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16 entrepreneurs took to the WIRED Retail Startup Stage sponsored by Cisco to vie for the winning title. The competition proved tough, and here's WIRED.co.uk's low-down on all the contenders.
Giving a coherent address to every three metre square of Earth might seem like a mammoth task. Yet cofounder and CEO of what3words Chris Sheldrick had done just that. "Think of all the places in the world that don't have an address," said Sheldrick. "According to research, the quality of half the world's addresses is so poor that it doesn't direct you anywhere meaningful."
So Sheldrick came up with a solution, a three-word system in a language of your choice, that would tackle address variations across the world. Covering 57 trillion three meter squares, Sheldrick states that now "everywhere -- even the most beautiful, fun and critical places have an address". His idea has already drawn interest from courier services, mapping agencies and has been included in a UN brief, which suggests using three words to tweet where you are when in a natural disaster. People in the geo industry have remarked that it's a possible "universal standard for communicating location".
The applications are mind-boggling. Sheldrick points out: "In the future, when there's drone delivery, we'll need to know whether you want your goods delivered to the front or back garden. There's no single latitude for your house."
Combining the in-store and off-store experience
"We're leveraging WI-FI abilities and creating new insights about customer behaviour," says Amy Lai, founder and CEO of Wittos, a mobile analytics company.
Wittos aims to enhance each customer's in-store experience as they move around the retail space by providing content based on their shopping behaviour in a personalised yet anonymous way. "Customers reach for their phones and devices at different points when they are in the stores," said Lia, explaining this could help retailers identify patterns.
"Traditional types of messaging from retailers to consumers simply don't work anymore," says Peter Janes, founder and CEO of Shopa.
His social commerce company allows users to discover, talk about, share and buy products. Janes asserts that today millenials turn to their friends for recommendations on products, not old advertising models. "Recommendations do what SEO can't -- they work on trust and drive a much higher value customer back to the retailer."
Asbjorn Jorgesen confesses that he hasn't been buying his own clothes for the last two years. Instead, at The Cloakroom, he has a personal shopper that knows what it takes to keep him looking smart.
Housing 40 personal shoppers united in their love of fashion and often hailing from backgrounds in psychology, The Cloakroom evaluates their client's unstructured data -- everything from photographs and likes on Facebook. "By garnering a better understanding of the customer, we're able to find products they can't find themselves," says Jorgesen.
"StreetHub helps the independent retailers fight back against bigger stores like Amazon, and we use the mobile phone to do this," says former retail strategy consultant Mandeep Singh.
Searching out the best vintage boutiques that offer quality products, but are stuck in analogue ways, Singh's platform is an "online-to-offline" marketplace that offers indie retailers an upgrade. "We give independent retailers a mobile and tablet application that manages their data in real time," he says. An app provides users with a list of items that are sold in boutiques around them.
It also allows them the option of having their purchases delivered in 90 minutes, or available for collection within five minutes.
When the app is activated, StreetHub gleans more data on who you are, when you are using it and what you like.
Getting the audience involved
Spencer Hyman wants to head a chocolate revolution through an online subscription platform. "Chocolate is a bit like tobacco. It's been controlled by big government monopolies who care more for the profit than the quality," he explains.
According to Hyman, three key developments have made the choco-revolution possible: those who have taken a stance against government monopolies, and "freed up the beans" in distant cacao-producing outposts; the factories used to make chocolate are more small-scale and cost less to build; and the hipster community that has jazzed up the chocolatier scene.
Customers receive a "graze box" when they join, then take a taste test online. Tailored recommendations are then sent out.
Vivino is a free mobile app that helps customers make a qualified purchase and review wines.
Users take photographs of any given wine label, and an image recognition technology matches this against a database of more than 4.5 million wines. "We will have a rating on almost every wine out there," says CEO Heine Zacharissen. "So we can find out what people like and start profiling tastes." Vivino also wants to synch up with retailers so the app can tell users what's available nearby.
Cofounder of digital store Love & Robots Emer O'Daly says users can personalise the last 5 percent of products from their browsers. "We create consumer products that are all built from digital files, then 3D printed," says O'Daly, whose startup prints anything from titanium to steel. Launching 15 months ago, and already with a community of 6,000 designers worldwide, Love & Robot aims to reduce the carbon footprint stemming from product delivery and distribution. The digital files tweaked and personalised by their customers can simply be sent to the relevant geographical location, and printed off there.
Founder and CEO Rossi Mitova is slowly bridging the divide between fresh farm produce and urban populations. "Farmhopping is an online market place where each farm can manage their online store front," she says. As the platform cuts out the middleman, "farmers can get four times more for their products". "Each farmer can upload info, and make an online profile available to the public," explains Mitova. This model allows consumers to pick their preferred producer, and as farmers know what products are being ordered, they too can meet their demand.
Buyapowa brings dynamic pricing, co-creation and gamification to ecommerce. CEO Gideon Lask explains the aim: "to convert a social customer into a paying customer."
Arguing that companies are investing more in social media platforms that consumers ultimately don't interact with, Buyapowa uses the potential of a social relationship between the consumer and retailer as its platform.
Making checkout easier
Lengthy and over-complex internet forms were bothering Tom New.
So he invented Formisimo -- a cloud-based analytics startup, which aims to make online checkout a stress-free process.
New has focused on "removing the friction at the very last point -- the tipping point before they become a customer".
According to New unnecessary additional details such as DOBs, and account number requests deter customers. "67 percent of people abandon online checkout, this causes $4 trillion dollars of loss."
Formisimo tracks everything users do in online forms and checkouts, then processes and relays that data back to users in the form of reports that highlight where customers are experiencing problems.
"There's an emotional journey that you go through when you're buying furniture," says founder Matt Drew. He claims all you need now is the Homespot app "an iPhone and any magazine in order to make an informed purchasing decision".
Users can select the designs they like and use augmented reality to visualise their product at home.
As the online furniture business only sees a two percent conversion rate, Drew thinks that with his app, customers are twice as likely to proceed to online checkout.
Augmented reality app Blippar allows users to bring physical objects to life using their phone. "Hold it up to a piece of marketing, and it turns it into an instantaneous digital experience," says CMO Jess Butcher.
The app permits retailers to convert anything physical into an advertising platform, as mobile phone users trigger weblinks, audio or coupon downloads with a simple scan.
Making data accessible for retailers
Ometria software helps online retailers leverage their data to pinpoint exactly what their customers want. According to founder and CEO Ivan Mazour, retailers like "leveraging the data to create an engaging experience for their consumers."
Jonathan Benshaoul says predictive analytics platform C-B4 goes beyond looking at the behaviour of individual objects and people through segments. It's all about going granular.
Benshaoul uses C-B4's algorithms to analyse store behaviour and find the consumer patterns that lead to high sales.
Products are sold differently in each store as they are influenced by variables such as discounts and locations. This variation in patterns makes it harder to analyse a real retail environment, says Benshaoul. C-B4 tackles the issue using machine learning algorithms.
Ecommerce startup Flubit creates private offers on products that customers are ready to buy. "On Flubit, you give us a URL to the product you'd like to buy, then you answer a question about the product or yourself," explains founder Steph Fila. "Then we come back to you with an offer that's time-limited or bespoke."
Since its 2013 launch, Flubit has transacted $4 million already and controls an inventory of 18 million products.
Specialising in smart vending, the Auto Store Company provides multilingual product access solutions to distributors to help cut down on real estate costs. Whereas retail spaces have to shut down at night, the smart vending solutions are mobile, and open 24/7. "Customers want service anytime and anywhere, and competition is always 24/7," says founder Alex Rashkovan. "Our system is bridging the gap between ecommerce and motor."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
