We are living through an unprecedented time as the entire world feels the impact of the COVID-19 virus. One of the hardest hit areas of our daily lives is the increased demand on grocery stores, as people stockpile essential goods and as consumer shopping patterns shift due to lifestyle changes.

Through Connors Group and Focal Systems’ ongoing work providing real-time inventory visibility and operational process improvement to some of the largest retailers in the world, we are uniquely positioned to perform analysis on…

SAN FRANCISCO— Retailers have incredibly challenging jobs, they manage thousands of SKUs, employees and stores while facing margin pressure from rising labor costs and the ongoing battle with online. With Amazon’s entry into the market, the stakes are now even higher.

As the industry leader in AI-powered retail automation, Focal Systems works closely with retail executives throughout the world, and they have been begging for a better way. It was clear to Focal that the future of retail had to be built on a completely new operating system.

Focal assembled a team of retail operations experts with decades of leadership…

SAN FRANCISCO — Focal Systems, Inc., the industry leader in retail automation solutions, announced today that it has received a strategic investment from Zebra Ventures, the investment arm of Zebra Technologies, to scale the business of AI-powered retail technology products. Focal Systems works with leading retailers on four continents to provide AI-powered cameras and an advanced analytics stack that functions as a retail store operating system.

“The future of retail is powered by real-time, accurate data and AI algorithms that leverage that data to automate and optimize all functions of a retailer’s business. We know that some retailers and consumer…

Wakefern Food Corp. is expanding its pilot of Focal Systems’ deep learning computer vision driven out-of-stock detection system from 4 to 50 stores.

SAN FRANCISCO— Focal Systems, the industry leader in retail automation solutions, announced today that Wakefern Food Corp. is expanding its Focal Systems pilot from four to 50 stores. Focal’s shelf camera based computer vision system captures images of store shelves in order to calculate what is out of stock. By generating data hourly, Focal has the unparalleled ability to optimize inventory and retail operations to help deliver an exceptional customer experience.

“Focal Systems’ out-of-stock detection through computer…

Focal Systems’ CEO Francois Chaubard sat down with NVIDIA’s Noah Kravitz at NVIDIA GTC 2019 to discuss the future of retail and Focal Systems’ approach to automating brick and mortar retail through Deep Learning Computer Vision. Listen in, read the summary or read through the transcript below!

Transcript

Noah Kravitz [00:00:11] Hello and welcome to the Nvidia podcast. I’m your host Noah Kravitz. Quick programming note or sort of more of a housekeeping note if you haven’t already subscribed, subscribe. You’re listening to the podcast. You love the podcast, so let it come to you. You can find us on…

Hailed as the future of retail, Amazon’s cashier-less Go stores have arguably been one of the most ambitious projects launched in the retail landscape in a long time. As an engineer myself, I am stunned by the scale and robustness of the system. Dilip Kumar, Jimmy Pang, and the rest of the Go team achieved what most people thought to be impossible. This robustness however comes at the cost of vast amounts of costly hardware, heavy computational requirements, devops, and numerous other challenges.

All of this bears the question: is Amazon Go actually a feasible solution for a large format…