The Coresight Research team attended NRF 2022: Retail’s Big Show in New York City, US, from January 16 to 18. The event, hosted by the National Retail Federation (NRF) brought together retail technology innovators, industry experts, brands and retailers. This report is the final of a three-part series in which we present innovative technology startups that showcased their solutions at the event.

NRF 2022: 10 Innovative Startups, Part Three—Coresight Research Insights

Appriss Retail  Appriss Retail has developed an AI platform to curb fraudulent returns and offer customized returns policies. The Appriss platform identifies fraudulent or abusive returns claims based on the pattern and history of each claimant. Powered by AI and machine learning, it leverages this intelligence to recommend responses such as denial of reshipment or returning damaged items in-store. The platform allows retailers to diversify and customize return policies during the sale by notifying shoppers of more generous or more restrictive policies while they make the purchase, based on their shopping history in all channels and locations. All these modifications are based on AI models drawn from metrics and patterns identifying abuse. [caption id="attachment_139688" align="aligncenter" width="699"] Source: Company website [/caption]   Deposco Deposco’s Bright Performance omnichannel retail fulfillment solution is aimed at reducing users’ behind-the-scenes workload to better fulfill orders with speed and accuracy. Its supply chain analytics tool, based on AI, evaluates statistics and monitors key performance indicators in real time. Bright Performance enables users to generate real-time reports based upon certain business needs. The solution also allows users to set benchmarks to track certain data points and to assess performance over time as it captures real-time data in six different areas:

• Top-selling items
• Order count
• Picking and packing
• Fulfillment metrics
• Cycle count task
• Orders per channel

Dressipi Dressipi’s fashion industry-specific AI and machine learning solution makes personalized recommendations to online shoppers in real time. While a customer is shopping online, the Dressipi’s fashion-specific predictive models makes additional recommendations to inspire further curiosity and drive conversion. Furthermore, the solution provides insights to retailers about every customer and product, allowing them to produce more accurate demand forecasts to enhance their supply chain. [caption id="attachment_139689" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Source: Coresight Research [/caption]   Pathr.ai  Pathr.ai provides unique insights on spatial relations for brick-and-mortar retailers. The company’s algorithim-based intelligence technology uses location data to observe human behavior within any physical space, while maintaining anonymity. This provides retailers with actionable insights about how customers are engaging with their physical spaces, such as how long they spend at product displays, which product displays are most popular and which physical paths are leading to the most purchases. Through the data collected by Pathr.ai, retailers can optimize their physical stores to drive consumer traffic, engagement and, ultimately, conversion rates. [caption id="attachment_139690" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Source: Coresight Research [/caption]   People Sensing People Sensing, a unit of Germany’s Hella Aglaia specializing in intelligent visual sensors, offers AI-based retail sensors. The sensores enable stores to count and monitor up to 10 individual counting lines per device and up to eight-individual polygonal zones, and they can monitor crowded areas with 99% accuracy, according to the company. The sensors simultaneously record motion data, allowing users to analyze images in an offline setting. Two models are available that cater to spaces of different sizes: APS-90E and APS-180E. The sensors come with 8GB memory by default and double as WI-Fi routers. [caption id="attachment_139691" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Source: Company website [/caption]   Pockyt Pockyt’s payment solution that eliminates payment friction and allows retailers to connect with digitally native customers, globally, according to the company. Pockyt partners with major digital wallets such as Apple Pay, Paypal and Venmo, and allows retailers to accept payments from each major QR-based digital wallet. Pockyt states that its platform provides seamless integration, which circumvents a retailer’s existing payment infrastructure while leveraging their existing barcode scanner—removing friction for both retailers and consumers, and enabling brands to increase consumer retention through ease of payment and post-checkout interaction. [caption id="attachment_139692" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Source: Coresight Research [/caption]   Returnity Returnity brings sustainability to the forefront through its cost-effective, reusable shipping and delivery packages. The core components of Returnity’s packaging are recyclable, eliminating the need to cut down trees like traditional cardboard packaging requires. Returnity allows reailers to customize their packaging to meet exact specifications for product deliveries. Furthermore, the reusable packages are cheaper to produce, cutting down retailers’ costs, while building toward a more sustainable planet. [caption id="attachment_139693" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Source: Coresight Research [/caption]   Savitude Savitude partnered with HumanSolutions to provide an innovative, personalized solution to help apparel retailers cut down returns. According to Savitude, most apparel is based on size, rather than shape. As a result, 44% of returns are based on the fact that apparelwear does not fit or flatter the consumer when it arrives. Savitude and HumanSolutions’ innovation is a computer vision platform that asks the consumer to take a quiz, which will accurately create an online avator replicating the consumer’s size and shape. In this way, consumers are better able to envision how apparel will fit them specifically. According to Savitude, the avatars enable retailers to increase customer loyalty and cut down returns as shoppers are confident in their purchases and only buy clothes that fit.

• Read our Innovator Profile to learn more about Savitude.  

[caption id="attachment_139694" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Source: Coresight Research [/caption]   UST According to UST, the current port bottlenecks and other supply chain challenges amid the pandemic have left national supply chains vulnerable to cyber attacks. UST’s supply chain platform, UST Omni, focuses on forecasting, inventory visibility and order orchestration, just like other platforms of its stature. However, UST Omni offers a strong cybersecurity feature, based on machine learning, which identifies possible cybersecurity risks throughout supply chains. Users receive notifications when such threats surpass a preset or customized materiality threshold. Yawye  Yawye is a survey firm that measures the “authentic feelings of next-generation consumers”—namely, Gen Zers and millennials. The company uses AI (artificial intelligence)-based data platform to measure the “authentic feelings” by surveying and analyzing their emoji-based responses. Emojis are the language of Gen Zers and millennials, said Richard Melzer, Vice President of Yawye. The company believes that feelings are a better metric than thought for the measurement of consumer response, because feelings precede thought in the limbic section of the brain, which involves behavioral responses. [caption id="attachment_139695" align="aligncenter" width="480"] Source: Company website[/caption]