Posted on January 10, 2023, 5:36 pm
The little Frenchwoman continues her ascent. SES-imagotag announced on Tuesday the acquisition of Memory, a start-up specializing in processing data collected in stores. “We started with electronic tags. Today we offer the cloud, sensors and cameras that scan shelves, media and retail data”, recalls Thierry Gadou, CEO of the French company.
At the end of 2022, SES-Imagotag joined the SBF 120, a circle of the 120 largest companies listed on the Paris Stock Exchange. The group, which has 350 distributors as customers in Europe, Asia and North America (including a partnership with Walmart) it has multiplied its turnover by 10 in ten years to reach 800 million euros and aims at 2.2 billion in 2027, the end of its new strategic plan.
The acquisition of Memory follows that of the Irish MarketHub in early 2022, which manages data relating to product prices in stores. This solution allows you to change prices on electronic labels almost automatically, to test a higher or lower price that indicates that the current one is lower than that of the closest competitor.
“Category management”
Memory intervenes in the field of “category management”, this science of shelves that works on assortment, merchandising (product presentation) and promotion plans. The data management and decision analysis platform processes the information provided by cash registers and loyalty cards. SES-imagotag will extend its scope to the data provided by its tags, sensors and cameras.
Thierry Gadou believes the store represents the future of e-commerce, as it will become the place for local order picking. For him, this movement involves the digitization of points of sale. “Assortment shortage alone represents a worldwide average loss of 7% to 8% of turnover for retailers. They know the stock status of their warehouses 99%, but only 70% in their stores at time T,” he explains.
The leader promises a 1% to 3% increase in store profitability by capturing and processing good information in or near real time. The profit is, according to him, all the more important as the data analysis can be sold to suppliers within the framework of “category management” contracts established during commercial negotiations. “Today both send visitors to the shelves to find out if the agreements are respected and work,” he summarizes. “If nothing else, he assures us, the gains made make it possible to make the heavy investments that digitization requires profitable. »