Zippin announced today it has entered a strategic partnership with Brazil’s largest retailer, Lojas Americanas S.A., to deploy its checkout-free technology in stores across the country.
Zippin operates a fully functional, public convenience store based in San Francisco, which offers a cashierless model using its own frictionless technology.
The company’s proprietary approach combines vision cognition, sensor fusion technology and machine learning to account for shopper behavior through overhead cameras, as well as product tracking through smart shelf sensors.
Though its innovation vertical, “IF – Inovação e Futuro” (Innovation and Future), Lojas Americanas S.A. made a strategic investment in Zippin in June 2019 to use the checkout-free shopping technology in Brazil exclusively and develop new technologies for their Ame Go retail stores.
The first Zippin-powered store has already opened in Rio and has been operational for four months. The next store is expected to open in Sao Paulo soon.
The new checkout-free Ame Go stores will vary in size from 250 to 3000 square feet and will be located in high-traffic, mostly urban locations with a largely captive customer base, from financial districts and housing complexes.
Customers will access the stores through the company’s popular Ame Digital app, which already has over one million active users. In addition, the company is developing an automated Ame Box checkout-free store-within-a-store concept powered by Zippin.
“We see checkout-free shopping as the future. Nobody wants to waste time waiting in cashier lines, and with Zippin’s breakthrough technology no one will have to,” said Lojas Americanas CIO Joao Guerra. “Going checkout-free enables us to delight our customers with speedy and convenient shopping, while unlocking additional value in the form of higher sales per square foot, better margins, and in-store inventory tracking and forecasting.”
Guerra said the company evaluated different options before signing with Zippin, which was chosen primarily for its technology’s high accuracy and low total cost of ownership.
“While other technology providers have announced deals and hinted at pilot stores, the new Lojas Americanas stores make Zippin the first company to deploy its checkout-free technology in a live, public store with a major retail partner,” said Zippin Co-Founder and CEO, Krishna Motukuri. “We are excited to lead the checkout-free shopping revolution by making it a reality for consumers in the real world.”
To learn more about Zippin, check out CSD’s profile on the company, which appeared in the August 2019 issue of C-store Decisions.