Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, will emcee the Women in Retail Leadership Days startup pitch session on October 22, 2020. We preview the event, outlining the judging criteria and profiling the three startup contestants.

Women in Retail Leadership Days: Startup Pitch Session

The event will see three innovative, women-led retail-tech startups pitch solutions that are solving key retail problems.

Some of the startup selection criteria were as follows:

• Women founded
• Seed financing (range from $500,000 to $4.5 million in funding)
• Scalable with strong growth prospects
• B2B (business-to-business) and retail-technology focused

Each startup will have five minutes to present to the audience and a panel of expert judges, followed by a nine-minute Q&A session. The image below outlines the judging criteria for the startup pitches.

[caption id="attachment_117935" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Source: Coresight Research[/caption]  

The session will conclude with two winners chosen: the favorite of the judging panel as well as an audience favorite. Winners will be able to record a podcast that will air in both the Women in Retail Inner Circle e-letter and the TotalRetail’s Total Retail Report e-letter.

Below, we profile the three startup contestants:

• ThirdChannel: A platform that provides field management tools, actionable data and brand-right people to manage the in-store customer experience at scale.
• Perksy: A next-generation consumer insights platform that powers real-time research with everyday people through contextual, in-the-moment mobile research.
• Savitude: An AI platform that curates personalized fashion collections based on a shopper’s individual body shape and proportions.

1. ThirdChannel

Company Description

ThirdChannel’s retail intelligence platform is used by brands and retailers to optimize their brick-and-mortar presence at scale. The cloud-based technology enables personnel on the ground in stores to assess shopping environments and identify retail-execution issues—and fixes—through actionable data, to drive sales and boost return on investment (ROI).

ThirdChannel responded to the Covid-19 crisis by introducing a suite of health and safety solutions developed with CDC and OSHA guidance. Retail Safety Auditor was designed to support in-store health and safety auditing, protecting customers, store associates and the brand.

What Is ThirdChannel’s Addressable Market, and What Problem Is It Solving?

According to ThirdChannel (based on data from Statista), it is addressing a $13.6 billion market for brands in specific retail subsectors that want real-time visibility into how their brand is performing in brick-and-mortar stores, as well as a data-driven view of how to prioritize efforts to make the biggest impact. ThirdChannel also addresses a larger market for retailers, solving the current challenge of having defensible audit trails to help retailers mitigate risk and potential for Covid-related lawsuits around duty of care for both employees and customers. The pandemic is likely to have a long-term impact on the ways in which consumers shop in physical stores, meaning that data-driven insights into in-store performance will continue to be important post crisis.

How Has Covid-19 Impacted the Business?

The impact of the pandemic on retail has varied: Essential retailers have thrived, while nonessential retailers such as department stores have struggled with prolonged closures. Brands that offer products in “essential” categories have therefore seen explosive growth in recent months, but categories such as footwear, formalwear and business attire have faced challenges. ThirdChannel has pivoted to launch a new offering that addresses the long-term need for health and safety protocols and corresponding risk mitigation in not only physical stores but any physical location.

Outlook: What Trends Will Benefit ThirdChannel over the Next Two to Three Years?

Manufacturing brands and retailers will continue to shift their workforce to a contingent model that is managed by an outsourced party. ThirdChannel technology offers a solution for efficiently matching work to a population that is constantly in flux, demanding flexibility and specialized skills. Post crisis, brands and retailers will increase their focus on optimizing spending and targeting their efforts on areas that maximize impact and ROI. Brands and retailers will seek to apply e-commerce principles to in-store channels to meet shifting consumer shopping habits.

Business Model

ThirdChannel’s business model depends on whether a brand/retailer selects software only or software with ThirdChannel brand-representative network support. Contributing factors include number of stores, visit frequency and duration, and the types of features and functionality required.

Headquarters

Boston, Massachusetts, US

Management Team

• Gina Ashe, CEO

Ashe has over 20 years of experience leveraging data to drive business strategies in the technology, fashion, health-care, branding and marketing domains. She has been CEO and founder of ThirdChannel since 2013. Ashe holds a BS from Columbia University in Computer Science and an MBA in Finance from NYU Stern School of Business.

• Brian Tervo, President and Chief Operating Officer

Tervo has spent over 20 years leading operations, sales, product and engineering, and strategic partnerships for global service delivery. He holds a BS in Business Administration Management from Northeastern University.

Perksy

Company Description

Perksy is a consumer insights platform that powers real-time research with real consumers (particularly millennials and Gen Z) through an interactive and gamified mobile app that rewards users for answering questions. Using its enterprise platform, Perksy enables brands and agencies to create bespoke quantitative and qualitative research campaigns with media-rich content, target precise audiences and analyze response data in real time. Perksy brings hypertargeted, hyperlocal and contextual insights from real audiences to help organizations make better, faster decisions with more confidence.

Perksy has previously participated in the New York Fashion Tech Lab 2019, the METRO Target Retail Accelerator 2019 and the SAP.io Retail Accelerator 2020. This summer, Perksy was also the winner of the Havas & NYC Media Lab Retail Competition for its video analytics and applications in the retail environment. Perksy works with brands and agency networks, such as Airbnb, Clorox, Mars, Mondelez, Nickelodeon, Target and WPP. It is backed by leading VC firms, including Bain Capital and Founder Collective.

What Is Perksy’s Addressable Market, and What Problem Is It Solving?

There is a critical engagement problem in market research. As consumers, marketing and technology landscapes have evolved, market research has not. Industry response rates have been declining for 20 years, currently sitting at 2–5% on average, according to market research firm GreenBook. Only one-quarter of all respondents globally are satisfied with their experience participating in market research. The GRIT (GreenBook Research Industry Trends) industry recommendations are to go mobile-first, think like a designer, reward appropriately and build brand equity.

Perksy set out to address the growing decline in respondent engagement by creating a solution for the consumer. Its mobile-first solution was designed to make surveys more engaging and enjoyable for the consumer and help brands to quickly reach consumers when needed. According to Perksy, its platform gives brands access to a more diverse consumer base and allows clients to reach consumers quickly and consistently.

How Has Covid-19 Impacted the Business?

The pandemic has had, and will continue to have, a significant impact on consumer behavior, psychology and buying patterns. Brands that evolve with their consumers during the crisis will have an advantage over competitors as the situation continues to unfold. Perksy is helping brands understand, track and navigate the new consumer normal, getting the answers their businesses need in real time. Since the outbreak in March, Perksy has experienced tailwinds from the digital acceleration; it has brought on over 20 new clients and more than doubled its sales revenue. This is primarily due to retailers’ increasing need for digitally native tools, rapid turnaround times and high-quality solutions to replace incumbent offerings.

Business Model

Perksy offers ad hoc and subscription-based offerings. The platform can be leveraged as a self-serve platform and can help at any phase of the research process, from strategy to fielding to reporting.

Outlook: What Trends Will Benefit Perksy over the Next Two to Three Years?

The Perksy team innovates around historical research methodologies and finds new ways to help clients achieve their research objectives faster and more affordably, in a way that is fun and engaging for respondents.

While it remains uncertain what the future will hold for engaging with shoppers, getting real-time, hyperlocal and hypertargeted insights into consumer behavior will be increasingly important for brands and retailers to understand and interact with consumers.

Headquarters

New York, New York, US

Management Team

• Nadia Masri, CEO and Founder

Masri is a Forbes 30 Under 30 headliner, TEDx Speaker and the CEO and Founder of Perksy. Prior to Perksy, Nadia founded three other companies before studying psychology and marketing at Harvard, which she left early to build Perksy.

• Andrew Lin, SVP of Product

Lin brings his expertise in product management and mobile gaming to Perksy. He is an integral member in product decisions and growing the app and platform for customers and consumers alike.

• Werner Domittner, SVP of Strategy

Domittner is a seasoned executive with decades of experience growing revenues for top brands like Procter & Gamble, Staples and Diageo. He was formerly the CEO of Interbrand and brings his diverse experience to drive growth at Perksy.

Savitude

Company Description

Founded in 2016, Savitude is an integrated artificial intelligence (AI) retail technology company that utilizes predictive learning and analytics to ensure that apparel designs cover the full spectrum of body types. Savitude achieves this by optimizing line planning with enhanced sketching and predictive trends. According to the company, the retail industry is focused on the hourglass body shape, not actual consumer body types. “There are only 20% of women who have hourglass body shapes, so we realized we could solve this problem with predictive modeling techniques,” said CEO and Founder Camilla Olson.

Savitude has created algorithms that incorporate domain expertise to make inferences more quickly and offer appropriate recommendations in applications throughout the design-to-post-sales cycle. Savitude Design Studio adds analytics to its AI and a fast design iteration process to enable fashion designers to ensure optimal fit, saving at least four weeks in development. The design analytics personalizes designs and current fashion trends for all body types.

[caption id="attachment_117939" align="aligncenter" width="700"] Source: Savitude[/caption]  

What Is Savitude’s Addressable Market, and What Problem Is It Solving?

According to online fashion giant ASOS, 25% of UK women’s orders are returned, with this estimate rising to 70% of orders in Germany. Savitude has found that 44% of returns are due to body shape issues and 36% are related to sizing issues. The hourglass body shape is the industry standard (historically, it achieved operational efficiencies), but hourglass represents fewer than 20% of women, according to the company.

About one in three garments returned end up in a landfill, according to industry reports. Savitude initially built an AI recommendation and search technology that was proven to lift sales after returns by over 11%. The company recognized an inability to recommend flattering clothes to several segments of the population because there simply wasn’t appropriate stock being produced. The team pivoted to build an AI design technology to solve the issue around fit in the design process.

Simultaneously, the team realized that fashion designers are dissatisfied: Burn-out is common and defections are frequent at the top ranks. According to a survey conducted by Savitude, designers identify the amount of work they do by hand as their number-one problem (38% of 72 designers surveyed), followed by the need to interpret designs for other body shapes.

How Has Covid-19 Impacted the Business?

The Design Studio can be applied to refashion excess inventory to help reduce any excess stock that built up during the pandemic.

Outlook: What Trends Will Benefit Savitude over the Next Two to Three Years?

Savitude is actively talking with partners to apply Design Studio to on-demand and custom manufacturing. Savitude is also testing AR applications.

Business Model

The Design Studio is hosted in the cloud and made available to clients on a software-as-a-service business model via an API (application programming interface) link or as a web app. The output is a vector or PNG file that easily fits into the workflow, saving four weeks in product development, according to Savitude.

Funding Stage

Seed round ($2 million)

Headquarters

Palo Alto, California, US

Management Team

• Camilla Olson, CEO

Olson founded two successful predictive modeling companies. She ran her eponymous fashion label for five years.

• Nick Clayton, Chief Technology Officer

Clayton is an expert in computer vision and machine learning and has previously worked in several startups.