Swedish cashier-less platform Storekey has partnered with an Irish company to launch the retail tech here next week.
torekey Ireland, which has entered into a licensing agreement with the Stockholm-based company, has been founded by Brian Goff and Felim Meade, who own a number of food businesses together, and David Fitzsimons, the former CEO of representative body Retail Excellence.
The platform allows people to shop in a store using only their phone, meaning shops can be unmanned.
In Sweden, Storekey operates 32 grocery shops in remote locations, offering rural communities access to convenience stores 24 hours a day.
In Ireland, Storekey envisages the technology being used in a range of locations, including hospitals, allowing staff to access food and other goods throughout the night.
Meade said: “We see applications in corporate offices allowing night-shift staff to access retail and food at night — simply scan and access the store.
“Other applications could be a builders merchants, allowing trades people to scan and access the store to pick up stuff early in the morning for the day ahead — cement etc. We also see rural Ireland using it in communities where the current stores close at 6pm.”
The founder of Storekey, Daniel Lundh, said that in Sweden, retailers used the technology to extend opening hours and also to collect data in the same way that online retailers can closely monitor shopping habits, stock and other trends.
‘We really saw kind of the quality of life became better locally by adding this service’
The business was started in 2018 to allow shopping in real stores to become more like shopping online, removing what Lundh described as “friction”, which includes queuing and trying to find items in store.
“The smartphone becomes really the central piece in your shopping journey and your experience. And that’s how we can merge the two worlds of online and offline,” said Lundh.
To demonstrate the concept, Storekey opened its own convenience store, going on to start a retail brand called Lifvs, which is short for groceries in Swedish.
“We placed that in a location where a traditional store could not survive and solely operated on this Storekey platform, and had great success.
“We became a store chain of 32 stores across Sweden, and focused on rural areas of Sweden.
“We really saw kind of the quality of life became better locally by adding this service,” he added.
He said that the technology did not necessarily mean fewer retail jobs but that staff would be freed up from mundane tasks, such as stocktaking.
Another concern linked to the technology would be the opportunity for theft. However, he said theft or shrinkage was the same level as in other retail.
Last year, Storekey focused on on-boarding the technology to other retailers, including Sweden’s largest petrol retail chain and a large florist chain.
Storekey Ireland plans to play a key role in bringing the technology to a number of international markets.