The Co-op Group and Finnish tech retail developer Digital Goodie have announced the next step in their work on the retailer’s first dedicated online grocery shop and home delivery service.
The project was launched last March and the Group plans to offer same-day online city-centre deliveries from 650 stores by the end of 2020. The service will follow the headless commerce model – which separates the front end of the operation, experienced by the shopper, from the back end, which is the IT. This makes it simpler, quicker and cheaper to make changes to the frontend and respond to consumer trends.
Digital Goodie says this combination will create one of the most powerful, scalable industry players with a complete suite of e-commerce applications, and will enable the Group to achieve its goal of offering grocery home deliveries in as little as two hours.
“The Co-op recognises the need to be equally fast when it comes to the user experience innovation,” said Digital Goodie in a press release. “This is where headless enters the picture.”
The Group’s online service and e-commerce operations run on Digital Goodie’s Connected Commerce platform, which is designed to provide an end-to-end service to retail customers.
Under the headless commerce model, the Group can take full control of the end user experience, and can build and design its user experience without dependency on Digital Goodie. The Group’s digital team has designed and built its own storefront, which went live in August.
Digital Goodie says the next steps include native mobile applications, which will again be developed by the Group’s digital team.
Chris Conway, head of food digital at the Group, said: “Convenience lies at the heart of our offering and as part of this, we have major online expansion plans which will make it easier than ever for customers to shop with us. Such growth can only be facilitated with a digital partner that offers modern and agile technology and we’re delighted to continue our work with the Digital Goodie team who are intrinsic in bringing these plans to life.”
Moris Chemtov, global CEO of Digital Goodie, said: “When we started our journey with Co-op we were impressed on how focused they are on digitaliasation, and how agile they are in their approach. The speed by which they were able to design and build their own storefront is a testament to these traits.
“However, it is also a testament to the robustness and completeness of Digital Goodie’s headless commerce platform. We are proud to be the first platform vendor to truly bring headless commerce to the grocery industry, and look forward to many more wins in the upcoming months.”
Digital Goodie’s customers include leading retailers in Scandinavia, the Baltic region and the UK. The company has built the entire digital shopping experience for Finland’s largest retailer S Group with more than a million consumers using Digital Goodie’s retail cloud shopping solution in the country.
