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LONDON, United Kingdom — Finding the perfect gift may be faster and less frictionful with launch of ThePresent.co, a new UK-based "intelligent gifting site" that uses public Facebook data and short Q&As to provide shoppers with a selection of gift ideas tailored for their friends.
“We’re not about browsing for hours,” says Carolina Brochado, acting head of operations at ThePresent.co. Working with family-owned businesses, as well as bigger retailers including Liberty and John Lewis, the site currently offers a wide range of presents including food, jewellery, sports equipment and homeware.
“There are a lot of players in the [gifting] space but our proposition is a little different — we’re mapping products to styles and interests,” says Brochado. ThePresent.co has attracted £1.5m in funding from London-based investors, including a Goldman Sachs syndicate, in November of this year and plans to introduce international delivery early in 2014.
Boxpark, the London-based pop-up mall, is gearing up to launch a new multichannel platform called Market Place, aimed at small, independent retailers, in February 2014. The unprecedented system will include an e-commerce store, an app that will enable customers to scan, shop and share online, as well as a fully integrated iPad POS system, linked to Boxpark's e-commerce store.
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“Market Place allows small independents to have a sophisticated multichannel solution with little or no setup costs. They just need an iPad or tablet and they are up and running,” says Boxpark CEO Roger Wade. To realise the project, Boxpark enlisted PayPal to work on the payment system, EE for its superfast 4G connectivity and Poq Studio to develop the Market Place app.
To promote the new platform, Boxpark is offering a special fee structure of 20 percent commission on all sales to small independent retailers. The package will include a 300-square-foot store, an e-commerce store on Boxpark Market Place, a POS system, consumer app and other benefits.
Also offering closer synergy between online and offline is Nomi, cloud-based analytics software that's something like Google Analytics for brick-and-mortar stores.
“The Nomi location platform offers physical stores the tools to measure, analyse and optimise every aspect of the customers’ in-store experience including loyalty, marketing, service and operations,” says Schuyler Brown, vice president of marketing at Nomi.
By gathering data gleaned from several sources, including door counting, wi-fi interior analytics, POS and labour data in a single dashboard, decision-makers can use the information to re-allocate the marketing budget to the highest performing campaigns.
Since its debut, the company has closed deals with over 50 of the largest US retailers, including three of the nation’s top 10 retailers and two of the top 10 restaurant chains in the US.
Cillian O' Connor is an innovation researcher at GDR Creative Intelligence, a London-based foresight consultancy that identifies innovation in retail, branding and hospitality.
