Forge Retail Pulse: A sneak peek into customer data platform, AI customer service platform, shopping cart categorization, and supply chain
Greetings Pulse subscribers!
Much is abuzz in retail this week. Here’s the agenda:
Who’s going to organize and optimize all the data?
Solving our cart abandonment issues
Efficiency vs. the supply chain: The startups trying to keep us on track
The rise of the “super app”
Before we begin, we’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that with the holiday season fast approaching, Bain is launching a retail holiday webinar series, taking a deep dive into the tactics and innovations that retailers are using to attract and delight shoppers. Learn more - here.
Now, let’s go!
Startup Deals
Customer Data Platform | Gathering customer data to drive engagement and improve sales has changed the way retailers do business by allowing more personalized and interactive experiences for shoppers. However, gathering the right data while optimally organizing, utilizing, and standardizing the massive quantity collected across multiple sources can present a challenge. mParticle, an 8-year-old New York-based startup, offers a customer data platform that helps companies like Overstock, Starbucks, and Chewy.com manage their customer data. Through a single API, mParticle enables businesses to integrate and easily manage data moving to and from sources, systems, and applications, syncing customer data in real-time to over 300 analytics and marketing APIs. By making the right data accessible across an entire organization, mParticle helps retailers better understand their customers and optimize the shopping experience. mParticle recently raised $150 million in Series E funding.
AI Customer Service Platform | Who said the written word is dead? These days, through email, text, website chat, social posts, and in-app queries, retailers are getting more written requests than ever before. Luckily, there’s Thankful, a Los Angeles-based startup that develops and sells AI software for all written customer service channels. Offering AI agents trained specifically for individual businesses, Thankful’s AI works just like a human agent - routing, tagging, and resolving large volumes of tickets, but 24/7/365. With AI that better understands what customers want and delivers the answers they need, Thankful helps establish lasting relationships through better customer service. Posting 400% year-over-year growth since its founding in 2018, Thankful has worked under the radar for companies like Crate & Barrel, FabFitFun, MeUndies, Morphe, and Bombas, but their secret is now out with a $12 million Series A funding round led by Alpha Edison.
Shopping Cart Categorization | As retailers painfully know, customers regularly load their online shopping carts without making a purchase. In fact, a recent study by the Baymard Institute found that nearly 70% of all online carts are abandoned. Carrot, a browser plug-in, is helping to lower that number. Carrot automatically captures what customers have put in their carts without any additional buttons or signals, regardless of the retailer. It then saves that information, including price and retailer, and automatically categorizes carts based on retailer, but it also allows consumers to create their own folders. Say a customer is looking for vacuums across a number of retailers. They can create a vacuum folder and immediately compare prices, even as they change, making it possible to see when something goes on sale or runs out of stock. Working across more than 500,000+ stores, Carrot helps customers easily see, and buy, what’s in their carts, instead of forgetting and abandoning them. Looking to develop the product further, including adding registries for friends and family, Carrot recently announced a $5.5 million seed round.
Theme Exploration: Supply Chain and Logistics
VC investment in supply chain technology has been growing at about 22% annually since 2015, with total VC funding on track to hit a new high in 2021. With supply chain issues in the news and the holiday season fast approaching, retailers across the nation are on the lookout for ways to continue to strengthen and increase efficiency across their supply chains. From visibility and logistics to warehousing and last-mile delivery, these startups are helping retailers keep ahead of supply chain problems.
Supply Chain Visibility | If they don’t know precisely where their products are and when they’ll be arriving, retailers might as well sit on the loading dock with their fingers crossed. Luckily, two startups are changing that. FourKites provides end-to-end global supply chain visibility with predictive ETAs and real-time status for shipments, in transit and in the yard. By eliminating workarounds and siloed systems, FourKites gives retailers a 360-degree view of their supply chain and the data insights to quickly and agilely respond to market changes. With customers that include Best Buy, Walmart, Wayfair, PetSmart, and Unilever, FourKites tracks more than 2 million shipments every day. In addition, project44 - is helping solve global supply chain woes with its advanced transportation visibility platform. Providing support to automate processes, it allows retailers to easily collaborate with stakeholders to deliver goods. With a recent acquisition in last mile and a partnership with Google Cloud, you could say project44 is going places.
Omnichannel Logistics Platform | Logistics platforms help organize the supply chain, but how do you organize the organizers? Flexe offers a suite of logistics programs in an omnichannel solution to help retailers strengthen their supply chain through flexibility. With logistics optimization, same-day delivery, fulfillment, distribution, and more, Flexe improves operations by allowing retailers to evolve quickly and get ahead of disruptions, all in a single platform. Of particular note with the holiday season coming is Flexe's inventory storage service, which connects retailers to warehouses with excess capacity, allowing for on-demand warehousing to accommodate seasonal peaks and take advantage of bulk-purchase opportunities.
Last Mile Logistics | Even if retailers know exactly what they want to do, adapting delivery logistics to a changing marketplace or optimizing operations can prove challenging to implement. FarEye and its Intelligent Delivery Management platform offer the industry’s first drag-and-drop approach for creating a strong logistics framework to personalize delivery experiences and boost customer satisfaction. With a user-friendly interface that helps retailers create a robust last-mile delivery setup and an optimized mid-mile, FarEye is making it easier to go live faster, instantly roll out process changes, and keep delivery ecosystems agile.
Essential Industry Reads
Innovations in fintech have been making headlines regularly these days. Also making headlines is the recent spree of acquisitions and expansions by fintech and other commerce platforms that point to something bigger: the bundling of financial services, product discovery, purchasing, financing, customer loyalty, and engagement into a single “super app.” In this essential read, the folks at Commerce Ventures take a look at what makes a super app and evaluate which US company could be the first to bring one to our shores.
While once rare, funding mega-rounds ($100 million+) for startups are becoming more and more common. Where is the money coming from? Why is there so much of it? How does this affect VCs and entrepreneurs? Over on LinkedIn, Tau Ventures cofounder Amit Garg explores these questions and more to help make sense of where the startup market is now and what it means for the future of funding.
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