Nexite raises $67 million for a new approach to labeling and tracking merchandise in brick-and-mortar stores.

When it comes to business innovation, brick-and-mortar retail is often such a sensation that it lags behind the evolutionary style towards newer, faster-growing, more measurable (and still far from perfect) digital channels. But brick-and-mortar retail is far from over, and today the company that developed the solution to improve personal goods sales is announcing a major round of funding as it goes through several major launches signed by retailers: a sign of how the business has gone. are changing. market demand for it.

Nexiteque has developed a radio tracking system and associated data platform to read and analyze information about selected items, and has raised $67 million in a C-Series funding round and a total of $100 million, money it plans to use for both R&D. Deploy services for your first customers.

“We are solving the biggest problem for our customers, which is the lack of real-time data in brick-and-mortar stores,” Anat Shaked, CEO, who co-founded the Tel Aviv-based company with his wife Lior, said in an interview. He describes the Nexite solution as “the only technology on the market” that doesn’t require a battery to transmit important data over long distances.

The latter cash tranche was co-led by Pitango Growth and Saban Ventures, with support from past sponsors Battery Ventures, Intel Capital, Pitango First and Vertex Ventures. Prior to this C Series, Nexite was relatively under the radar when it came to its technology and its first customer relationship.

The Pitch book notes that during that round, before it closed completely and at just $53 million, Nexite was worth just over $340 million. Now that Series C is valued at $67 million, it will cost the startup less than $356 million. (The company declined to comment on the song when asked.)

Nextite’s first customer list speaks volumes about the concept and strong product launch in the market. Shaked said the startup has two major retailers that have signed “full implementation agreements” that will cover more than 1,000 stores and 80 million tags on merchandise each year when they launch. He added that Nexite has signed additional deals with the “four largest retailers in the world” (names not mentioned), which are in various stages of development and are in talks with 20 other major retailers.

The market flaw that Nexite corrected is that brick-and-mortar retailers today operate in a kind of data desert: they display and sell items, expect success, and often have large amounts of inventory that they don’t have. For sale. † It takes a lot of trial and error with some observations and historical data to understand why and yet like physical locations, they rely on a lot of useful data when they can make better use of it.

“Retail stores are like a black box,” Shaked said. “Except for sales, they have no data. “Now they’re looking for it.”

Nexite has developed a tagging system that attaches to individual parts of the goods, as well as a network of radio nodes (via Bluetooth beacons) that can be configured in-store to detect movement of the item and how the item should be moved. At the same time as the other. These tags can be affixed to the clothing label at the production location, or the retailer can attach them afterwards via a label. They’re no bigger than “washing instruction labels,” Shaked said. Tags can send their data up to 10 meters, but typically up to seven meters, which is the distance the company is trying to extend so that even fewer nodes need to be used.

As Shakedd described it, the system looks slightly more versatile and functional than RFID; In a sense on RFID steroids. Tags not only keep track of where the item is in real time, but also where it has moved over time and what has changed (for example, if someone chooses a shirt to match a particular pair of pants). Tag data is processed in the cloud, making tags energy efficient: they operate on radio waves from traffic lights.

And because the system is based on existing radio standards, it also works with doors, retailers already have to keep track of when someone takes an item from a store without removing the radio label (eg in case of theft or mistake); That means they may also replace those weird radio tags.

This also means that tags can be used in a “just go” contactless transfer stream. One of the advantages of using these tags in a contactless payment environment compared to other developed technologies is that Nexite tags are not dependent on camera technology: they are not only cheaper to implement, but also more functional than tags based on camera technology. “go”. for example, our technology “cannot be used to monitor how clothes can be tested.

So after the item is sold, the idea is that the tag can remain “alive” in the form of an app that the customer can join, to get more information about the item and other related items that the retailer or brand has . Sales and other related information. It may also become another source of aftermarket data, information that they previously had little access to.

There are several possible setbacks when starting your business on Nexite. If getting involved in label production is ideal, it means that many other stakeholders will get involved and prove to everyone that it is worth their time and investment to add that extra step to the process. There’s also the problem that these tags can be very powerful: Shaked stressed that people should refuse to receive tag data after purchase, but some will inevitably see this as big brother style anyway. What I really hope from personal shopping is to get rid of this huge data gap.

Finally, the big question arises of how and if retailers have the infrastructure to produce the data they collect – real-time is only effective if you have teams and IT to analyze and read it. Data and action. Digital transformation has certainly become an expression these days, but that does not mean that every company is ready to implement it, or that it will be successful in implementing it.

Either way, there are also plenty of opportunities to apply the technology Nexite has developed to a wider range of IoT and other applications — any scenario where tracking the movement and health of previously used items is now useful. “Disconnected.”

“We first went to retail because they already write everything. 90% of products in categories, like clothing, already have security labels, so we didn’t need their big education,” Shaked said. “In addition, our total solution for your current needs is cheaper than other solutions.” Pricing for the Nexite system is based on the entire layout of the beacon and the data platform it runs on, more or less labeled around that almost insignificant factor, he said.

“The continuous flow of goods data is reinventing physical retail in live digital solutions. “Nexite’s latest technology is gaining tremendous popularity in the market,” said Isaac Hillel, managing partner at Pitango Growth. “It is clear that Nexite is creating a new and necessary category and we are excited to continue our initial investment in Pitango First in this latest round.”

“The continuous flow of commodity data and the resulting analysis is transformative for retailers around the world,” added Barack Predor, managing partner at Saban Ventures. “Nexite’s latest solution is delivering significant business results that have never been achieved before. We are so proud to be part of this incredible team on their journey.”