UK online retailer Sosandar thinks it can score better margins than Boohoo and Asos October 30, 2017 The giants of e-commerce have become experts at selling catwalk looks to cash-strapped millennials online, but new entrants are looking to take advantage of gaps in the online market. Founders of newcomer Sosandar, Ali Hall and Julie Lavington, are targeting wealthier women who have grown up buying clothes from Asos, but now want to buy [...]
London tech startups head on Brexit trade mission to France with Mayor of London Sadiq Khan October 23, 2017 The Mayor of London is leading a delegation of top tech startups to Paris to rustle up investment interest from across the channel and bolster innovation ties between the two cities. Entrepeneurs from Smartzer, a platform which can make online video shoppable, pregnancy health app Baby2Body and Realeyes, which uses technology to read emotional reactions [...]
Tapping third-party app stores to improve downloads July 25, 2017 Generally speaking, app developers, like brands in a supermarket, are in a battle for two scarce resources: consumer attention and shelf space. Lab Cave, a mobile games company headquartered in Madrid, is looking beyond distribution on the “digital shelves” of the Apple App Store and Google Play. It’s part of a bid to cash in [...]
Graphcore lands $30m from top AI experts Demis Hassabis from Deepmind, Uber’s Zoubin Ghahramani and more along with Atomico and others | City A.M. July 20, 2017 Some of the world’s leading experts in artificial intelligence are among fresh investors to plough $30m into a Bristol-based chip startup. Google DeepMind founder Demis Hassabis and Zoubin Ghahramani, Uber’s chief scientist and Cambridge university professor, are among new investors in Graphcore, which makes chips that can process machine learning faster and more efficiently. It [...]
Fashion technology startup Metail raises £10m from Hong Kong’s TAL to become “Google of size and shape” July 9, 2017 A tech startup which offers retailers technology that lets online shoppers try items on virtually, and wants to become the “Google of size and shape”, has bagged millions of pounds in fresh funding from investors. Metail has raised a £10m series B led by TAL, a Hong Kong-based apparel manufacturer, bringing total cash ploughed into [...]
Common mistakes Android app developers make June 15, 2017 Android is an incredibly popular platform, and it is both growing and improving all the time. Android's openness must surely be the reason for its market development and continual innovation. The openness of Android also leaves the platform susceptible to segmentation. Segmentation can be a pitfall even to veteran developers. We want you to avoid [...]
Shoppers spent £133bn online last year, but the internet is hitting margins January 17, 2017 UK retailers raked in £133bn online last year as the internet's importance for the retail industry continued to grow. Research from IMRG and Capgemini shows that shoppers spent £18bn more online in 2016 than they did the year before, a growth of 16 per cent. Read more: John Lewis will cut staff bonus as profit comes [...]
These are the key trends in retail in 2017 – and who will benefit from them January 16, 2017 The Christmas reporting season isn't over yet – the market is awaiting updates from Dixons Carphone and WH Smith – but the figures that have been reported so far have indicated some of the key retail trends investors should watch out for this year. Read more: Brexit vote boosts Hugo Boss The outlook for the UK consumer [...]
Outraged City analysts bash retailers for choosing to report on the same day January 12, 2017 Overloaded City analysts bashed UK retailers this morning for all choosing to publish financial updates on the same day. Today has been branded "Super Thursday" because so many retailers are publishing their Christmas figures. Financial reports have come from Marks and Spencer, Tesco, AO World, Debenhams, Asos and Primark-owner Associated British Foods, to name just a few. [...]
Asos sales jumped during a record Christmas trading period January 12, 2017 Asos remains decidedly en vogue, after it hiked guidance following a record Christmas trading period. The figures It's all coming up roses for Asos (in this case, roses embroidered down the side of a button-down denim mini). The online retailer reported a 36 per cent jump in retail sales to £605.7m in the four months to the end of December, [...]