MiMEX, Micro-Market Experience

The kickoff meeting of MiMEX (Micro-Market Experience) was held on December 11 2020. This European project was created to develop a new smart retail experience in the next two years and is composed of an International team of researchers, developers, and retail experience builders. The consortium is coordinated by the Italian research and technological development company Spindox Labs (Spindox Group), and includes the Turkish e-commerce operator Hepsiburada, Fondazione Bruno Kessler from Trento, the Spanish technology development company Metrica6 and the Cefla Group, which specializes in the engineering and shopfitting sectors.

The virtual kick-off was held in the presence of the EC Project Officer Vincenzina Vinci and involved representatives of the various project partners. Discussion led to the definition of an operational program that identified the viable strategies for the coming months to help us configure new consumer experiences in retail stores, ranging from proximity marketing to self-checkouts. Micro-markets will be designed to fit European scenarios that are characterized by needs from Small and Medium Enterprises.

The strategy foresees the setting up of a testbed in Trento, under the supervision of Spindox Labs. This environment will be created to validate the concrete effectiveness of the applicable solutions at an early stage. The space will have the basic configuration of a store and will facilitate the development of options that could be used in different contexts.

The next step of the project will lead to the installation of two pilots: the first one will be indoors, at the Hepsiburada Operation Center in Istanbul; and the second will be outdoors, in Malaga, in the Technological Park of Andalusia. In both scenarios, the solutions prepared in Trento will be refined and further customized, to test their operational versatility.

MiMEX’s Micro-Markets also aim to optimize the remote management of retail stores, with particular attention being paid to the processes of shelf replenishment and inventory management. Our solutions will integrate components already used within the previous Spinretail project, an artificial intelligence platform developed by researchers at Spindox Labs and Fondazione Bruno Kessler with Cefla Shopfitting in 2018-2019. Deep learning techniques exploiting computer vision will be extended to encompass the complex shopping movements of customers and to accurately monitor the picking up of products, leading to the generation of large amounts of data for artificial intelligence training. Through the harvesting and deep analysis of individual shopper feedback, MiMEX market will be able to customize future shopping experiences. At the same time, the computer vision techniques will provide tools to observe customers’ strict compliance with social distancing measures in this continuing, or future, health emergencies.

Cefla is a multi-business Italian group, operating in five specific business areas: engineering in the civil, industrial and energy sectors; shop equipment and personalized solutions for retail outlets; machines and complete plants for coating and finishing; technology for the dental and medical sectors; innovative technology for the lighting industry.

Fondazione Bruno Kessler is a leading AI Research Institute in Europe, ranked 1st for scientific excellence in Italy and for its high economic and social impact (*according to the latest quality of research ANVUR evaluation). Fondazione Bruno Kessler (FBK) has a central mission in the valorization of the scientific and technological research results, to this end FBK supports the researcher in the process of transferring knowledge and technology to the companies.

Hepsiburada is the leading e-commerce and retail platform in Turkey, attracting more than 200  million monthly visits offering 40 million products under wide ranges of 40 + different segments. Hepsiburada launched R&D and technology development center in 2017 in order to carry out business issues and service better customer experience to the visitors. Thus, Hepsiburada’s Research and technology center will be visioning to excel an innovative and technology driven projects in an emerging field such as AI, Logistic, supply chain, data science, operation so on.

Metrica6, based in the Technologial Park of Andalusia (Málaga, Spain) is a product development and manufacturing company, including innovation projects and business strategy consultancy for their own patented technologies and for third parties’.

Spindox Labs, based in Trento, Italy, is the technological research and development company of the Spindox Spa group. At the meeting point between research, ICT services, consulting and technological development, Spindox support the transformation of the digital economy in all areas: from telecommunications to the banking and insurance sector, from automotive to manufacturing and logistics.

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