The Center for Advancing Retail Technology (CART) has rolled out its enterprise platform advancingretail.org, a free service to help retailers and brand manufacturers find, learn about and connect with the best solutions for their business.
An estimated 3,000 solutions are represented on the platform, making it the largest collection of retail solutions in the world today. CART attracts Silicon Valley startups and a growing number of international innovative solutions as they seek to enter the multi-trillion dollar U.S. consumer goods retail industry. These solutions, along with new products being released by established providers, add hundreds of products each month to the platform.
“Just as easily as you can search your smartphone for the latest apps, users can search CART for the latest retail solutions and connect with them through a single click,” said Gary Hawkins, CEO and founder of CART. “CART is helping retailers and brand manufacturers keep pace with technology-fueled innovation.”
Solution providers can choose from several options to participate, including a free option. The CART platform also includes a large and growing number of resources, including case studies, papers and publications from universities, that can be searched and downloaded.
“CART has helped us identify important new innovative solutions that can provide deep insights into shopper behavior to help grow our business,” said Michael Moore, chief marketing officer at Lowes Foods. “The CART platform helps us understand and stay abreast of new capabilities coming into the industry.”
CART is launching the platform in partnership with a growing number of industry trade organizations and wholesalers, including National Grocers Association, Retail World Alliance, the American Beverage Consortium, Certco Wholesale and Unified Grocers.
“Unified is a trusted technology partner to our members,” said Mike Brown, VP of retail services and technology at Unified Grocers. “There have been dramatic changes in the use of consumer-level technologies in recent years and the CART platform gives our members the ability to quickly find and understand solutions that are recommended by Unified. The platform is a major benefit to our retailers.”
Adde Hawkins, “The retail industry is undergoing a transformation the likes of which has never been seen before. Two things are different this time. The first is that innovation is occurring in every part of retail simultaneously, not concentrated in one area as was often the case in the past. Second, the pace of innovation is continuously growing. There are no breathers or time-outs for industry leaders. This environment is putting tremendous pressure on retailers and brand manufacturers to keep up.”
CART powers an exclusive platform connecting retailers, brand manufacturers and solution providers. The CART team has decades of experience as both retail operators and technological innovators, providing unique experience and exposure to the complexity of discovering, navigating and implementing the latest technologies. The CART platform provides an ever-growing repository of solutions and related research materials to help industry executives keep pace in a world of daily innovation.
