IDs and objects through computer vision in order to automate processes and provide insights that enhance customer engagement and increase worker productivity.
Since its Series C in May 2020, the company has more than doubled its annual recurring revenue and now has over 1,700 global customers including Levi Strauss & Co., FedEx, Carrefour and Sephora.
Scandit has strengthened its leadership position in its core verticals—retail, transportation and logistics, healthcare and manufacturing—and works with three of the top five global courier companies.
Scandit plans to use the additional funding to further expand its global footprint and team with a particular focus on APAC, including Japan, Singapore and South Korea. Since the Series C funding, Scandit’s globally distributed team has increased by 85 percent with plans to grow by another 50 percent by the end of 2022. The investment will also be used to continue to drive expansion and innovation in core verticals.
Additionally, the funding will be used to accelerate Scandit’s R&D to advance enterprises’ core business processes with an increased emphasis on AI/ML capabilities and autonomous data capture methods. Scandit’s Smart Data Capture platform will further augment the intelligence and decision-making of users, which can lead to faster, more accurate and automated outcomes whether on a smartphone, wearables or via robots.
Traditional data capture tools, such as those enabled with general purpose scanners, have been unable to meet such requirements. Whether to digitally enable the mobile workforce or to enhance supply chain visibility, omnichannel fulfillment, store operations efficiency or asset tracking and maintenance, Scandit Smart Data Capture is designed to enable enterprises to address these new challenges with unmatched speed, accuracy and intelligence.
Last month, Scandit launched ShelfView, a smart data capture and analytics solution for retail shelf management. Leveraging augmented reality, object recognition, optical character recognition and other innovative computer vision technology, ShelfView is geared to capture SKU-level product data via both mobile devices and autonomous robots to enable constant shelf visibility and empower more intelligent and efficient store operations.