Retail Tech: Amazon Brings Affirm to B2B Sellers, Tractor Supply Deploys Forecasting

Glenn Taylor
·11 min read

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

Buy now, pay later

Amazon/Affirm

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Amazon and buy now, pay later (BNPL) platform provider Affirm are extending their partnership, making the solution the first pay-over-time option available at checkout on Amazon Business.

Amazon Business is the e-commerce giant’s B2B marketplace designed for small businesses seeking to buy products in bulk. Now, Amazon Business customers can split the total cost of eligible purchases and pay over time with Affirm without late or hidden fees.

The tech titan rolled out Affirm to select eligible sole proprietor businesses, and the new payment option will be available at checkout to all eligible Amazon Business sole proprietor customers by Black Friday.

Loans made through the service range from $100 to $20,000.

By selecting Affirm at checkout on Amazon Business and inputting information such as registered business name and business address, small business owners will receive an instant credit decision. If approved, they can select from customized pay-over-time options of three to 48 months, with Affirm claiming they will never have to pay more than the amount agreed to upfront. Businesses are charged an annualized interest rate between 10 percent and 36 percent, based on the perceived risk of the transaction. For example, a $200 purchase at 15 percent annual percentage rate (APR) would cost a customer $34.81 for six months, totaling $208.84.

Assortment planning

Lightspeed

Lightspeed Commerce has introduced new product features for merchants.

Lightspeed Retail aims to simplify the purchasing and planning processes at retailers and brands, speed up vertical and target assortment planning. Brands that operate their own retail stores can reduce manual work (and the frequency of data-entry errors) by using NuOrder Assortments to optimize inventory allocation, identify merchandising gaps and make more informed range planning decisions.

“Implementing NuOrder Assortments meant more accurate rollups and a clear process to write smarter buys,” said Stephanie Gin, director of buying at Italian luxury fashion brand Brunello Cucinelli. “We now get an immediate visual of the assortment thus making it much easier to analyze and review. The tool has replaced all manual processes and has become essential to our buying process.”

For multi-brand retailers, NuOrder Assortments now allows both merchants and brands to load and manage financial or allocation targets, which helps them to compare their assortment against planned spend and make it easier to see where they are over- and underinvested. As they write their units, buyers can review how their totals measure against their targets for different departments, categories or other product groupings.

Additionally, onboarding new brands to NuOrder Assortments is a self-service process, allowing for automated mapping of their product plan into an assortment plan and enabling the brand to configure their setup.

With Lightspeed Retail’s B2B Catalog expanding across all major verticals such as fashion and apparel, sporting and outdoor goods, bikes, toys and crafts, home and lifestyle, retailers can now add product info from millions of products from thousands of popular brands straight to their product catalog. This is quicker than adding products manually, and merchants can ensure that all product info, images, descriptions, universal product codes (UPC) and more are verified from the supplier. This can make it quicker to start selling new products.

After a successful beta launch, the company’s Services Module is now available on Lightspeed Retail everywhere. The module now lets merchants include back-ordered items, and is best served by retailers with service components like bikes, sporting goods and jewelry.

Alongside these updates, Lightspeed Payments is now available for eligible merchants via Lightspeed eCom in Canada, the U.K., Australia and Belgium, making international transactions more accessible and convenient for businesses of all sizes.

Supply chain visibility

Tractor Supply/Relex

Tractor Supply Company has selected Relex Solutions, a provider of unified retail planning technologies, to implement a supply chain forecasting and replenishment solution.

Through AI and machine learning, Relex’s platform gives Tractor Supply more real-time visibility into its supply chain to better anticipate the needs of its more than 2,100 stores and nine distribution centers, and provide forecasts to vendor partners. The Relex solution automates Tractor Supply’s forecasting, replenishment and allocations, improving inventory productivity while increasing product availability to ensure customer needs are met.

The partnership assists a retailer that runs the gamut in product categories it sells, including farm equipment, animal feed, and lawn and garden essentials, in addition to men’s and women’s apparel and footwear from brands including Wolverine, Dickies, Reebok and Timberland.

“Relex allows us to scale our supply chain to support growth with same store sales, new stores and e-commerce,” said Clay Jackson, vice president of inventory and planning at Tractor Supply Company. “By centralizing and automating our demand planning, Relex has added a new level of optimization to our supply chain, allowing us to continue to deliver legendary service to our customers and provide all the products they need to live Life Out Here.”

Logistics

Fillogic

Fillogic, a local market logistics platform provider that operates micrologistics hubs converted from underused retail space, has closed a $13 million Series A funding round, led by Revelry Venture Partners (RVP). This capital will be used to accelerate Fillogic’s product development and nationwide expansion of its sustainable logistics technology ecosystem.

Partnering with the largest shopping mall owners, Fillogic aims to offer its customers a cost-effective and eco-friendly middle-mile logistics network, that the company says slashes logistics expenses by up to 50 percent. The company has grown 300 percent in 2023, adding new enterprises, digital brands and platform partners to its expanding list of customers.

The funding comes just weeks after Fillogic teamed up with Loop Returns, an automated returns management portal, as its latest partner in building a channel-free reverse logistics network.

The partnership will leverage the combination of Loop Returns’ front-end return management solution and Fillogic’s proprietary sorting, grading, and segmentation technology to help retailers and brands create a more circular, sustainable and profitable returns process.

RVP Managing Partner Peter Liu will join the Fillogic board as its director. Other new board members including Herb Shear, founder and executive chairman at G2 Reverse Logistics, and Gene Spiegelman, vice chairman and principal at Ripco Real Estate.

The round also saw contributions from existing investors including XRC Ventures, Closed Loop Partners, Venture 53, Groundbreak Ventures and Green Egg Ventures.

ShippyPro

Italy-based shipping platform ShippyPro has secured a new $15 million Series B round from Five Elms Capital. This investment is designed to eliminate shipping complexities for businesses by optimizing all aspects of the fulfillment process.

ShippyPro has built a multi-carrier infrastructure to help brands save time and millions of dollars in logistics budget every year by driving efficiency across all the fulfillment operations, from initial order intake through to tracking and returns.

With its data-driven technology, ShippyPro can help brands choose the optimal shipping service for each order, while automating the generation of shipping labels, turning the delivery experience for consumers into a competitive advantage.

ShippyPro’s network includes 166 carriers and 81 sales channels, giving brands quicker access to new shipping services.

ShippyPro currently processes millions of shipments per month for thousands of clients in more than 36 countries for brands in different industries, including Diesel, Guess and Venchi, that rely on the platform to automate shipping and offer a better customer experience.

The company has recently launched two new products. The first facilitates out-of-home deliveries, granting brands the flexibility to let consumers receive their orders at diverse drop-off points, including postal offices, supermarkets and local shops. The second, ShippyPro Data Optimize, is a suite of business intelligence tools designed to illuminate shipping data, providing brands with unparalleled oversight and control over their shipping information.

Davinci Micro Fulfillment

Davinci Micro Fulfillment, a micro fulfillment-as-a-service company, has closed a $3 million seed funding round co-led by Las Olas Venture Capital, Venture 53 Fund and Accelerator and Silicon Road Ventures. It has raised $10 million since launching in 2021.

The company plans to use the capital to increase overall operational excellence and to enhance current technology capabilities, including adding an automation test site.

Davinci’s micro fulfillment technology is built around order orchestration and network optimization that, using data and machine learning, can help multichannel merchants place their inventory more precisely so they can reduce touch points and meet supply and demand as close to real-time as possible with the lowest fulfillment cost.

In short, the technology aims to tells brands what items to sell and on what channel, how to market them, and when to restock and where.

In the two years that Davinci has been operating, it has helped brands increase their sales by 25 percent by positioning inventory correctly and saving 30 percent ROI in fulfillment costs.

Using its six micro fulfillment centers in Fresno, Calif; Dallas; Erlanger, Ky.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Central New Jersey; and Denver, Davinci provides merchants with one-day ground delivery to over 85 percent of the continental U.S. and two-day delivery to 99 percent. Davinci’s clients include apparel, beverages, dry goods, toys and home goods, with a wide range of SKUs from five to 50 or more.

Returns

ReturnGo

Returns and exchanges management technology ReturnGo has entered into a collaboration with Amazon Multi-Channel Fulfillment (MCF) and has secured $5 million in capital funding led by Trestle Partners, a private investment fund that focuses on investing in pre-Series A and Series A software as a service (SaaS) businesses.

The Amazon partnership will provide merchants using MCF with an integrated solution that can automate the entire return and exchange process.

ReturnGo’s SaaS platform has already been implemented in more than 2,500 Shopify stores. The company wants to develop an open, end-to-end solution that can be used with any e-commerce stack, so that all integrations can work together within one “post-purchase operating system.” The firm aims to improve the shopping experience by giving customers more return options, making e-commerce more sustainable and reducing reverse logistics costs for online retailers.

The company, which partners with sellers including orthotic footwear brand Orthofeet and sporting goods retailer Decathlon, currently helps retailers process more than 250,000 returns per month. The ability to provide customers with tailored alternative products and real-time return solutions has increased the number of product exchanges by a substantial percentage, ReturnGo says, reducing the need for full refunds and maximizing retailers’ profitability.

The $5 million investment follows a $6.5 million seed funding round announced last June that was led by TPY Capital fund, along with Cresson, Good Company, SeedIL and Aristagroa.

ReturnGO was founded in July 2020 by CEO Aviad Raz, chief technology officer Assi Abramovich and U.S. general manager Eyal Rosenthal and currently employs 25 people at its research and development center in Israel. The company recently expanded its footprint in the U.S. via a new subsidiary to further support its business in the market, which ReturnGo says is its primary target territory.

In-store analytics

RetailNext/MarketDial

RetailNext, an in-store traffic analytics provider used by more than 450 brands, has partnered with MarketDial, an A/B testing solution for physical retail, to give retailers a 360-degree view of the customer journey.

Harnessing its AI-powered heat-mapping technology, RetailNext pinpoints in-store foot traffic patterns, offering insights such as dwell time, engagement metrics and shopper exposure. By integrating this data into MarketDial’s platform, retailers can establish in-store tests, while concurrently gauging shopper reactions to an array of stimuli. This joint offering is designed to position retailers to generate more insights into the evolving customer experience.

RetailNext’s solution suite, from shopper journey insights to real-time analytics, helps retailers understand their customers better and optimize store operations.

Furthermore, with changing customer preferences, MarketDial’s platform offers a more timely solution for retailers seeking evidence-based insights. By focusing on testing, the platform looks to unearth concrete data on aspects such as pricing, promotions and loyalty programs.

For example, after implementing improved sales training tactics, one retailer noted a 6 percent increase in revenue per visit. Similarly, another was able to make informed decisions by identifying a 3.5 percent sales dip through proactive testing.

Payments

Commercetools/PayPal

Commercetools, a composable commerce software company, announced a collaboration with PayPal to offer a wider range of payment options for customers via payment platform, PayPal Braintree. The new integration allows Commercetools’ customers to work with multiple payment providers, acquirers, and banks to optimize their customers’ experiences.

As a Commercetools Connect-ready integration, PayPal Braintree can instantly be added as a new component. The integration is developed for both Commercetools’ back-end and front-end environments, as well as other JavaScript front ends. The integration reflects the two companies’ shared vision to deliver frictionless experiences for consumers and backend developers, helping merchants to increase and support revenue growth.

Features include expanded payment options, including debit and credit cards, digital wallets, PayPal Later and local payment methods to over 200 markets in 135 currencies. The collaboration will also include integrated and customizable fraud tools, including risk services like fraud protection on eligible transactions and dispute automation.