The Biggest and Boldest NRF Must-See Tech Preview | Ask An Expert

Foreign.

Hello everyone.

Welcome to what is now our second annual NRF Must See Tech Preview.

Oh my God, it's 2026.

Ann and I have selected our top must see technology companies that you have to have on your list.

Heading into NRF in just a few days, we've got companies bringing you everything from AI agents to, to cross border commerce to in store technology which you'll see across this stellar lineup.

That's right, Chris.

I cannot wait to get started.

And just a quick reminder for all of those of you who are at home listening in, watching live right now, you can put your questions for each of our tech companies right in the text chat area to the right of your screen if you're on desktop.

And we will make sure to get to as many of those as we can can during this session.

All right Chris, who's first up in the lineup?

Well, and he's no stranger to omnitok, I can tell you that much.

From his early days creating AI and computer vision store solutions at Trigo to now where his agent employees, agent employees are helping retailers with their negotiations.

Please welcome GAIN CEO Michael Govai.

All right Michael, let's get right into it for those meeting you for the first time, tell us about your background and, and Gain and how it all came to be.

Yes, I was the, as you know, was the CEO of Trigo, the company that developed Autonomy stores and test prevention tool for very large grocery retailers.

And after finishing my role at Trigo, I started to talk with many of my, you know, past customers and some current customers from the retail space and CPG companies as well.

And to hear the need and, and I will pretty amazed of the fact that all of them are not negotiating with most of their suppliers.

So they have tools for to say what should be the right price for their suppliers.

If you're a retailer, you're a CPG companies or if you're a cpg, your suppliers.

But they didn't have the ability to actually negotiate with most of them.

And that was actually in part it was a bit around year and a half ago in par two where the agent capability just arrived to the world so that AI can make decisions and also act.

So then we thought of the ability of AI employees to actually execute for them and to start to negotiate for the company.

So that's how it all started.

And yeah, and here we are.

Yeah, I mean I remember Michael, last time we spoke to you, you really introduced us to the first kind of practical use case that I had heard at least of these agentiq employees Especially the one that is helping with the negotiations that you just mentioned.

Natalie, explain for the audience what exactly Natalie does and how the capabilities of what Natalie's doing or started out doing and what Natalie's doing now.

So we call it AI employee, not just agent, because any AI employee could be, you know, hundreds of agents inside.

Sure.

And each employee can talk.

I mean, each, you can talk to them freely over chat and they can actually execute for you actually to do the work end to end, not just something specific.

And also, I mean, it's done very fast.

I mean, things that for us can take, for humans could take a week or two.

For them, it will take one minute.

So Natalie, our first employee, she's negotiating for our customers with their supplier.

So the thing is that all any large company has around 80% or even more of their suppliers that they might negotiate with them once a year.

And with Natalie, they can negotiate all year long and enjoy the value and the changes in the market, not just leave the money on the table.

So that Natalie, she's actually negotiating like human, like over email.

She negotiate with the suppliers and bring the best possible deal for our customers.

Michael, explain.

Even maybe like, take me through a scenario with Natalie too.

Like, I mean, how once this is set up, like talk me through like a negotiation or how this would all go down.

So Natalie connected to external data sources of commodities and raw materials and imagine like reduction of prices in the market, not that we come to the buyer and say, hey, I see reduction of prices at those raw materials.

And it's, it could be now an opportunity to start to negotiate with our supplier and enjoy it as well.

So she will start to talk with the buyer and we'll offer a strategy for negotiation and we'll ask about can I start the negotiation?

And if the buyer will say yes, and it's an open conversation between them, she will actually start to negotiate with the, with the supplier for, for them, for the company.

Wow.

And that's so crazy, isn't it, Chris?

Like, I mean, there's no employee that's going to be able to be like keeping track of all this data and then shoot.

I mean, it's, it's just unbelievable to me.

Yeah.

And the thing I like about it too, it takes the partiality out of the negotiation process too, which, you know, as you know, being a former buyer, there's a lot of like glad handing that goes into some of those negotiations.

Like who's taking me out to dinner, who's.

Who's taking me golfing, who's taking me to the ball game.

And so if I'm on the CPG side like I kind of like this because it gives me a chance to particularly negotiate more of my items but to do it in a very impartial way.

So.

So Michael, how does it work from the CPG side too?

Like how would a CPG deploy?

Natalie?

For example, one side of it, the CPG is the supplier of the retailer and small cpg, I mean they love it because now they will have.

It's actually a communication tool between them to the large company, the large retailer.

But suddenly start to speak with them.

They can also enjoy from it.

I mean reduction of prices means that they might start to buy much more for them.

So it's.

And today nobody will actually pick up the phone for most of the small suppliers.

And when it comes to the large cpg actually the same thing, the same kind of negotiation between the retailer to the CPG company is the negotiation between this large CPG company to their suppliers.

So it's the same process pretty the same process between the large TPG to their suppliers.

And they are starting to pick up.

And we're already working with some of the largest CPG company in the world that started to enjoy Natalie and also by the way our secondary employee Bob that rely on replenishments for their warehouses for the factory and for the retailers.

It will rely on the replenishment for the inventory for the store.

So not to negotiate for the deals.

And Bob, actually send the PO and complete the, the, you know, the complete the entire action for the, for the company.

Yeah.

Okay, so I love that we're leading with this because I mean recently I've, you know, I've been putting a lot out particularly around where agentic AI needs to be the focus of retailers first and foremost.

Like should it be on the consumer facing side or should it be on the internal operations?

And what you're saying here is that Natalie and Bob can both help improve the operations of a company and that's one of the values of agentix.

So I'm curious, like what is the current, what is your current read of the sentiment of retailers and CPG towards agents like Gaines?

Has it changed?

Have you seen it evolving?

How would you sum up the current sentiment across the industry around deploying agents?

What we see that the executives, I mean the management, the CEOs, I mean pushing very hard now to, to add more and more AI.

We do see some fear if I would say employees level.

And I think this is by the way why we are, why we Called ourselves gain to tell people I mean we are coming to gain, we're coming to help, we're not coming to replace, we are coming to help you execute and then you can, I mean provide more impact to the, to the companies.

But we do see a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure now you know, at the beginning of the year to start with a lot of projects and I'm happy to be, to be at that side of you know, for companies that now need to deliver.

Chris and I think are just surprised by how far this has come and all of the capabilities that it's able to offer.

These, these buyers who from our experience talking to retailers buyers are some of the most time constrained under pressure teams that exist inside retailers and CPGs right now too are what are the areas that your, your CPG and retailer clients are most surprised when they deploy gain like what are some of the things that they hadn't expected and that some of the benefits that they're getting once this is up and running for them.

I mean people always amazed your first time that it's really working.

I mean something completely new.

That's actually a big achievement.

Yeah, I mean and the fact that Natalie can you know answer very sophisticated answer for the supplier for example if you're on the retail side and how flexible the solution is, that's I think the first thing second thing is that sometimes even I mean simple things that we do can provide huge impact.

So for example, you know, as I said we are already working with very large CPG company and and we started with negotiate for the repair parts for the factory for example pipes.

And it's not very sophisticated, it's not very complex.

And even just to take a look at the history of how much these suppliers told you two years ago similar pipe it was much more cheaper.

We can just take the data from the past and come back to the supplier.

Hey, three years ago it was 20%.

I mean lower price.

Let's talk about it.

And a minute after we started this kind of negotiation we got an answer for the supplier.

Hey, we give you now the 20% discount of the pipes.

And this is a kind of thing that the buyers will not do today because it's just a small deal, it's not something huge.

Nobody will start to negotiate this small deal.

But in total the amount of deals they have is huge.

So in total the potential is endless.

But sometimes do you know simple tasks, not just the most complicated.

And we also of course providing very complicated negotiations.

We are now already negotiating for retailers for deals that are on 2 to 3 million dollars each deal as well.

So it's also relatively large deals, not just small things.

That brings up another interesting point to me Michael, is like, you know, a lot of these people change their jobs very frequently too.

Like the typical life cycle of a buyer in my experience is two to three years in position at most.

And so a lot of that knowledge that they gain gets lost, you know, throughout the years.

And you know, an agent would retain that knowledge throughout its use, usage and understand the history of the products they're negotiating.

So.

So that's really interesting too.

All right, so what before we let you go, what's ahead for Gain and your clients in 2026?

Like are Natalie and Bob going to get a new brother or sister?

Like what's going.

So they will get a sister in 2027 selfie that will help them to onboard new suppliers.

Also huge issue for retailers.

Usually it can take three to four months to add new suppliers for their.

You know, for the direct procurement for.

For cpg, it can take even a year.

Oh my God, that'd be so helpful.

Oh my God.

Yeah, yeah, that, that would be the.

The next in 2027, 26 would be more entire onboarding.

Wow.

Yeah.

But 26 will be, I mean to execute for retailers, to negotiate for them, to help them on the also tactical stuff that Bob is doing to help them to be much more productive.

And regarding your point about the buyers, I would say that I think in the long term the buyer profession will change a bit.

People will be more managers will manage the AI and the AI will execute.

So it will be more an expert of how to.

To manage those AI employees that are.

Providing the manage the outcomes.

Yeah, exactly.

Michael, I'm so glad that you are kicking us off here for our NRF must see tech event.

If people listening want to connect with you, they want to learn more about Natalie, about Bob or about anyone else down the line, where is the best way for them to find you or talk to you at nrf?

Yeah, so actually, you know, I was many times in dnr but actually first time for gain to be in dnrf.

Oh yeah.

And we are going to be at the innovation showcase.

Lucky you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's Boost 8041.

All right, so 8041.

Got it.

And the innovation area always pop.

Always a popular spot traffic.

Yes.

We always tell people to make sure to stop by there.

Well Michael, we'll see you out in New York for GAIN's first NRF in just a couple weeks.

Thanks, Michael.

Thank you guys.

Bye Michael.

Now that the contracts and pricing for our products have been negotiated thanks to the help of our agentic employees, let's move now to how we successfully sell those goods at home and in this case, more importantly abroad.

Joining US Next is ESW's Chief Revenue Officer, Tonya Likes.

Tonya, welcome to Omnitalk.

We're excited to have you.

Thank you very much for having me, Anne.

I'm delighted to be here.

Now Tonya, ESW is relatively new to our audience, but when we heard about you and the work that your team is doing, we had to share with our listeners and had to set you up for our NRF Must See Tech Preview.

Can you share a little bit about your role and specifically how ESW helps retailers and brands?

ESW in a nutshell, right?

It makes worldwide E commerce powerful and simple right now.

Why, why is the importance on powerful and simple?

So you know, global shoppers have really, really high expectations and they want a seamless checkout, they want a localized experience, right?

But going global, right, and going international brings like a ton of complexities and the complexities with cross border trade are continuously, they're not just hard now, but they've become even harder, right?

Especially if you just look at 2025 as a, as one, one period of time.

It's around trade complexity like the trade compliance.

So a lot of changes in the macroeconomics this year which we can talk a little bit about.

It's around the, I suppose the increasing customer experiences around delivery, around localization, around translation.

And so what ESW do is that we have, we've been doing this for a long time and we're experts in bringing brands to over 200 countries in a very, very short, condensed but highly successful time frame.

So that's ESW in a nutshell.

Me, I joined ESW earlier this year, in January, actually last year, actually it's nearly a year.

And, and so I am here to accelerate our growth.

Right?

That's, that's, that, that, that's, that's my sole purpose is to look at how do we, how do we grow even faster, right over the course of the next three to five years.

Time flies when you're having fun, no doubt.

So you, you mentioned something, you mentioned something too.

Like, you know, to say that, to say that there weren't cross border challenges in 2025 is probably the biggest understatement of the year.

I mean those challenges were immense for many, many retailers and brands.

So like, I'm curious, as you look across the Portfolio of companies you work with.

What have the best brands done to balance international, to balance their international growth ambitions, you know, amid all these like, what are very difficult conditions.

The key word, I would say, because it's not just one thing that a great brand has done or a successful brand, it's many things, right?

It's the sum of all parts.

So it's about being able to be a brand that has agility, right?

Agility in how you operate from a trade perspective, like a trade compliance, right?

So duties and taxes and how do you manage that?

That, you know, whole conundrum of challenges.

Logistics, right?

How can you optimize your logistics and your supply chain to get goods in the buyer's hands quicker but also to provide a really, really seamless return experience because returns is really important.

We've all had that, we've always, we've all received that good.

And you try and find the way to return it.

And if you can't, it leaves a lasting impression on whether I would buy from that brand in the future.

Right.

And then I think the final thing I would say is around, you know, you've got to speak the consumer's language.

So a consumer in the US has different requirements than a consumer in Brazil or in Malaysia or in, or in Ireland, right.

They have a different experience in terms of what is the payment method I want to use, how do I want to be communicated to, what's the tone of communication, what's the merchandise selection that I want to see is very, very different.

So it's.

So the brands that have been most successful are ones that have the ability to operate in a very agile, fast paced environment.

Now I'll give you an example of some of the things.

One thing, right, that's that kind of comes to mind in terms of 2025 specifically, you know, with the trade complexities that were placed upon organizations and the removal of the 800 de minimis in the U.S. there was an awful lot of European brands that have a, a strong presence in the US market, but suddenly they were impacted by these huge duty bills, right?

And so the cost of doing business in the US which represents a big significant chunk of their existing revenue, suddenly becomes unprofitable.

So we worked with all of our customers that had these flows into the US and we changed their business model.

So we used our US entity to be able to become the importer of record and to so this like we imported the goods into the US Under ESW US we declared and calculated the duties and taxes on the wholesale value of the product rather than the retail value.

And it actually reduced landed costs for retailers for up to 60%.

So this type of agility in your business models is essential to be able to react accordingly depending on, you know, what's the, what's the problem of the day?

And Tonia, explain a little bit like who, what types of retailers?

Like where are they?

How many SKUs are we talking?

Like what, what's the breadth of types of retailers that you can work with?

Yeah, obviously they need to be agile, but like who's coming to you and what kind of states were they in?

How are they handling this prior to working with you?

So ESW focuses on large strategic brands.

So we play very much in the enterprise space.

The industries that we focus on is apparel, luxury apparel or fashion, beauty, so health and beauty and then consumer electronics, to give you some examples.

On the fashion side we work with Calvin Klein, we work with Levi's, Golden Goose and J.

Crew.

So you can see quite high end household names as well.

In beauty, l' Oreal is a customer and on the consumer electronics space, Logitech is a customer.

You know, there's, there's one retailer in question who had a very, very strong presence in the US but they'd never actually done business.

And they came to us two and a half years ago and said we need to go international but we don't know how to do it.

And so they partnered with ESW and they now exist in not only in the US their, their domestic market, but across 50 other regions and countries.

And it's an area that is significantly growing.

And, and to answer your question, what did they do before this?

There's, you know, there's some, I think opening in one country is very different to opening in 50 to 80 countries.

Right.

And so brands typically will have a presence, an in house presence on their own.

Right.

And they're able to manage that very, very effectively and efficiently.

The complexities come with scale.

Right.

And so we would typically partner with brands when they're on a kind of a, on that growth, I suppose, starting to see that growth and want to have a strong international presence, be that from Europe into the US and wider or from the US into international markets outside of the us.

Got it.

And so I think what I'm hearing and what I understand, Tonia, is that not only are you helping them figure out how to do incredibly difficult things like reduce the duties and taxes on importing products, but also how to work to set up their site so that they're ready to go into and Market their products to a variety of countries and locations all in one business.

Really like you kind of do it from soup to nuts.

You're helping them kind of figure out how to go international.

I'd also add, as well as redesigning, typically redesigning their supply chain to ensure the products are in the right places at the right times to meet the needs and enabling the shopper to have that seamless return experience.

So, you know, ESW operate as an extension of your business, right?

So we're your partner for international and whatever international means, depending on where your HQ is, right.

So international could go to the US or go outside of the us.

I want to dive into the season that we just got out of the holidays.

I have to imagine this adds even more complexity as, you know, gifting comes to play, comes into play.

Were there any things that you saw from your stable of clients just changing patterns in how international shoppers behaved, how things like agentic AI shopping change consumer behavior?

You have this wealth of knowledge.

What were some of the trends maybe that you saw coming out of the holiday shopping season that you could share with our audience?

So it's interesting, as you say, and coming out of the holiday shopping season, so that, that's, you know, we, what we saw was in prior years, holiday shopping ended sort of mid December, but actually this year, right, it started much earlier and it ended really only up until the end of December.

And we've even seen that, that, that, that the volumes maintain into January, right?

So the season is stretching, right?

What used to be a day or two, two or three years ago has become of it like a, a certain festival or a certain, you know, in like elbow du fin in Mexico used to be a week, it's now three weeks, right?

Singles day.

Used to be a day, it's now two weeks, right?

So everywhere globally we've seen the stretching, global stretching of the season, right?

And 9% of annual sales, like holiday sales, right?

Landed in that period and it's the highest we've probably ever seen, right?

So big stretching of the season.

One second thing is the omnichannel experience.

So we're all really adapted going online and buying our stuff.

But the, the, the ability to seamlessly buy online or in store, return online or return in store, irrelevant of where I bought it from, right?

And having a really strong mobile experience is non negotiable, right?

Is non negotiable for brands.

And also your logistics partner is so essential.

So a massive uptake in, in expedited delivery options, right?

People want, when they buy they want the product now I'm one of them.

Right.

I might have the time, but when I bought something, I want to get it, like, you know.

Yeah.

And so that was a huge.

Those, those three areas, I would say were the biggest, biggest changes.

Wow.

Your point about, your point about Singles days is right on too.

Like, Singles day came in with went this year.

Like, it was like, I didn't.

It didn't even make a noise to me over here in the US and did you even notice it?

Like, usually you get all this PR about it and I didn't even hear about it this year.

And it's probably to your point that it's just become a different event in and of itself.

So that's really fascinating, Tanya.

The other point that this brings up for me is I can remember back when I was an executive at Target and I had a buddy who's, whose job was this.

This was like 2017.

His job was to figure out international expansion.

And I can imagine that had he had you at the time, he would have definitely reached out to you.

So with NRF just days away, what are some of the considerations that people that are exploring this type of, you know, relationship with you or an external partner like esw, what are some of the things they should consider in trying to approach that conversation with someone like yourself?

We work with a lot of brands.

So, you know, your ex Target, and coming from your days, there was one person that's tasked with international, right?

Yep.

International is a beast, Right.

It's not only a beast in terms of complexity, but it's a beast in terms of potential.

Right.

And so the way to look at it is, like, we would bring a lot of brands on a journey.

So the typical, the first thing a brand will think about is, do I buy it, do I build in house?

I've done one country.

Isn't that hard, is it?

Right?

Now, when you think about do I build in house?

You have to think about, well, what's the cost?

That's going to.

That's going to how much cost, how much speed?

And do I have the right team?

Right.

So cost it can take.

It can cost between 2.5 to 4.5 million just to get up and running.

Right.

And that would mean probably a launch within one to two years per country.

Per country.

Right.

And then you think about, what do I need to do to maintain that.

Right.

And how am I going to understand those localized customer experiences?

So the first thing to think about it, that's one thing.

And then the second part, actually, Chris Is, is this the best place to spend my effort?

We're a retailer, right?

Do I.

Does the retailer not focus on building phenomenal product?

Right.

And then do you partner with someone who has the technical and technical, I suppose, expertise, the investment and the innovation in the platform to not only do what's required today, but tomorrow is another beast.

Right.

And let's talk about Agentic in a moment because we have to talk about that.

Okay, so what does tomorrow bring?

And so you've got to just think what's best for your business and then when you think about what's best for your business and you decide, actually, let's look at partners, you've got to find someone, a partner that gives you your brand the control to determine where you go, what you do and how you do it.

Right.

So what we're not is an organization that will come in and dictate to a brand what they need to do.

What we are is an organization that will work with a brand to understand their strategy and operate within that strategy to meet the brand's growth expectations.

So that would be how I would frame it for brands.

I'd love to talk to anyone at NRF who wants to talk to us.

And so I'm sure I can share some contact details at the end so that people can reach out, you know?

Yeah, for sure.

I, I love what you're throwing down here too, because, like, what I took from that conversation that I can remember vividly back in the day was like, it seems like it's easy fruit on the ground just waiting to be picked up, but yet it's so complicated for so many people.

And I think this is the right approach that one has to take if they want to capitalize it on to the extent that one could.

So, all right, you mentioned agentic AI.

So we'll give you the floor here to close this out.

You know, before we let you go, what are your thoughts on agent?

Ok, so agentic, it's a real buzzword, right?

And it is.

Everyone is trying to kind of wrap their head around what is agentic.

I would say it's a buzzword, yes, but it's a very important one because it's going to be the operating model for the next decade of retail.

Right.

And what Agentic?

I suppose if you think about global scale in 26, 27, 28 and beyond, it's not going to come from just working harder.

Like we've all seen that in our daily lives, right?

Do we work harder or do we work smarter?

We work smarter, right?

And we use AI in our daily lives to make us more efficient.

It's the exact same with E commerce.

So I actually think Agentic is the future of smart commerce.

Right.

It's smart commerce that we're looking at.

What does that mean though?

And like, yeah, like what does that give a retailer and what does it give a buyer?

Right.

So you have to think about it in the way of how can you localize experiences for consumers automatically without having to think about it?

How can you optimize your payment flows that boost your conversion and minimize your fraud?

Right.

So getting more shoppers through in a safe and high converting environment, how can you have a dynamic logistics decisioning engine, right, that protects your margins but meets customer expectations and then how can you onboard and launch in new countries and new markets in a faster time than has ever done before?

And that's what we're doing.

We're building with our Gentic hub.

So we're not layering agentic on top or layering AI on it.

We're, we're optimizing every single part of, of how we bring brands to life in international markets with Agentic.

So it's a, it's a complete soup to nuts, right.

Transformation about using Agentic throughout the flow.

And the benefit for the retailers, we strongly believe, right.

The benefit for the retailers is going to be significant because retail has outgrown manual decision making and the complexity now requires that AI can adapt faster.

Faster than how the conditions are changing.

And the conditions are changing very quickly.

So we're really excited by it.

We're delighted to talk to brands about what it could do for them.

But yeah, we're launching our AgentIQ hub very soon.

And actually Frank Coertas, our Chief Product officer is at NRF with us talking about Agentix.

So eager to have as many conversations with brands that have an interest.

Tony, I think what I'm taking away from this and what I think is going to be a really important theme out at NRF and for the rest of 2026 is really giving retailers the opportunity to rely on partners like ESW so that they can focus on what you talked about earlier, producing the best quality goods, getting their product set right so that they can expand it internationally and that they don't have to worry about the constantly changing things like de minimis exceptions like tariffs changing at a moment's notice or about the intricacies of how customers are going to be shopping cross border.

And so that's one thing that I'm really hopeful that our listeners will be able to learn and to find the right partners.

That's one of the reasons why we do this show, is to help you find those partners who can carry you through through this next wave of, of technology when it comes to shopping.

Tonia, you mentioned a couple times you'll be out at nrf, your team will be out at nrf.

What's the best way for our listeners to get in touch with you either out there or afterward?

So we are there and we've got a big presence there.

We'll be on the floor.

We're having some events.

So if you want to reach out to me on LinkedIn, my email as well as is, please reach out.

We'll connect, we'll follow up and we'll, we'll get some time time in the calendar to, to understand your needs.

Fantastic.

Thanks, Tonia.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we've covered products moving and being sold across borders.

Let's talk about tracking the movement of products in our stores.

Pervase idea is helping retailers achieve this.

So it's with great pleasure that we introduce Pervase IDs Chief Executive Officer Peter Oram to the show.

Welcome to omnitalk, Peter.

Yeah.

Hey, thanks everyone.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, it's great to have you on the show.

I mean we had, we had Pervasive ID on our Spotlight podcast series probably over a year ago now and I can't remember exactly when, but it was a really great conversation.

I remember it was one of my favorite conversations that we did in that year.

So.

But there's probably a lot of people that are still watching or listening and meeting you for the first time.

So tell us a little bit more about Pervase id, what it is, what it does and what are you most excited about in leading the company?

Wow.

So really perverse idea is fundamentally about turning physical retail into a fully visible data rich environment.

If you want to go down that route.

I've seen a, a podcast that you don't agree Orange just with Troy yesterday and it is coming the whole, you know, data rich environments, the digital twins, all that sort of stuff.

Basically our hardware is what I call the data collection devices and that fundamentally creates the data that all these guys need to then make them informed decisions.

So effectively, you know, we manufacture fixed overhead RFID solutions.

Our Latest is Trackmaster Trackmaster 3X.

It offers real time RFID tracking that gives the retailers total visibility of their inventory across the store.

In practical terms, we help retailers reduce like they're out of stocks, improve availability, we cut the shrink in and run more efficient store operations.

In terms of what excites me about leading the company now, I've been here about a year and a half now and we're generally solving real world problems.

That's where we're at now.

I think the world's moved on, the world of retail's moved on and we're sort of redefining what's possible in this connected retail world that's come up.

We're laying the foundations for this sort of autonomous stores, frictionless experiences, smarter decision making, generally power.

And the in store software partners such as Gray Orange need that clarity.

These guys, you know, we're working with all these partners where we can push the data to these guys so they can make them effective solutions, software solutions for the retailer.

Pete, let's talk a little bit about the technology and kind of the, the evolution of it, the timeline.

Let's, let's start with kind of what the tech looked like.

You mentioned the overhead readers.

What were you collecting, you know, the last couple of years and where, where is it now and then what do you think the future looks like?

Like kind of take us through that timeline.

Yeah, well the evolution's been huge really.

So yeah, I mean Pervas ID has been around for a few years and, and concentrated on overhead, fixed overhead solutions.

Generally though, you know the market hadn't come to it rfid although it's been around forever it seems ever, you know the last 20 years everyone was using handheld, comfortable of using handheld.

But I think the market's come to us.

So as we've evolved over the last two or three years, evolving the solution, working with them sort of then forward thinking retailers with the solution and the market is coming together.

So I think over the next sort of three to five year, you know, overhead will become a big part of the, the in store solution.

If I, if I look at what we focused on really is creating that continuous hands free tracking that requires far less hardware.

So initially on, on overhead hardware solutions there was a lot of infrastructure, you know, a lot of hardware right be deployed that obviously increased the cost for the retailer.

Therefore the ROI was never there.

Now with Trackmaster 3X we've worked closely with, with some of our, our pilot partners, retail pilot partners such as as Urban Group and, and now we've came up with our Trackmaster 3X and we've, we've just about doubled the coverage area of one of our readers.

So we've took it from two and a half thousand square feet to four and a half thousand square feet with One reader using multiple antennas.

So all of a sudden that's far less hardware that you would need for a typical retail store.

Therefore that ROI is a lot quicker.

Typically six to eight months is what we're seeing.

Therefore it's a much more viable solution for, for these guys, for the retailers when they're looking at what they're going to do next and how are they going, real time data that they want to consume, that they want to make these decisions off, you know, so it's sort of been a culmination of that work in the sort of latest generation of what we've got.

And we want to take that overhead RFID platform faster, more accurate, with a much lower cost of ownership.

You know, how do we get there?

How do we make it viable for all retailers?

I think where we're heading next is even more exciting.

Richer, real time analytics, tighter integrations with additional store solutions like offering more automation.

And then ultimately we're enabling retailers to operate with a kind of visibility and responsiveness that consumers now expect.

You know, post Covid, that's what they want now, this whole omnichannel experience.

And how do we, how do we grab that data in store to deliver the same in store experience as online experience, you know.

Yeah, I love the name, the trackmaster, the track master 3X.

That's such a great name.

It's such a great name.

And what I remember too from the first conversation which you hit on too there, Peter, is like there's really two things when you, that come into the equation.

It's about coverage and precision.

And that's what you guys really stand out in the marketplace, you know, in terms of tracking RFID tags.

So, so to that point about precision, when you think about the times where with, with whatever, with whatever partners you can discuss, you know, or however you want to talk about this.

I'm curious, like when the, in those times where you've been successful working with retailers, what is, what has generally brought about that success and what does that process look like?

It's an interesting one, I think for, for us, success is when a retailer goes from guessing to knowing and you can see the light bulb switch on, you know, in terms of what they were doing in the data that they were able to collect.

Let's say they were doing a, you know, hands handheld operation typically once a day at best, maybe once a week.

And then when they go to, you know, basically 100 online constantly, they're, they're literally, they're going from guessing to knowing exactly where they're at.

So that we're seeing stores achieve stock accuracy and they're jumping from 70 up to 98, 99.

And that, that effectively creates significant reductions in the out of stocks, the lost sales that they had.

You've got real measurable shrink reduction to see the patterns in the data.

They can see when stuff is, is disappearing front of store, disappearing back of store, what percentages of that really is, is happening on a back shift, on a night shift.

Smoother replenishment and better staff productivity that on shelf availability that you know, they've been crying out for.

Everybody knows, you know, you, you, you walk into a store and you're looking for the size that you're looking for size, you know, size 12, green top and it's not there.

You don't necessarily ask for that, you just move on and that's a lost sale to them.

Now by inputting the technology, you know, every hour, they're able to replenish that on shelf availability.

So they're at 100% constantly and that's increased their sales, you know, typically between 5 and 10%.

Somewhere in between that.

So you can really see, you know, when we first started looking at this it was all about, for us it was about offering better stock inventory.

But that really is the core for everything they want to achieve to run their business.

And we can see them start to run their whole business based off the data that they're now gathering in store.

You know, they're looking back up the supply chain into logistics, their stock inventory, everything is a lot leaner and meaner.

But you can really see it in their eyes when they see that, you know, they can actually make them informed decisions on a, an hourly daily basis.

And, and that goes across the group.

They're moving stock between stores.

Every store now is effectively, you know, they want to do click and collect and it becomes a depot and they're moving stock between them stores and effectively selling everything at full price rather than having to sell it at a reduced cost in a sale, you know, far more efficient with the stock that they have.

So yeah, we, we see it as just their eyes light up when they start to see that data.

Yeah, when you talk about it like that, I mean this is another tech that we're previewing that.

To me it feels like a no brainer that you know, every retailer should, every retailer this is applicable should at least be having a conversation with you all.

You know, in our, in, in our opinion, you know, the other thing you didn't mention that I wanted to ask you about too is like operationally this just feels like an easier approach too because you have the RFID reader in the ceiling versus the handhelds.

And I don't have to train my employees.

I don't have to worry about those devices getting lost.

Like it's just always there latent in the background tracking things.

I mean that's gotta be a key component of this too fundamentally.

I mean the staff are then able to really spend the time on the tasks that the retailer want them to spend time on and dealing with the public and giving them more time and proactively trying to sell more stock within the store.

You know, this effectively automates a lot of them standard tasks, you know, rather than walking around for two hours a day with a handheld reader.

Effectively, no disrespect to the in store worker as well, you know, are they following the correct process?

Were they trained correctly?

There's a, there's a high staff turnover, you know, and you don't know whether the, the right training has been done and passed on to the next level.

So by having this continuously just reading from the ceilings and delivering that data, they know they're getting good data.

It's sort of 98, 99% accurate, you know, every 15 minutes where we're feeding that data back into their systems.

So if you think of click and collect and a big thing, you know, out the back of COVID like I say you buy online, pick up in store, you would get to store.

It's like, oh, we're showing stock but we don't really know where it is.

Now they where it is, not only do they know that that stock inventory is correct, but also you've got, you know, the real time location system that the GPS if you want to call it of actually where it is.

So that whole customer experience has been improved.

You know, when you turn up the, the item is there, they can quickly then purchase that item and what that is then doing is driving that customer back to that store, back to that retailer.

Because that whole customer experience is an improvement.

Right.

And it's not just in the store too.

I think that's the other part is that this is also in the back of house too.

So it's not only keeping track of what's what the movement of products is on your store floor, but also knowing in real time like, oh, there's a product hiding in the back, that there's a whole box of things that were supposed to be on special for Black Friday.

We better get them out here.

To move that product quickly is another area that I think people just don't think about, they think about the front, front of house scenario.

Yeah, I mean the guys in the store, you know, relatively, you know, the, you would probably say that they're, they're understaffed, you know, and they're running around and chasing and trying to deliver the best possible service.

But some of these decisions could be made at sort of group level, at head office level.

They can now see that stock that should be on the shop floor.

They, they can proactively tell the store what they're missing.

If they haven't had a chance to look at that data within store, you know, maybe the shift manager or the store manager hasn't had a chance.

So it's allowing to have them proactive, make them proactive decisions right across the business and understand if they haven't sold something, why they didn't sell it.

You know, if you think of the decision making process, let's say there's a box of, of, of green shirts like you say should have been out.

They didn't sell them because they weren't actually on the shop floor.

But then they're not reordering that stock.

They're not reordering it because they never sold it.

We actually, now they can see it never actually made it onto the shop floor.

Therefore the data and the information that they've been working from has been incorrect.

Now they can actually see that right across the group.

So not only from a store level, but you know, you start to look at it from an area, from a region and really start to understand what's happening.

Yeah, and the other thing too is that I love is the scenario of like what's going in the fitting rooms and what's going back out on the floor.

Like there's just like you said, there's so much data that you're able to collect.

And now what I find even more interesting too, Pete, is like with, with a Trackmaster 3 that's coming out 3x.

Like what does that do as far as like the types of stores?

Because I imagine that opens up the opportunity then for maybe a smaller format store that is RFID tagged but would have been using a handheld reader because of its size.

Now if that one unit can cover the entire store like it couldn't before, is that opening up more types of retailers or brands that you can work with?

Yeah, for definite.

I mean what it gives us is if you think of the smaller retail, hopefully, you know, we could use just one or two readers with multiple.

And that ROI is there for them guys but also the huge large department stores that once upon a time, the amount of hardware that was needed just push that ROI way past the 12, 18 months.

Are you with me?

So now we've got the ability to work with all sizes of retailers, all types of retailers.

Also the design that we've worked closely with, like I say, some of our pilot customers.

Urban's been a really good one.

Where our antennas now are flat to the ceiling.

You know, they're a flat antenna.

It's in, you know, typically in this world of overhead, it's.

They're quite large, the antennas, you know, and the brand teams really don't like that.

So we've worked hard over the last six months, 12 months, with some of these brand teams to come up with solutions that are that fit within the store.

So you don't really see them there.

You don't, you wouldn't notice them as a client.

You know, they just fit with the rest of the infrastructure.

Some of them can also be painted now in terms of the colors to match the walls and the ceilings like that.

So we've got options in terms of what we can offer them.

Pete, you mentioned Urban.

Is that the best place for people to go right now to see pervase IDs tech in action or to like look up and see the readers?

Yeah, that's one of the clients where they would be able to see them in multiple stores.

We've got multiple apparel retailers that we're rolling out with currently.

What we could do is if somebody wants to look at the hardware, they could get in contact with us directly.

We'd be happy to take them to a store, show them how it's working in the real world environment because there's no better place to see it actually working in conjunction with one of the partners software so they can really see the data that's being collected.

So yeah, we'd be more than happy if you, you know, guys would want to contact us then, then we'd be able to take them to a store and show them in real life.

Yeah, I love, I love the, I love the anecdote you shared too, about the things that the, the types of questions you have to answer from the retailers and the brands as, you know, an entrepreneur or a tech startup.

Like, what does it look like in this ceiling?

Where, you know, from my perspective as a former retail executive, I'm like, if my customers are looking at the ceiling, I got another problem, man.

I gotta have good product on the floor and I want to be able to see sell it like first and foremost.

Right.

And that's what I hope everyone hears from this too.

But, but anyway, you mentioned it, so let's put you on the spot.

Like if people want to get in touch with you when they're out at nrf, it's like a few days away.

If people want to get in touch with you after, what's the best way for them to do that?

Yeah, of course.

So we'll be at NRF, of course.

A Track Master 3 hardware will be showcased on, on several partner booths such as Spencer Technologies.

That's, that's booth 3257.

It'll be on the gray orange booth and then one or two others beyond that.

Obviously we've got live deployments that we would, you know, be happy to show customers around if they wanted to see that.

In terms of getting in contact with me, hit me up on LinkedIn.

I'm very active on LinkedIn so you know, hit me up on LinkedIn or just visit our website, www.perbaseid.com, fill in the forms and we'll be in touch.

We'll get in touch within a day or two.

All right, great stuff, Pete.

Thanks so much for joining us.

This was really fun.

Yeah, no, thanks very much guys.

It's been great.

Now that retailers have full visibility of their products and can make them available to shoppers, the next thing retailers need to do is make sure that their customers can check out as fast and as conveniently as is humanly possible.

Making that a possibility is our next guest, Arvind Jawa, the VP of Global strategy and Marketing at Digital Diebold Nixdorf.

Welcome to OmniTalk Arvin, it's great to have you on.

Thank you so much, Anne.

I'm a big fan, as they say in radio.

I'm a longtime listener, but first time caller.

Yes, we're so happy to have you.

Thanks for taking the time out.

Arvin, I'd love for you to maybe start for our listeners because you're a first time caller who most likely interacted with a DeWalt Nick Serve product before but might not be familiar with or might not realize that they have share what you're known for and maybe some things that they might not know about your approach to retail and retail technology.

At Diebold Nixdorf Retail, we like to say that our purpose in life is to transform the way people shop.

And as a leading provider of unified retail commerce platforms, a globally scalable services partner and also a well known supplier of world class technology, we are focused on improving performance in physical Retail.

We serve many of the world's largest and most recognizable brands and retailers in general merchandise and grocery, hard discount, fashion, specialty fuel and convenience and qsr.

Of course, we like to create retail environments that matter.

We provide flexible checkout options and journeys to attract shoppers and leverage store associates in more value add ways.

We make implementing and integrating self service checkout concepts easier and help enable retailers kind of be free of lock in to a single vendor of hardware or software.

We tackle some of the biggest pain points inside the store like shrink and checkout friction.

Leveraging sophisticated artificial intelligence.

We make sure that retailers are getting the most out of their technology investments by ensuring the highest levels of system availability through world class service that's both predictive and proactive.

One of our key differentiators, Ann and Chris, is the application of visual AI at the point of interaction.

That combined with modular self service solutions and our store evolution advisory services helps us reduce friction and loss where they happen in the aisles and at checkout.

Arvin, one thing that you just mentioned that I want to dive a little bit deeper into because on one hand you're helping retailers by providing all of these solutions, but you mentioned advisory services.

So am I hearing this right?

I mean, are you.

So you're kind of a consultant but then also a solutions provider.

Like tell me exactly how that works.

While we use consultative mechanisms, I wouldn't say that we're necessarily a consultant.

Okay, it, it is though where we think we really stand apart.

We don't start just with technology, we start first with our customers.

Why are you fighting long queues?

Are you trying to reduce, shrink?

Are you trying to deal with staff shortages, safety concerns or overall just trying to create a better shopper experience?

Once we know that, why we're able to help our customers map their store almost like a living organism.

Traffic flows, peak times, shopper habits, payment preferences, even how the existing checkout lanes and self checkouts are configured.

Then we design the right mix of assisted lanes, self checkout lanes and the application of visual artificial intelligence so that retailers can hit their goals fast and at the lowest total cost of ownership.

And we see that as the difference.

We're not selling hardware, we are actually engineering outcomes.

Higher throughput, lower shrink, happier associates.

And we prove it with data.

And so when we're at nrf, our customers will be able to see that happen live and with the examples of projects that we've done in the past.

So we're looking forward to showing people that.

And the bottom line is the advisory services.

It's not Just an add on.

It's the foundation of how we make technology work and how our customers make it payback.

Well everyone, one of the other things that you mentioned at the outset, you mentioned computer vision AI and you know we've seen a lot happen with AI in retail.

That's probably the biggest understatement of the year actually.

I can't even put my finger on how much we've seen with AI this year particularly.

But also, you know, we've seen a lot in AI in terms of how checkout and self checkout particularly is evolving over the last few years.

And if I can recall, you all were one of the first to introduce a real live referenceable retailer using AI at checkout.

So what's different about your approach to visual AI compared to the computer vision retailers we saw a couple years ago that were kind of the talk of the town back then.

The old way of doing things with computer vision think spot checks and maybe after the fact alerts.

Today DN's approach to visual AI is like having a digital brain right at the checkout and in the aisles, watching, learning and acting in real time, not just reviewing footage later.

And so I think that's what's different.

We've trained our AI on real retail behaviors.

Multi item baskets produce without barcodes and even subtle shopper gestures.

It's not just about identifying shrink after it's occurred.

It's about using nudging to help guide shoppers to self rectify when a missed scan is detected and not assuming the worst from the get go with the shopper.

You know, I think there was a study back in December from LendingTree.

They said 27% of consumers surveyed admitted to taking an item at the self checkout without paying.

What if we nudged a shopper when we detected an anomaly and not assume that theft is actually afoot?

Our data shows that 80% of the time a customer will self rectify once they're prompted or nudged.

So I mean I think it's big difference in where things were before and where they're going.

Another example is age restricted purchases.

Facial detection automatically validate the age of a purchaser.

No more awkward waiting for a staff member to have your ID checked or validated when you're buying those favorite beverages we like to buy or you know, like with one of our customers.

Inter Marche in France.

Error rates for anomaly transactions, they dropped by over two thirds when we deployed the visual AI we have.

And interventions by members of staff drop significantly as well.

And so that means associates spend more time helping and less time policing.

Another example, Chris, is safety.

Our AI can spot a spill before someone slips or recognize a gesture like hey, my hands are up in dangerous situations.

I love the word nudging too because like this actually just happened to me, Arvin.

Like literally I was, I was at the grocery store and I picked up some bananas and I thought the bananas were regular bananas.

So you know, I know the PLU number for regular bananas.

I think it's 4 011.

And I plugged that in.

But I accidentally picked up the organic bananas and I got nudged that, hey, if you walk out with this, you're stealing.

And the computer vision was what captured me doing that.

And so I corrected my behavior.

And that's essentially what you're talking about.

Absolutely right.

And we see that as such a big beneficial aspect of this.

It's a, we're not assuming that the consumer is intending to steal because there is shrink that's non malicious.

And then the second thing is we, we enable this to help a retailer not have to create a negative environment with a store associate assuming that the consumer that you were trying to steal organic bananas instead of regular bananas.

So we see it as really powerful.

Chris Arvind, I think you gave some great examples there and it certainly all makes sense from a retailer's perspective why they would want to deploy something like what you're talking about.

But I mean can you share some hard numbers from some of these deployments?

I know that that's going to be the next question and follow up that we get and that I'm sure you get when you have retailers stopping by your booth at nrf.

But what's showing shrink reduction and shorter cues?

What kind of data do you have to send support that?

Yeah, yeah, sure.

And of course we have to get specific because we all know in retail results are what matter.

Right?

So we have a customer in Germany called Etica.

Etika Jager is the location and we, we worked with them on their initial pilot and our Visual AI now approves over 80% of transactions with age restricted products.

And they're done instantly at self checkout.

So this means that shoppers really breeze through the self checkout.

No more awkward waiting for a staff member and associates that are freed up to help not just check IDs.

Another example is in France with a very large grocer called Inter Marche.

We saw their transaction anomalies, both accidental miss scans or intentional theft, drop from what they had calculated as 3% of all transactions to less than 1% after deploying our solution and maybe to put a little bit more tangibility around it, you know, when we take the compendium of results from our numerous customer studies in a typical grocery store with say six self checkouts maybe doing $10 million in annual revenue and we'll assume that maybe they have about two and a half percent shrink, which in some respects may seem low, in others it may seem high.

We know that with our Vynamic Smart Vision AI solution we can impact 70% of the shrink inducing transactions occurring at the checkout and that can turn into over $100,000 annually in savings a year.

And that's profit, that's real profit.

That's significant.

And we're super excited to have, we have about 100 retailers in some stage between pilot and rollout with this solution.

So more results and benefit to come.

Well, I want to talk about that then Arvind, because I think those examples are great too.

Like the Germany example is pretty pressing for me in my head because to do that in Germany where the standards are a lot higher is pretty impressive.

To your last point that you raised, I'm curious as you look more broadly than across the store operation and you think about unified commerce platforms or maybe even take like something specific like electronic shelf labels throughout the store, how do your solutions fit in with those broader solutions?

Yeah, no, that's a great question, Chris.

We like to slot in at the point of interaction, you know, where we see shrink and checkout friction actually occurring.

And our smart vision and our self service solutions complement unified commerce stacks and electronic shelf edge labels by catching fraud behaviors, automating age verification, identifying produce right as the items are being rung.

But because our approach is very open and modular, we feed trusted stored data back into enterprise platforms without really forcing retailers to do a rip and replace of their core systems or investments that they've already made in technology.

So the net result is you protect current investments as a retailer while finding and adding front of store performance gains that upstream systems alone can't deliver.

So we feel that we're like part of an ecosystem.

Right?

And that ecosystem approach is what we believe retailers truly need to achieve that maturity.

Towards a vision of intelligent retail stores.

We believe that intelligent retail will shape the in store experience for shoppers and associates in the future and we are just being a part of it.

Arvin, you mentioned intelligent retail stores.

I know that's going to be a big topic of conversation among the retailers out wandering the floor at nrf.

If you had to give like your elevator pitch of what intelligent retail stores look like, what would that be?

I love that question.

And picture this.

You walk into a store that doesn't just react, but it anticipates.

To us, an intelligent retail store is a physical space with a digital brain.

It's powered by AI, computer vision, IoT, maybe even RFID.

But what matters is what it does for people.

The store more or less sees what's happening on shelves, at checkout and in the aisles.

And then it acts instantly to help fix problems before they become pain points.

Imagine a long line forming itself.

Checkout.

The system predicts it and opens another lane before frustration builds.

With the consumers produce bins running low, the store knows and prompts a refill.

A safety risk appears, and our AI solution spots it and alerts staff in real time.

I think the magic of an intelligent retail store is in how seamlessly it will all work together with existing systems.

As I mentioned before, not ripping and replacing out, but just smarter, faster, more proactive retail.

Right.

We shouldn't notice it.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

It's not just about the tech.

The tech should be in the background.

It's really about delivering the kind of personalized, frictionless experiences that I think shoppers expect today while making life easier for associates.

And we'd love to show that to everybody.

At nrf, you won't just hear about intelligence stores.

We'll actually show it to our prospects and customers and visitors to the booth in action and they'll get to, you know, see, decide, act on their own live at our booth.

I think, I think your booth is one of the must stops every year.

Like I, I personally am a massive retail geek and I love seeing all the evolution, particularly in self checkout and even, you know, all the forms of self checkout that that whole idea and concept can take, that you guys are always on the cutting edge of trying to design for the future.

And so like, I'm definitely going to come by the booth.

I'm curious, like, what else can we expect from you all at nrf?

It's only a few days away.

And where is your booth?

3522 Chris.

And we're glad that you are curious.

That's what we want you to bring.

Bring your curiosity.

There's so much potential in retail.

Right.

And at nrf, we will be inviting you to step into the future of retail.

And our booth is designed as a journey, an insight zone is where we'll start people and you'll see real data from live stores and test drive our store evolution advisory services.

I mentioned before, they're not Just dashboards.

It's really a hands on, kind of interactive and tailored to the challenges that we know retailers care most about.

And then we'll have them step into what we call the impact zone where we showcase real customer stories, measurable results and you'll see how retailers like Inter Marche or Etika turned insights into action and then that action into real roi.

Then the real showstopper.

We've got a retail store inside which have solutions that are live in action.

You can try Chris.

The world's most advanced visual AI flows yourself scan a basket.

Okay.

Item recognition, breeze, breeze through our age restricted checkout with instant approval and then see how produce is recognized without a barcode.

You don't need to key in that 4011.

See how safety is helping with AI spot hazards before it becomes a problem.

So I hope that retailers will come in and they'll leave with a checklist of proven use cases that they can then come back to us and book a 30 minute impact session with our team right there on the show floor.

So don't just hear about the future, come experience it, measure it, take it back to your stores and we'll see you at booth 3522 at NRF.

Now you're speaking my language.

Yeah.

Now you're hinting at like assisted checkout too, which I love.

Whether it's assisted as a self checkout or assisted for the employees too, which is awesome.

So wow.

Yeah, you got, you got.

Oh man, my mouth's watering just thinking about it.

Arvin, thank you so much.

All right, well that was great.

Thanks for joining us today.

Well, we can't wait to see you guys there.

Thanks, Arvin.

Well, sometimes ad, you know, it's easiest to just skip checkout altogether and use buy online pickup in store.

At least many people like to do that.

So there are several ways to go about that, however, and there's one concept that major retailers like Zara and H and M are utilizing and that is where Cleveron comes in.

Our next guest.

So it is with great pleasure that we welcome Mark Schneider, the business development director at Cleveron.

Mark, welcome to Omnitalk.

Thanks for joining us today.

Hi guys.

Thank you so much for having me on.

Really looking forward to this.

Well, let's start, let's start by giving, giving a little background about Cleveron.

We've had you on the show before, but there's probably many people that are hearing about you for the first time.

So talk about what Cleveron is and what it does.

Yeah.

So we are a technology company we design, build and deploy parcel solutions that are fully automated using lockers and robotics.

We combine this with our intelligent software and our AI tools.

And what we aim to do is help retailers and logistics partners handle this growing parcel volume that we're seeing deploying a faster and smarter and more customer friendly way of doing it as a business.

We've been going since 2007.

We're based in Estonia, which is in kind of northeastern Europe.

And we were created just to solve a problem.

Problem that was becoming more and more prevalent at that time is how can we deliver parcels quicker to people but without them having to queue up in a store at a collection desk or having to wait in home all day for it to be delivered.

So we were going through R and D, we were looking at what do we do.

And we came up with our robotic locker concept which deployed for the first time actually in 2016 in the US since then we've been developing it, making it quicker, making it smarter, making it quieter, and also looking at other functionality that we can give that system because we want to make it more reliable and something that's future proof for stores.

So, Mark, I always love asking this question too.

What does a business development director do?

What is your job responsibility?

At the end of the day, the.

Easiest thing to say, Chris, is what don't we do?

I think, you know, when you're looking at business development, you know what you have to do anything and everything you have to get really stuck in.

But kind of what's at the heart of what I do is leading the growth that we have in terms of our parcel locker systems and our robotic click and collect solutions across this retail and logistics market.

So what I like to do is I like to build those really strategic long term partnerships that major retailers like, but also looking at how we can shape that commercial proposition for them.

In retail, everyone's fighting for space, everyone's fighting for funding.

So what's really important for me as a business development director is ensuring we can prove that return on investment and give that retailer every tool they can so they can get the sign off to have these amazing kind of high capacity, customer friendly collection hubs in their store.

Ultimately, I help retailers handle more parcels using less space in store, which gives colleagues their time back to focus on tasks in store that deliver that kind of everyday quality that customers expect.

Mark, we were at one of the early flagship deployments in Madrid that Zara did.

And so we, Chris and I have both seen how impressive this automated parcel locker is.

Super easy.

You just scan The QR code that you get in your email, next thing you know this, you know, within seconds you're delivered your parcel.

And behind the scenes, that's saving so much more time for retailers and space, as you mentioned.

But I want to, I want to get your perspective.

That was, that was a few years ago.

Who are some of Cleveron's kind of best retail partners that are leveraging Cleveron products today?

Like, who would you call out, you know, for people listening to, really pay attention to or use as maybe those kind of shining examples of the technology at work?

One thing to add with that end, that feeling of looking at that parcel being delivered for the first time on a robot.

That feeling doesn't go away.

That happens every single time you pick up a parcel.

It's just this magic that happens and this parcel just appears to you within seconds.

It's that feeling never goes away.

And that's something that actually lots of our retailers like.

That's one of the big selling points for having this robotic system.

When you've got customers filming their collection and putting it on their socials about, you know, look at this, you know, living in 2030, this futuristic collection, that's the great thing.

That's what you want.

That, that real genuine customer engagement that you get with a product.

But in terms of looking at other ways that retailers are doing it, you've mentioned kind of looking at Zara, how they do it with their robotic units.

It's this futuristic collection service that customers really like to use.

And what it does is it helps absorb that volume that's coming into store for Click and Collect.

It moves it away from the service desk, it moves it away from changing rooms.

And what that does is it helps reduce the queues that you have in store so those customers in store that are queuing to pay can do just that.

They haven't got to wait for the colleagues to go back of house to collect their parcels.

It shifts it to a dedicated area that shortens the collection time.

For example, you mentioned Zara Inditex have over 300 of these now deployed in over 38 different countries worldwide.

So it's not just a US or a European thing.

We're seeing it across the globe and customers are loving it.

Some of our other solutions that we have, we have one of the largest furniture retailers in the world.

They use our oversized lockers.

So what this means is as a customer, you can click and collect a wardrobe, the hangers to hang up your clothes, a light bulb to change the light in your dressing room, and Some knives and forks, collect it all from the same compartment at the same time, normally on a trolley.

So you can just wheel it out straight to your car and go.

And that kind of convenience and frictionlessness service of what our customers and what retailers customers are really looking for, it reduces that split collections that you might get.

And it just means that customers leave happy and they want to do it again.

They want to use your click and collect service again.

I think the other final business case is looking at grocery retailers and convenience retailers that they do have a small amount of their own click and collect, but actually have generally have quite a lot of space in store.

So one particular grocery retailer we work with in Sweden, they've created an open network where they use our Cleveron solution, but actually allow marketplaces and other couriers to deliver their parcels into these hubs.

So customers go to one place, collect everything and leave.

From a customer point of view, perfect.

But from a retailer point of view, that grocery retailer has now unlocked a new revenue stream.

So they are earning money per parcel that's collected, but they also have that incremental sales from those customers that wouldn't normally be in store, coming into store and then thinking, oh, actually, let me pick up some bread, let me pick up some milk while I'm in the store.

And I think across all the examples that we have, clever on being used to make click and collect like a natural extension of their store, are those retailers that are winning and doing it really, really well, using automation to handle bigger items, bigger volumes and complex orders, while keeping the experience simple for customers and manageable for store teams.

Because what you don't want to do is burden those store teams with even more tasks and even more complication.

Well, and Mark, I think it's important just to kind of explain a little bit.

So each of these solutions that you mentioned, the automated parcel pickup that Zara is using, the home furnishings parcel pickup, the lockers that they're using, which sound incredible, by the way, I love the idea of just rolling out my, you know, piece of furniture on a trolley.

Right.

House, they're ready for you to collect.

Right.

And then finally, the grocery case that you mentioned in Sweden, which requires, you know, refrigerated compartments, you know, ambient compartments, I imagine, what is the.

Like, how do you set the expectation for the retailers for each of those cases, if you don't mind kind of diving into that, like, what is the Zara pickup capacity and what does that look like from like an infrastructure perspective?

And then the same question for the other two.

Use Cases.

What we like to make sure that retailers understand is our solutions give you flex so you can expand and decrease size depending on your requirements.

Because what you don't want to do is you want, you don't want to install a new system.

For example, in Zara, we put in a robotic unit, it's ready to go.

And actually in a year's time, because the volumes increased so much that now no longer is fit for purpose.

So we really work hardly with the retailers, Zara being one of them, where we make sure that we look at the volumes that you've seen, the volumes you think you're going to see, and then come up with the solution that best suits, that allows you that flex not just for peak periods, because traditional peak periods I think we're going to start to see disappear.

And actually it's just going to be busy all the time.

We're just going to have this volume all the time and a lot more unpredictable when we look at things like social commerce.

So things like TikTok shop, where you can have a product selling nothing one week and then the next day you're selling tens of thousands of units because someone's done a great dance on TikTok and told you to buy it.

When we talk about integration, we like to have everything integrated into the retailer's current system.

So it's a really simple integration that we have using open API links.

And what that just allows us to do is any changes that the retailer makes on their end can naturally be reflected in the tech that we have in store.

Particularly when it comes to the furniture shop, we need to make sure we've got the right size compartments because you can't have 100 compartments that fit in a whole house.

You're not going to have everyone click and collect in a wardrobe.

There are going to be smaller compartments needed.

So it's working again with that retailer to look at what is their aspiration and then we can tailor make that solution for that particular retailer.

But even down to a store level, we know that not every single unit that we create will be the same that will fit in the same store environment.

So it's that flexibility that we really need to give retailers and allow them to increase over time and in the future, because the business that we go into now is not necessarily going to be the same retail business in five years.

There'll be different things they want to add and we just want to make it as easy as possible for the retailers to do that.

So, Mark, I love, I love a couple of things you said there, I think one, I love how you laid out, you know, everything that you guys do really from the retailer perspective and what the opportunities are in thinking like this.

And then the other point that you mentioned back, you know, when you started that conversation with ann was around 2030.

And so I kind of want to stay on the 2030 angle, but now I want to shift from the retailer to the consumer.

So what do you think are the biggest challenges that retailers are going to have to adapt to in terms of how consumer behavior is going to change around click and collect, delivery, parcel pickup, whatever you want to call it.

And what advice then do you have for the retailers in trying to adjust to those changing consumer predictions, so to speak.

So certainly something we're seeing is customers are becoming far less tolerant of friction.

So anything that makes a customer's life hard, they're like, no, don't want to do it.

And where we're at at the moment is there's choice.

Customers have choice.

So they don't have to have that, that collection experience.

They can go somewhere else to a different retailer and have a much better experience.

So having click and collect and having parcel pickups no longer viewed as a, as a nice to have alternative to home delivery, this has to be a core part of what a retailer offers.

Customers want to know that their order is ready.

They want to know that they can collect it on their terms and be in and out without queues, without any confusion or having to wait for a colleague to come over and assist them.

So that self service, I want to go in, collect and leave.

Also getting those customers used to and being more comfortable to collect in store as parcel destinations, not just for retail orders, but again for those carrier orders or for those marketplace parcels to you, Customers are going to want to collect everything in one place.

And how can we provide solutions that allow retailers to offer that kind of one stop shop where everything can be collected?

Convenience at the end of day is going to win.

So stores that can offer the extended hours, that can simplify that pickup journey and be consistent with availability, they'll naturally attract this repeat footfall.

And while those that rely heavily on the manual process, they're going to struggle because if you have a task that's repetitive, let's automate it with these robotic collection machines, these parcel collection machines, because you don't want to tie up your resources doing the same thing in the same way.

Technology can do that for you.

So I think for retailers the advice would be look at scaling now even if today's volume feels manageable to you.

Peak is no longer going to be Christmas or just Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

It's going to be more frequent and more unpredictable.

And what that does at the end of the day will put pressure on your in store teams.

And that's what we want to avoid because that's when you start losing the customer experience.

That's where you start losing that consistency that customers come to expect.

Giving them that self service option as a customer that helps you create that resilience in the operation and not just looking at the speed in the front end.

And I think in terms of retailers, space is going to be key.

Every square meter in a store has to work and has to generate revenue for a store.

So when we look at store planning teams, everyone's fighting for space within store.

Do we put merchandise there to sell?

Are stores going to put in self service checkouts?

Are they going to put in a collection robot through Cleveron?

And what we want to do with retailers is help with that return and investment calculation as to how you can best make use of that space.

And this also comes down to our own R and D. We want to make a smaller footprint but higher volume so you can pack in as many parcels as you can in that small footprint.

Because we understand that as demand change and as you can flex, that's going to be critical whether it's the smart lockers doing that, quietly absorbing that parcel growth without adding that complexity to the store.

Well, I'm really excited Mark to announce that we're going to be part of a very special tour of the Zara flagship store at Hudson Yards where retailers at NRF will be able to join us and Cleveron for a one on one tour of this technology to see it live in person, to try it for themselves.

Mark, maybe tell our audience a little bit more about what, what the retailers participating in that might expect from that experience and then where people can find you out at nrf.

Yeah, I mean this is an experience that you don't get very often.

I mean I work for CLEVR on and I haven't had a chance to do this yet.

So what we have is a really exciting opportunity at the Hudson Yard store of Zara, which is their flagship store in New York on Monday 12th January between 4:30 and 5:30 we're going to be having a small selected number of people come to the store, have an introduction from some of the Zara team to talk about why they've used Cleveron and then we've got a really great lineup.

So Indrik, who's one of our co founders at Cleveron, he's going to be there and he's going to take us around to the, to the robotic locker, show us how it works, explain how he got to create and got to the stage where we have this amazing piece of technology and look at it in a live flagship environment.

We get to ask questions to Indrik, gain that real behind the scenes view of how does it work, why do retailers do this but also have that opportunity to look at that technology and try it for yourself.

So in the chat section underneath we're going to have a link there but also check on our LinkedIn pages.

So either with Clevron or with myself, we're going to share how you can sign up for that.

Now don't panic everyone, if you're busy 4:30 to 5:30 on Monday 12th January, we are also going to be giving you the chance to go to the store and experience it in your own time over those three days of the nrf.

So throughout the the NRF we're going to have some QR codes that we can give out to different customers.

You can go along to Zara, scan it and you can have a go at the machine yourself.

And you never know, there may be a small surprise waiting for you.

You never know.

I can't promise anything but, but if.

I know, if I know anything about the Estonians, they are very hospitable people and have always brought the surprise treats.

So I love that Mark like as like Mark said, we'll put the link to the registration.

If you're interested, you can sign up there.

And as he mentioned, there'll be a select few during that Monday night event, but there will be an opportunity to open up if we have interest.

So Mark, thank you so much for your time today.

We're excited to see Cleveron out at nrf.

Excellent.

Thank you very much for having me and look forward to seeing you all in New York.

Well, and I guess that wraps up another NRF tech preview.

We're thankful to all our guests and to those of you who are able to join us live today and those listening on their way even to NRF this weekend.

We'll be heading out shortly ourselves and you can catch our full live coverage of NRF brought to you by the Fusion group beginning this weekend and available to you on LinkedIn or our YouTube channel at YouTube.com omnitalk retail or of course and wherever you get your podcast or even better if you want to stop by and say hello to Ann and to myself.

You can see us at booth 4921.

Every time one of you stops by, I gotta say, it just melts and warms our hearts.

So until then, travel safe this weekend.

And be careful out there.

There.