Westfield, R/GA accelerator program seeks to redefine retail experience
A diverse mix of retail tech start-ups have been selected to participate in a program aimed at enhancing retail innovation.
Digital advertising agency R/GA Ventures and Westfield Labs, the digital lab of mall giant Westfield Corp., announced the companies chosen for their Connected Commerce Accelerator. The program, running from August-October, will emphasize opportunities for business development, pilots, and partnerships with the program partners and their networks, and enable participants to develop and launch new business models designed to disrupt the status quo and reimagine the future of retail and commerce.
The participants will receive input and collaboration from program partners, including Macy’s, Verizon and Walmart. They will also have an opportunity to join roundtable sessions with the program partners and third-party experts to share forward-looking research, discuss cutting-edge innovations, and identify market opportunities.
The 10 start-ups chosen for the program include Axle Hire, which provides same-day delivery services for e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailers that demand reliability and exceptional customer service, and Agent Q which provides the artificial intelligence necessary to automate natural language user interactions through chatbots, product search, and customer service.
Here are the 10 companies participating in the accelerator:
1. Agent Q provides the AI to automate natural language user interactions through chatbots, product search, and customer service.
2. AxleHire provides same-day delivery services for e-commerce and brick-and-mortar retailers that demand reliability and exceptional customer service.
3. Clarifai understands every image and video with the world's best visual recognition technology.
4. Cordial enables retail and publisher brands to deliver highly personalized messages, while tracking digital behavior across connected devices, web, purchase events and signals for IoT.
5. Darkstore is an on-demand logistics platform that converts underutilized brick-and-mortar spaces into local fulfillment centers, allowing e-commerce brands to store inventory, have orders fulfilled, and connect to same-day delivery providers.
6. Happy Returns is a technology, logistics, and service company building a network of Return Bars where online shoppers can return items in-person for an immediate refund, eliminating the hassle and wait of returns by mail.
7. Myagi is an online training platform that makes it easy for retailers and brands to create, manage, deliver and measure customer service, product and sales training for their front line teams.
8. Oak believes the future of retail will be software-driven. Starting with an interactive fitting room mirror that enables customer requests, lighting changes, and checkout, Oak is building the ultimate intelligent store platform.
9. Percolata uses sensor and sales data in physical retail stores to optimize sales teams.
10. Reply.ai is an end-to-end solution to build, manage, optimize, and scale chatbots across all major messaging platforms.
The program will take place at the R/GA San Francisco office, concluding in late October 2016 with an invite-only investor and business development event where each startup will present to investors and industry leaders across the retail, commerce, and technology industries.
"Westfield Labs is thrilled to participate in this program and to collaborate with the next generation of companies seeking to redefine the retail experience
"We are committed to infusing digital into our physical shopping environments to create new consumer experiences and we are excited to support the ten companies selected who share in our vision for the future of retail," said Kevin McKenzie, global chief digital officer, Westfield Corp. “We look forward to working together to identify opportunities to provide some of the participants access to Westfield's scale and visitors by implementing their products and solutions in some of our centers, further accelerating their access to real time customer interactions and feedback."