Hudson’s Bay Company (TSE:HBC) Releases the Robots

Executive Summary

• Hudson’s Bay Company (TSE:HBC) recently announced the deployment of a $60 million Perfect Pick case shuttle system that covers the entire vertical height of the building in which it has been installed. The system has the capacity to hold 1 million units of inventory and to process 4,200 customer orders per hour.
• The Perfect Pick system uses autonomous carriers that carry items horizontally and vertically along a rack-style structure, bringing goods to an operator. Other vendors’ systems rely on autonomous vehicles that move across the warehouse floor.
• Market research firm IDC expects spending on robotics and related services to hit about $84 billion this year and to grow at a 17% CAGR during 2015–2019. The firm expects China to drive much of this market growth.
• The investment by Hudson’s Bay comes four years after Amazon’s $775 million acquisition of Kiva Systems, and it represents a significant validation of the return on investment that a major traditional retailer can see from a robotics system.