Shoptalk 2023 “Shark Reef” Startup Pitch Competition: Preview—12 Innovators, Four Areas of Retail Disruption

Introduction

Coresight Research is a research partner of Shoptalk 2023, which will take place during March 26–29 in Las Vegas. Shoptalk is an annual retail conference focusing on retail innovation and the trends, business models and technologies that are shaping the future of retail.

The Coresight Research team will participate in two panels and a workshop during the conference—see our Must-Read Guide to Shoptalk 2023 for more details.

In addition, on March 26, 2023, Coresight Research will host the “Shark Reef” startup pitch competition at the Beacon Theater, which will see 12 early-stage US retail-technology innovators compete to win the Judges’ Choice and Audience Choice awards.

In this report, we present a preview of the pitch competition, covering its format and the judging panel as well as an introduction to each participating innovator.

Shoptalk 2023—“Shark Reef” Startup Pitch Competition: A Preview

Event Format and Judging Panel

The Shoptalk 2023 “Shark Reef” startup pitch competition will comprise two rounds across three sessions through the day:

• Round 1. All competitors will present for three minutes on their innovative technologies that are solving important challenges in retail. An expert panel of judges will lead a short Q&A session following each presentation, before selecting six companies to progress to the next round.
• Round 2. The finalists will each participate in a more in-depth, four-minute Q&A session.

The judging panel will then reveal the Judges’ Choice winner, and the audience will have the opportunity to cast their votes for the Audience Choice winner.

Deborah Weinswig, CEO and Founder of Coresight Research, will emcee the competition, in addition to participating as one of the judging panel. She will be joined by three expert judges:

• Matt Nichols, General Partner at Commerce Ventures
• Anna Barber, Partner at M13
• Brooke Kiley, Partner at VMG Partners

Innovative Solutions Across Four Areas of Retail Disruption

Coresight Research categorizes the 12 startups into four areas of disruption in retail.

1. New Ways To Engage Consumers

Retailers are increasing their degree of engagement with consumers via messages on social media platforms, providing inclusive imagery, enabling price negotiation and using clienteling to cater to key customers.

Companies: Drop, GoCharlie, Nibble, Reflekt Me

2. Innovative Video Applications

Video is becoming a primary communication channel, particularly with certain demographics. Innovators are helping retailers and brands improve the quality of video and storytelling, in addition to offering customer service via video.

Companies: Gander, Hark, Tolstoy

3. Ensuring Product Quality and Sustainability

Retailers and brands have a major stake in ensuring that customers receive products that meet their standards for quality and sustainability.

Companies: IN BOLD PRINT., Toki

4. Optimizing Operations: Payments and Supply Chains

Demand planning is a key early step that drives inventory, sales and returns, which in turn enables efficient logistics. Offering payment methods, such as with biometrics, reduces friction and increases conversion.

Companies: Frate, Syrup, Wink

The Competing Innovators

We profile each of the innovators below—including the speaker who will present on the company’s solution at the pitch competition—in alphabetical order. (GoCharlie and Toki joined the event after the publication of this report, so are not included below.)

Drop

• Speaker: Benjamin Benichou, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: New Ways To Engage Consumers

Founded in 2020, Drop is a social commerce platform that enables enterprise brands and retailers to engage with and sell products to their Instagram followers directly through Instagram Direct Message, at scale, providing opportunities to increase revenue from organic and paid social initiatives.

The platform enables businesses to capitalize on their Instagram following and offer a seamless shopping experience with a means for followers to purchase desired products without having to leave the social media platform. Drop also improves personalization through the generation and aggregation of first- and zero-party data.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Drop.

Frate

• Speaker: Bailey Newton, Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: Optimizing Operations: Payments and Supply Chains

Founded in 2022, Frate provides returns management software for “peer-to-peer returns.” Frate’s solution incentivizes consumers to hold onto items they wish to return while the item is re-listed by the retailer at a discounted price. If the item is re-sold within a certain period, consumers “return” the item directly to the next buyer.

Frate aims to reduce the impacts of returns on profitability and the environment: peer-to-peer returns enables retailers to save on shipping labels, warehousing costs, liquidation and more, while also decreasing CO2 emissions from shipping trips, and reducing packaging and landfill waste.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Frate.

Gander

• Speaker: Kimiloluwa Fafowora, Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: Innovative Video Applications

Founded in 2021, Gander has developed an end-to-end solution that enables brands to easily create and embed quality video UGC (user-generated content) on their websites, driving sales, engagement and conversion. Gander can handle the entire production process of UGC, including sourcing content creators, developing content narratives, video editing and production, and licensing. The company uses high-quality content delivery networks to improve network speed.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Gander.

Hark

• Speaker: Fran Brzyski, Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: Innovative Video Applications

Founded in 2022, Hark is a customer experience platform that offers a unique post-purchase interaction experience for customers and service teams. The platform leverages video and audio prompts to enable customers to showcase and explain their issues to companies before interacting with a live agent. With its AI (artificial intelligence) technology, Hark packages relevant details into a “perfect ticket” delivered to service teams via a Help Desk integration.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Hark.

IN BOLD PRINT.

• Speaker: Cierra Valor, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: Ensuring Product Quality and Sustainability

IN BOLD PRINT. helps consumer brands understand, track and optimize their carbon footprint to become more environmentally sustainable. The company’s cloud-based platform aggregates data on Scope 1, 2 and 3 carbon emissions across a retailer and its vendors through an interactive dashboard. It also allows for data downloads and offers services such as data preparation to track goals, as well as action plan and roadmap setting.

By using IN BOLD PRINT.’s platform and services, brands and retailers can appeal to a growing number of environmentally conscious consumers and retail investors.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for IN BOLD PRINT.

Nibble

• Speaker: Rosie Bailey, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: New Ways To Engage Consumers

Founded in 2020, Nibble is an AI chatbot for e-commerce retailers that lets customers negotiate personalized prices on desired products or services. Through providing an automated and entertaining chat experience, Nibble aims to improve conversion rates, customer engagement and preserve margins from steep discounts.

Every month, Nibble chats with more than 50,000 users across the US, Europe and Asia, enabling retailers to recoup otherwise abandoned baskets. Nibble records every conversation between consumers and retailers, and interprets the comments made by consumers to unveil their concerns or intent. The data can help brands and retailers build effective and dynamic pricing and discounting strategies.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Nibble.

Reflekt Me

• Speaker: Tope Mitchell, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: New Ways To Engage Consumers

Founded in 2018, Reflekt Me aims to help brands and retailers make the online shopping experience more inclusive. Its B2B (business-to-business) SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform enables retailers to provide personalized product images featuring “real people,” with different skin tones and body types, on a product’s landing page. These product images resonate with shoppers and enable them to better understand product size/fit, driving consumer confidence in their purchase decisions.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Reflekt Me.

Syrup

• Speaker: James Theuerkauf, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: Optimizing Operations: Payments and Supply Chains

Founded in 2020, Syrup offers an AI-powered platform that helps omnichannel brands and retailers optimize inventory management. The platform uses ML (machine learning) algorithms to analyze historical sales data, market trends and other factors to provide accurate demand forecasts and inventory recommendations. It also offers tools for automating inventory allocation, managing purchase orders and optimizing inventory levels across multiple channels.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Syrup.

Tolstoy

• Speaker: Dov Kaufmann, Co-Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: Innovative Video Applications

Tolstoy is an end-to-end video-commerce platform that enables brands and retailers to better sell their products directly to consumers and build an authentic connection with their audience by adding shoppable and interactive videos to their digital surfaces—including storefronts, product detail pages, and email/SMS campaigns. The platform allows for the creation, publishing and sharing of short-form interactive videos, with the goal of increasing visit duration times on the clients’ websites and driving conversion. Tolstoy also offers a video quiz feature that enables businesses to better understand their audience and personalize their offers and future experience.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Tolstoy.

Wink

• Speaker: Deepak Jain, Founder and CEO
• Area of disruption: Optimizing Operations: Payments and Supply Chains

Wink is a US biometric identity and payments platform that enables companies to offer simpler and more seamless payments experiences through AI, ML, ChatGPT technology and facial and voice recognition-based multi-factor authentication. Customers can checkout securely quickly without using passwords, usernames, card numbers or SMS texts. Currently, the Wink payments platform supports major payment methods and supports sending biometric payments to more than 200 major gateways.

• Read the full Innovator Profile for Wink.