Retail Tech: Alibaba’s AI Sourcing Update, Ikea’s Demand Sensing Collab

Glenn Taylor
·13 min read

The weekly Retail Tech Roundup compiles technology news across the supply chain, manufacturing, retail, e-commerce, logistics and fulfillment sectors.

Sourcing

Alibaba

More from Sourcing Journal

Alibaba.com launched its latest Smart Assistant features powered by artificial intelligence (AI) at CES in Las Vegas. The Smart Assistant, an AI-powered global B2B sourcing tool, is designed to be a personal guide that helps small business owners discover new brands, stay up-to-date on trends and track orders from a single touchpoint.

“Today’s small businesses face a variety of headwinds, but with the right technology and support, they can feel confident that they will overcome obstacles and help their business thrive, which is why we’re expanding the features of our new Smart Assistant tool to better serve today’s entrepreneurs,” said Chris Lu, General Manager at Alibaba.com North America, in a statement. “With advances in AI, we are ushering in the next generation of sourcing and empowering small businesses to succeed with our Smart Assistant at their side.”

First announced at CES and coming soon to the Alibaba.com Smart Assistant is the Instant Help feature, which leverages an AI-powered chatbot to answer basic inquiries and offer real-time insights and resources, regardless of time zones or language barriers.

The Instant Help feature can provide buyers with knowledge and industry insights about a variety of verticals and product types, and offer tips to elevate their communications with suppliers. It is built to help ensure small businesses can increase efficiency and keep up with trends by leveraging AI to increase competitive advantages.

Since their launch in September, the first two features of the Smart Assistant, Upgraded Image Search and Smart Request for Quotation (RFQ), have already provided benefit to entrepreneurs using the Alibaba.com desktop platform.

Based on Alibaba.com’s internal study, buyers using the Upgraded Image Search have seen a 28 percent higher deal closing rate than those only using traditional text search. Buyers who used the Smart RFQ tool saw 29 percent more quotes from suppliers, while suppliers saw a 21 percent increase in buyer responses to quotes as compared to the original RFQ process.

“Developed from buyer-supplier feedback and embedded with profound industry knowledge, we are excited to demonstrate how the Smart Assistant rapidly and accurately produces product requests and images aligning with buyer needs,” Lu said. “Smart Assistant helps buyers embrace their creativity, improve the efficiency of matching buyers and sellers, while making sourcing more accessible for all.”

Demand sensing

Ikea/Blue Yonder

Ikea is collaborating with supply chain management software provider Blue Yonder to bolster the customer experience via demand sensing.

Demand sensing examines short-term demand patterns across various channels, that include but is not limited to customer insights, market events, pricing, campaigns, localized weather reports and external economic factors.

Leveraging the Blue Yonder technology, Ikea can more accurately observe customer preferences over time, which not only supports workers on the job, but also can elevate forecast accuracy by precisely adapting to shifting variables.

According to the Swedish home retailer, the key component of the initiative’s success, however, is the quality of the data which is provided by coworkers.

So far, the retailer says it has provided workers with better planning tools, and ensured the availability of products for specific locations at the right times, enhancing overall operational effectiveness, and allowing coworkers to spend more time making strategic decisions and working better with stakeholders. In one such example, Ikea Portugal saw forecast accuracy improve by 5 percent after implementation.

‘’AI has been a game-changer for us, making our routine tasks easier with the use smart models,” said Parag Parekh, global chief digital officer for Ikea Retail (Ingka Group), in a statement. “However, the tool is only as good as the data it’s provided. The real heroes here are our coworkers, as they bring invaluable insights and always ensure the quality of data is there’’.

The initial pilot took place in Norway in 2020 and showed “noticeable” improvement, the retailer said, by delivering more accurate customer demand predictions, including more reliable forecasts for each article and each store.

Buy now, pay later

Walmart/Affirm

Walmart has expanded services with buy now, pay later (BNPL) payments platform Affirm, bringing the technology’s pay-over-time options to self-checkout kiosks at more than 4,500 Walmart stores in the United States.

According to the payments company’s own research, 54 percent of Americans want retailers to offer BNPL option at checkout.

With the expansion, Affirm is now available in Walmart stores nationwide, on walmart.com, and in the Walmart app.

The tech company says customers that use the platform are shown the total cost of their purchase and will never pay more than they agree to upfront. Affirm also says it never charges any late or hidden fees.

The expansion comes as shoppers are increasingly delaying payments as U.S. credit card balances hit record highs and defaults rise. BNPL services account for 5 percent of e-commerce payments globally and are forecast to rise to 6 percent by 2026, according to data from financial services tech firm FIS.

E-commerce

Amazon/Salesforce

Amazon and Salesforce are teaming up, with the e-commerce giant integrating its Buy with Prime offering into the CRM company’s Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This solution is built to help Salesforce merchants integrate Buy with Prime into their existing shopping experience.

Buy with Prime for Salesforce offers merchants several new features, including the ability for shoppers to search and filter for Prime-eligible items, and purchase Prime-eligible and other items in the same order. This integration can help Salesforce merchants connect with new shoppers and increase conversion by offering the convenient shopping benefits of Prime, including free delivery, 24/7 live chat support and returns.

Additionally, Buy with Prime for Salesforce can automatically sync with Salesforce Order Management, including orders, promotions and catalog listings. Merchants can customize this end-to-end integration to tailor the placement and appearance of the Buy with Prime experience throughout their product, cart, and checkout pages.

Whether a shopper places an order directly on a seller’s own direct-to-consumer website via Buy with Prime or shops directly on Amazon.com, the orders are fulfilled using the same pool of inventory stored within Amazon’s logistics network. This shared inventory pool gives Buy with Prime merchants the flexibility to scale their inventory across multiple sales channels, which in turn can reduce out-of-stock rates, and thus speed up delivery times.

The offering will start rolling out as invitation only to select Salesforce merchants, and it will be available to all U.S.-based Salesforce Commerce Cloud merchants via the Salesforce AppExchange later this year.

“The Buy with Prime integration with Salesforce Commerce Cloud empowers merchants to offer their shoppers a new yet familiar purchasing option directly within their digital storefronts,” said Peter Larsen, Amazon vice president of Buy with Prime, in a statement. “Now with new features that build Buy with Prime seamlessly into search, cart, and checkout, Salesforce merchants have even more flexibility and functionality to provide Buy with Prime while maintaining control over their stores’ look and feel.”

Bolt

Bolt, the e-commerce company that touts one-click checkout capabilities, laid off nearly 30 percent of its staff, the company confirmed in December.

The layoffs are the latest in a series of job cuts made by the Authentic Brands Group partner since the company secured $355 million two years ago, which valued the firm at $11 billion. In May 2022, Bolt laid off at least 185 employees, or one-third of its workforce at the time. The company instituted another round of layoffs in November 2022, before reducing headcount again two months later by approximately 10 percent, or at least 50 people.

Bolt did not reveal how many employees the company had at the time of the most recent layoffs, or which roles were impacted.

The company was working toward profitability and had undergone a rebrand of sorts early last year, introducing new features designed to improve merchandise returns and provide personalized experiences across its universal shopper network. In November, Bolt unveiled partnerships with a handful of retailers, including Saks Off 5th, Shinola, Filson, Lafayette 148 and Toys “R” Us.

RFID

Pacsun/Nedap

Pacsun will implement RFID across its fleet of stores in partnership with Nedap.

The lifestyle retailer is deploying Nedap’s iD Cloud Store solution, a technology designed to increase inventory accuracy, inform replenishment decisions and improve both omnichannel and in-store experiences. The partnership is part of Pacsun’s effort to create a higher level of transparency with customers and fulfill more customer orders.

Pacsun expects to deploy iD Cloud Store to all its stores by the first quarter of 2024.

“Meeting our Gen Z customers how they want to shop is crucial. Pacsun shoppers are social media savvy and shop our exclusive merch drops with urgency,” Shirley Gao, chief digital and information officer at Pacsun, said in a statement. “We pay attention to our customers desired preferences and listen to them every second of every day—including their expectations on a seamless shopping experience. To achieve this, Pacsun is a digital disruptor and we actively invest in technologies that will help take our brand experience to the next level. Partnering with Nedap is helping us unlock competitive advantages as we tap into data-rich fulfillment and operational cheat-codes to get the right product to the right stores for the right customers.”

Nedap’s iD Cloud Store was chosen by Pacsun after what the retailer called a rigorous market research and competitor analysis. User testimonials helped Pacsun better understand what iD Cloud Store can deliver, notably a boost in retail inventory accuracy and an increase in buy online, pickup in-store usage.

On the technical side, Nedap says its Virtual Shielding algorithms can digitally identify item location at 98 percent accuracy.

Returns

Pitney Bowes/PackageHub

Pitney Bowes has partnered with PackageHub, which operates within nearly 1,000 retail shipping stores in the U.S., to debut a returns drop-off network that will enable no-box and no-label returns across the U.S.—at no additional cost to retailers or consumers.

E-commerce brands that already use Pitney Bowes returns service and its platform partners will immediately have access to the drop-off network, with no additional integration required. This launch augments the existing network of 30,000 postal locations where currently Pitney Bowes offers no-label returns.

Consumers can leverage no-label returns using a QR code, which have shown up to a 30 percent reduction in exceptions versus packages labeled by consumers.

No-box returns also reduce the likelihood of incorrect or invalid items being returned—often a tactic employed by fraudsters. According to Pitney Bowes most recent Boxpoll retailer survey, almost 40 percent of online retailers say that returns fraud is one of their top challenges.

Flowspace/Two Boxes

E-commerce fulfillment provider Flowspace has partnered with returns management solution Two Boxes to enhance reverse logistics capabilities for merchants contending with post-holiday returns and exchanges.

Flowspace’s fulfillment management system is designed to enable brands selling across e-commerce and brick-and-mortar to leverage their supply chains as a strategic advantage. This partnership with Two Boxes brings end-to-end returns and recommerce capabilities to sellers, ideally enabling them to get returned inventory back to stock and on the right side of the balance sheet.

Poor return experiences are also a sales deterrent, jeopardizing up to 21 percent of online sales, according to estimates from Salesforce. Together, Flowspace and Two Boxes want to enable merchants to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty by ensuring more efficient returns and exchanges.

Two Boxes integrates with the Flowspace platform and with merchants’ existing returns tech stacks, including Happy Returns, Loop Returns, Aftership and more. Its software captures information on inventory and product condition, providing data that can empower brands to eliminate fraud and waste, increase operational efficiency and make informed business decisions based on data-driven insights.

Unified commerce

Slowear/Xy Retail

Italian fashion company Slowear has selected omnichannel retail solutions provider XY Retail to improve its unified commerce experiences across its 25 stores in six countries.

The retailer is leveraging the full spectrum of XY Retail’s solutions, integrating the front office and back office through the implementation of the tech firm’s point of sale (POS), order management system (OMS) and clienteling capabilities.

“At Slowear, we are constantly innovating to offer our customers an exceptional experience that reflects our dedication to quality and craftsmanship,” said Daniele Stella, chief information officer at Slowear. “XY’s deep experience in luxury retail and their omnichannel commerce platform perfectly aligns with our vision for the future, providing us with a holistic solution that transcends geographical boundaries and simplifies international operations.”

With the partnership, Slowear customers can gain benefits from using the XY Retail platform, such as leveraging a mobile-first approach that enables customers to browse collections, make purchases, manage loyalty programs and access personalized recommendations.

XY can also help integrate online and offline channels, enabling click-and-collect, reserve in-store and ship-from-store functionalities. The tech provider said its platform’s capabilities also cater to Slowear’s global audience by supporting multiple languages, currencies and tax regulations, ensuring a smooth and localized experience for customers worldwide.

XY integrates global payment solutions, offering customers a streamlined checkout process that can eliminate the complexities of a cross-border shopping experience.

Fulfillment

Logiwa

Logiwa, a cloud-based fulfillment management system for high-volume fulfillment businesses, has launched a new product update, Logiwa IO.

This advanced system seeks to help retailers adapt to the dynamic demands of the digital marketplace and rapidly changing consumer preferences.

The update is powered by its headless, versionless and serverless architecture, which is designed to ensure that operations are not only future-proofed but also adaptable to fluctuating business needs.

The serverless framework can enhance system reliability, streamline maintenance and boost overall resilience. Accompanied by a partner-centric marketplace, Logiwa IO empowers businesses to customize solutions to their unique operational workflows.

Logiwa IO’s advanced automation is built to minimize manual intervention, thereby streamlining operations, reducing errors and maintaining high efficiency and adaptability, crucial for challenging workforce environments.

Frictionless retail

Trigo

Trigo, which develops infrastructure for autonomous retail stores and retail analytics, is cutting 30 jobs, or 15 percent of its workforce. The recent layoffs will impact all departments of the company, which currently employs around 200 people.

The company’s solutions allow retailers to track inventory in real time, optimize stock levels, personalize marketing, and manage store and supply chain operations. The solutions are powered by computer vision technology built to analyze feeds from ceiling-mounted cameras and shelf sensors, creating a “digital twin” of the store.

The layoffs come as Trigo continues to expand its deployment of computer vision and artificial intelligence, to its customer base. While personnel headcount is being reduced, the company said it remains focused on sustaining its leadership in innovation and hiring employees for expanding departments.

Trigo most recently raised $100 million in funding in October 2022, bringing the firm’s total amount raised to $204 million.