Featured Vendors: Lula Convenience, Mars Wrigley, Relashop & Swiftly

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Relation

Relashop, a digital engagement platform for retail chains, has acquired Stor.ai, an e-commerce solution for regional grocery stores. The purchase will create a unified e-commerce platform, combining operations with data analytics and omni-channel engagement capabilities to increase transactions, improve retention and increase sales.

The new entity will be called Stor.ai, a Relationship company.

Stor.ai was founded in Israel in 2014 and provides solutions for some of the leading grocery chains in Israel. Today, the company has over 100 grocery customers in the United States and more than 200 customers globally.

Relashop’s digital experience platform offers grocers omnichannel health and nutrition engagement and personalization tools, rewards programs, email marketing, digital circulars and data analytics for both online and offline customers. The platform is rolled out across 11 regional food brands across the United States, including chains such as Albertsons, United Supermarkets and Big Y Foods.

“This acquisition gives retailers the ability to move from e-commerce to i-commerce,” said Galen Waters, CEO of Relashop. “We believe regional retailers can compete with Walmart, Instacart, Kroger [or] Amazon, they need a unified technology platform [to drive] all trade. By merging Relashop’s buyer engagement and personalization suite with Stor.ai’s ecommerce and fulfillment platform, our clients will be able to provide a frictionless digital shopping experience to their customers.”

Post-closure, Waters will serve as CEO of Stor.ai. A 50-year veteran in the retail industry, he founded Relashop in 2007 under the name Go Think!. Mendel Gniwisch, former CEO of Stor.ai, will serve as chairman and board member and will focus his attention on additional M&A opportunities and international operations.

Quickly

The retail technology company swiftly released its new SMB platform, democratizing access for more than 15,000 small to medium-sized physical retailers (SMBs). Launch Brings Swiftly’s Retail Network to Over 25,000 Stores Nationwide, Representing Over 12% of Grocery and Convenience Store Locations in the U.S.

Quickly partnered with two launch partners, Alliance Retail Group (ARG) and Skupos. Stores received a portfolio of retail tools and solutions to manage their digital customer relationship with an enterprise-grade platform, giving advertisers potential access to the largest store network in the country.

While many retailers understand the need for digital solutions to compete with department stores, they have historically been limited by a lack of financial and engineering resources, according to the company. The new low-cost platform aims not only to address these challenges but also to create solutions for SMEs on the heels of impending consolidations such as that of Kroger and Albertsons, which is expected to bring together nearly 5,000 stores under one corporate umbrella.

“Competition and technical complexity make it harder than ever for brick-and-mortar retailers to differentiate themselves from consumers,” said Henry Kim, co-founder and CEO of Swiftly. “The launch of our platform and subsequent partnerships with ARG and Skupos are reinforcing our mission to democratize retail technology for stores across the country.”

By providing SMBs with access to the technology and tools they need to generate new revenue streams with increased speed to market and little to no up-front costs, Swiftly believes the scales will tip more evenly in favor of resellers smaller.

“We are putting our independent grocery stores on a level playing field with companies like Walmart so they can control their digital customer relationships and capture valuable digital ad revenue streams,” said Mike Bokarae, chief development officer at ARG . “With industry consolidation on the horizon, time is of the essence. Our independent grocers can now leverage their speed and agility advantages and the network power represented by Swiftly and ARG to outpace the competition.”

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