Pitching digital retail with Swiftly
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What
Swiftly develops digital tools for retailers to compete directly with e-commerce giants. The company provides three platforms: a retail platform akin to Shopify, an analytics platform like Google Analytics, and an ad platform offering digital ad placements for brick-and-mortar shoppers. Through an app, the company also provides consumer-facing features such as a digital loyalty program, shopping lists, pickup and delivery capacities, subscriptions, and mobile self-checkout. Founded in 2018, Swiftly raised a $100M Series C in 2022 from BRV Capital Management.
Why
Swiftly sees an especial need for its products now—in the face of inflation, rising debt, and dwindling savings. Consumers are avoiding unnecessary trips to the grocery store due to gas prices, and being able to confirm the most affordable prices at competing stores is a timely and needed use case for a growing number of consumers. These consumers know that cheaper prices can be found in person rather than through e-commerce purchases (a flat of water bottles is more expensive online, for instance), making hybridized online and offline retail all the more relevant.
How
According to Sean Turner, Swiftly’s Chief Technology Officer, Swiftly effectively markets itself by demonstrating how e-commerce giants have become engineering-forward companies. “When you look at this from just an overall numbers perspective, Amazon is an engineering company, Walmart has 15,000 engineers, Target has 4,000 engineers, and even Kroger has 1000 engineers,” Turner said. “If I'm any other retailer in the space, I ask, how do I compete with that, especially since brick-and-mortar food retail is a 2% net income margin business?”
Swiftly’s products are a white-labeled opportunity for smaller brick-and-mortar retailers to offer the same tools as e-commerce giants without the massive overhead costs—addressing profit margins as well as the need to innovate.
In addition, Swiftly highlights the omnichannel opportunities that its products offer. Amazon, Turner said, is misunderstood by the public in terms of its revenue strategies—the company is actually the third-largest ad platform in the world, raking in $31.1 billion last year. Swiftly demonstrates the potential for apps and other digital platforms to bring in new revenue streams for retailers, who can sell ad space in their digital products, while also delivering lower prices to consumers through sponsored discounts. “We're helping brick-and-mortar retailers to grab their fair share of those advertising dollars,” Turner said.
In the coming months, Swiftly is focused on moving into the SMB space, and helping spread the digital advantages it’s delivered to enterprise retailers onto smaller players as well. “That's significant, because ultimately it really is the Davids versus the Goliaths,” Turner said. Especially with the two-year window provided by the impending Kroger-Albertons merger, smaller retailers face a formidable countdown clock for successfully building a solid digital relationship with their customers and capture their needs through an omnichannel strategy.
