From Shelf Scanning to Fresh Food: Simbe's Complete Store Automation Strategy Explained

Welcome back, everyone.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we are here coming to you live from the Symbi and Omnitalk booth here at the Food Expo by Spartan Nash standing between us, we have the one and only, the Caitlin Allen, SVP of market at Simbe.

Katelyn, welcome to omnitalk.

Thank you, Anne.

Chris, so good to be back.

You were on stage today, already.

You're doing all the things.

How did it go?

It was so fun.

It was a panel on women in retail.

Very important topic.

And kudos to Spartan Nash for spotlighting that.

Yes, absolutely.

Well, I was gonna ask you at the end, why don't we start there?

Why don't we start there with what did you talk about on that panel, first of all?

And then we'll get into Cymbi and your background too.

But why don't we start with the panel too?

Cause that's important.

So what'd you hope the audience took away?

Two things.

The first is something that I like to call polite bulldozing.

Okay.

Never heard that term.

Which is the fact.

Is this your own term or this?

Okay.

It is.

It's the fact that women, when they are prepared and when they are focused on what's really good for the business, they're uniquely qualified to get stuff done in a way that is good for building relationships and for business outcomes.

So that was the first concept.

Okay.

And then the second one is the.

The best advice that I ever got.

Okay.

Which is to do the hardest thing first.

And we were talking about how easy it is to stand out if you just start your day or your week or a conversation with the hardest thing.

Yeah.

And think about all the procrastination and dropped balls.

Right.

You'll miss as a result.

Right.

Yeah, it's really good.

Yeah.

If you do the hardest thing first, your day feels like a success already.

That's really, really good advice.

I've never thought about that.

Huh.

I might incorporate that today.

All right, well, let's start off now with Simbi.

So tell us a little bit about Simbi for those maybe that aren't familiar with us or maybe listening to us for the first time.

And tell us about yourself too.

Sure.

So I have had about a 20 year career building markets for disruptive technology in enterprise software and consumer platforms.

And then now Deep Tech Robotics, and it started in nonprofit healthcare.

And then I started and sold a marketing agency that put companies like Google and LinkedIn on the map.

Okay.

And then I was in Venture very quickly in the last 10 years have been building early stage and technology companies and taking some of them to public offering and we're building another one.

That's really exciting.

Yeah, tell us about it.

Sure.

Because I don't know how anyone listening could not know about Zimbabwe, especially if they follow us.

Yes.

But tell for anyone who's listening for the first time, there's a lot of new first time listeners from this show.

So tell us about Simbi.

So Simbee is a vertically integrated physical AI company that solves a problem that we all live with all the time, which is the fact that the things that we want to buy are often not there when and where we want them at the correct price.

And so we work with the largest number of retail banners in the world to digitize shelves and make sure that prices are accurate and that items are available when shoppers want to buy them.

And what I love about it, honestly is the fact that this is something retailers are already obsessed with doing.

Keeping their promises to shoppers and store teams and so.

Super fun.

Yeah, I'll say.

And how do you do that?

How do you help them with that specifically?

Yeah.

So in 2016, we introduced the world's first inventory robot that is mobile and goes up and down aisles.

We have a computer vision platform now that also has other technology that helps make the things that we're talking about possible.

But it really starts with the robot.

What.

So what brings you to the Spartan Nash conference outside of your panel and showcasing Talley?

Yeah, I think it boils down and to the power of the independents.

Like you think about how often we buy things that we need or maybe buy things just because we buy things and the fact that retail is the largest employer in the world.

It's, it's, I think it's safe to say that retail is the modern cornerstone of or the cornerstone of modern society.

And you know, online grocery is here to stay for sure.

But there's nothing like going into the friendliest store in town where you know everybody's names and they know that special brand of peanut butter you like or whatever.

And so it's, it's really great to be here with you guys celebrating that and with our client, Spartan Nash this year.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Yeah.

It's funny, you know, we got running up that hill in the background here and I think, you know, most grocers feel like they're probably running up a hill most days when they're trying to do their business, so.

And to that point, you guys just released a new report with coresight research on the manual inefficiencies that are plaguing grocers.

What were some of the big takeaways from that report for our audience?

Yeah, so second annual report.

Second annual.

Okay.

And the largest finding was that inefficiencies in the store impact up to five and a half percent of sales every year, which is an increase from 4.5% last year.

So it's getting worse.

It's getting worse.

And the three main drivers of that are execution, gaps in promotion, execution, pricing accuracy, and then missing items on the shelves.

And that's obviously like a bad thing.

But it also showed that retailers, in the very resilient, innovative way the retailers work, aren't sitting still.

And it showed that two in three of the retailers surveyed are using in store technology, that investments in the space have gone up 151%.

So bigger problem, bigger awareness and a lot of action.

That really underscores a tipping point, I think, in technology that we see inside retail stores.

And Caitlin, we've talked, you've talked about shelf scanning, but I think one thing that's really been top of mind for the independent grocers that we talked today too, is this the pervasiveness of fresh and really a focus on fresh.

How do you at, Cindy, think about that as part of the business too, helping out independents with that?

Yeah, it's a good question.

While e commerce giants can compete on things like price and convenience, I think it's safe to say that brick and mortar retail, or to the question earlier about independence, it's here to stay because of things like fresh.

Fresh is, I think, accountable for 41% of grocery sales and about that of online revenue as well.

And one in three shoppers say that they choose where to go shop because of things like fresh.

Yeah.

Then at the same time, though, we know that it is the most perishable, complex and labor intensive part of the store that suffers from the highest shrink.

So long way of saying Stimpy's really aware of that data and how loud it speaks.

And we've also heard from grocery executives that it's the category in the store that they're thinking about most strategically in the years to come.

So I'll leave it at that and just say big things, big announcements coming soon.

Oh, we got a tease.

And we'll take it.

Got a tease.

We'll take it.

I mean, I want to know.

Maybe we'll get it offline, but.

But stay tuned because Caitlin's got some.

Some tea for us.

Yeah.

And.

And to that point.

Caitlin, too.

You know, I'm excited to hear what that is.

Very, very excited to hear what that is.

But you guys have, in addition to the robot, you've unleashed a lot of new products or released.

Unleashed.

Release whatever you want to call it.

A lot of new products over the last few years.

What are some of those, too?

Beyond the robot.

Yeah.

Thank you for the question.

So we released a fixed sensor earlier this year that is basically a fixed camera.

And then we also have a robot with RFID capabilities for soft tagged apparel.

And there will be others coming soon, too.

But I think the concept is it's less about the hardware type and much more about getting full store coverage so that you have that visibility to know how to get your products where shoppers want them, when and where they need them, and.

And to be able to make sure your accuracy is in place online.

Right.

Especially as we're seeing more and more retailers start to carry things like fresh or like foods to get people in the door on a more regular basis.

So that's exciting.

I can't wait.

Yeah.

Or more groceries carry apparel too, right?

Yeah.

Or, yeah, vice versa.

So, yeah, the right solution for the right use case.

That's the key.

So we started talking a little bit about the beginning.

I said I was going to ask you, and I brought it up to the front.

I gotta go back to it, though.

What is polite bulldozing?

So I don't feel like.

I don't feel like I quite understood what that term means.

So explain what the polite bulldozing is again.

It means.

It means doing things that you need to do with a smile, but kind of pushing things through.

Okay, got it, got it, got it.

All right, got it.

Well said.

Well said.

We're trying to muster up that smile.

Caitlin, you do it best.

You do it best.

Well, thank you so much.

We want to give a big thank you to Caitlin and the team at Symbi, to Spartan Nash.

We will be back here tomorrow with more interviews from a lot of retailers.

A whole host of retailers.

So many I don't even know how many.

But it'll be well worth your while to come back and check us out.

You can stop by booth444.

We'll be here all day tomorrow.

And until then, be careful out there.