Updated retail online to offline map – Sep 2014

With the ‘Retail Online to Offline’ scan hitting 500+ companies, I wanted to take a step back and look at the current landscape. I’ve created over 19 categories with the latest one being “Retail Internet of Things (IOT),” which covers companies that manufacture or sell physical devices as part of their core offering. This is partially due to the rapid rise of Bluetooth low energy devices (ibeacon), as well as other products such as physical wallet devices (e.g. Coin), NFC stands, and smart objects that integrate into a retailer’s existing hardware.

See the one page tear-out below:

So far I am covering 14 companies in this category, some from the existing landscape, which already represent ~$100M+ in funding. Following on the heels of IOT growth, we can probably expect to see much more interest and financings in specific retail applications over the next few quarters. The recent initiates from the likes of Apple and the Merchant Customer Exchange (MCX) to make mobile payments and mobile loyalty platforms more ubiquitous also exacerbate this trend – incentivizing merchants through sheer market size to try new technologies.

This sector is still rapidly growing so it will be interesting to see what other categories being to appear.