Forge Retail Pulse: A sneak peek into no-code chatbots, e-commerce subscriptions, AI voice ads, and a deep dive into workforce management solutions
Greetings, Pulse Subscribers!
Join us for our Showcase event next Thursday, June 3rd as we feature three of the leading Last-Mile Delivery disrupters; Nuro, Gorillas, and Takeoff Technologies! Don’t miss out on this amazing lineup:
Nuro | Self-driving vehicles designed for local goods transportation in neighborhoods, creating a safer, smarter approach to everyday errands. Nuro has raised a staggering $1.3B to date and is scaling quickly!
Gorillas | A grocery delivery service providing fresh fruits, dairy, vegan products, and cooled drinks to customers at retail prices within 10 minutes. EMEA-based Gorillas has raised $360M in less than a year and is launching operations in the US this week!
Takeoff Technologies | An automated grocery fulfillment solution creating microfulfillment centers inside of existing stores that leverage employees to fulfill orders reducing last-mile and assembly costs. Hear from the founders about how they help grocers thrive and their vision for the future!
In this week’s Pulse, we look at no-code chatbots, e-commerce subscriptions, and the (possible) future of advertising - AI voice ads. We also dive deep into workforce management solutions and finish up by highlighting some essential industry reads.
Sound good? Let’s roll.
Startup Deals
No-Code Chatbot | When customers reach out, they don’t want to wait. They want answers, and they want them now. As the developer of an automated customer experience (ACX) platform, Toronto’s Ada is helping businesses strengthen customer relations with their easy-to-use automation platform. Ada helps non-technical teams use a LEGO-like block-building experience to create chatbots that automate nearly 80% of all customer conversations. To date, they’ve helped companies like Mailchimp, Shopify, Upwork, and Zoom reduce wait times and improve customer satisfaction.
Ada raised $44 million in a Series B round led by Accel and earlier investors Bessemer Venture Partners and FirstMark Capital.
E-commerce Subscriptions | In the e-commerce world, reliable revenue can be hard to come by, leading many businesses to embrace the subscription model. Subscriptions allow businesses to engage with customers regularly on a personal level, turning one-time shoppers into loyal customers. ReCharge’s subscription management software allows merchants to enable customers to skip or reschedule deliveries, manage their subscriptions, swap products, receive shipment alerts, and more.
Looking to double in size over the next year, ReCharge closed $277 million in growth capital backed by Summit Partners, ICONIQ Growth, and Bain Capital Ventures. Bootstrapped for most of its seven-year history, ReCharge already works with 15,000 merchants and 20 million subscribers worldwide.
AI Voice Ads | Just as Siri, Alexa, and their AI voice counterparts have changed the way people search, AI voice is positioned to change the way people interact with advertisements. Unlike traditional ads, AI voice ads by Instreamatic allow customers to speak with the ads they hear. Instreamatic enables a real-time conversation about current promotions or products between brands and customers via smart devices. By remembering past interactions to customize future engagements and not waste budget on disinterested consumers, Instreamatic’s AI voice ads are hoping to upend traditional one-way advertisements. Even more, Instreamatic is an end-to-end platform that manages, measures, and monetizes conversations between brand and consumer, allowing businesses to better understand the impact of their AI voice ads.
As more consumers turn to smart devices, brands like IKEA, Infiniti, HP, and Pandora have deployed Instreamatic for brand-consumer conversation. Looking to scale staff, expand AI capabilities, and increase global partnerships, Instreamatic raised $6.1 million in Series A funding, led by Progress Ventures and joined by investors including Accomplice and Google Assistant Investments.
Theme Exploration: Workforce Management
As retailers ramp up staffing and in-store shopping returns, workforce management is more crucial now than ever. To compete, retailers need to exceed customer expectations while keeping labor costs in check. To do so, retailers are looking to increase efficiency across store operations by increasing productivity, reducing labor inefficiencies, and delivering a better experience to the hourly workforce.
With a variety of messaging tools and planning platforms to aid store staff, retail is back in business.
AI Workforce Management | In labor-intensive industries that rely on an hourly workforce, workforce management is paramount to both labor efficiency and employee happiness. Using AI and machine learning, Legion helps improve both. Through intelligent demand forecasting, labor optimization, and automated scheduling, labor efficiency is maximized. And with an easy, intuitive platform for employees to manage schedules and communicate, employee engagement rises while churn drops. By benefiting hourly workers and their employers, Legion is looking to transform workforce management. Legion just raised a $50M Series C after growing 391% in the last year. Customers include Dollar General, Muji, La Colombe, and Blaze Pizza.
In-Demand Staffing | Sometimes, there are barriers that make it difficult for people to find fulfilling work and for companies to find quality workers. Wonolo’s mission is to break down those barriers and help businesses find and manage high-quality workers on one simple, centralized platform. For workers, Wonolo offers broad job opportunities with best-in-class protections, flexibility, and consistent work. With a 90% fill rate from its work pool of over 300,000 workers, 12 hours’ average time to start, and a 97.8% customer satisfaction rate, companies like Uniqlo, Papa John’s, Aramark, and Coca-Cola are helping Wonolo break down barriers.
Retail Communication | Executing brand standards is one of the most difficult tasks for retailers. Every aspect of the business needs attention, but communicating these needs through phone calls, emails, or portal sites is often inefficient and time-consuming. Zipline is a store communication solution that unifies the connection between retailers and their stores on a single platform. With tools to manage tasks, messages, training, performance, and more, all in one place, Zipline gives retailers a streamlined and engaging communication platform to monitor their stores. With customers including Toms, BevMo!, Sephora, Allbirds, and Casper, Zipline is providing retailers with a simpler solution for better store execution.
Essential Industry Reads
As lockdowns over the past year forced stores and businesses to shutter, e-commerce adoption accelerated in markets across the globe. The question is, how big of an impact did lockdowns have, and how will this shift play out in a post-pandemic world? By comparing the UK and the US through a series of illuminating charts, we can see the outsized effect stricter lockdowns in the UK had on accelerating e-commerce adoption. Even more interesting is the vast difference in e-commerce usage between the two countries as lockdowns have ended. Find out how two different pandemic approaches affected e-commerce:
Over at Forerunner, founder Kirsten Green predicts that “the next revolution in commerce will be driven by the seller.” Starting with how the internet has fundamentally changed how we shop and the evolution of commerce over time, Green asserts that modern tools for product discovery (TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.) and enablement (Stripe, Shopify, Substack, etc.) have created a new breed of seller. These upstarts can engage customers more directly than ever and are changing the face of retail in the process. It’s a thought-provoking read:
Forge Retail Showcase
Mark your calendars for our future Showcase event!
July 15 | The Sustainable Retail Revolution: Environmentally conscious solutions to meet global needs and consumer demands. Register here!
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