Contact: Scott Denne
It’s hard to find an industry that’s more threatened by emerging technology than retail. In addition to dangers from Amazon and a bevy of younger online retailers, stores are forced to adjust to changes in consumer behavior that impact everything from marketing to inventory management and logistics. Despite all that, the exit environment for startups selling retail technologies is narrowing as retailers and consumer goods companies generally show less inclination to invest in new technology than other industries.
There are exceptions. Take L’Oreal’s recent purchase of augmented reality vendor ModiFace. In reaching for the virtual makeover vendor with 70 engineers specializing in augmented reality and machine learning, L’Oreal hopes to expand new channels for customer engagement – a path it started down in 2014 with the launch of its augmented reality mobile app, Makeup Genius. Still, our surveys of retail technologists, along with acquisition data from 451 Research’s M&A KnowledgeBase, suggest that L’Oreal will be an outlier.
Retailers and related consumer products providers are less likely to be planning to adopt augmented or virtual reality technology in the next 24 months. In 451 Research’s VoCUL: Corporate Mobility and Digital Transformation survey, 24% of retail respondents told us their organization planned to use such technologies, compared with 29% of other respondents. Retail indexed lower in most other categories of emerging technologies as well, including artificial intelligence, where 35% of retail respondents planned to adopt, compared with 47% across all other verticals.
The reticence to invest in newer technologies translates into a decline in dealmaking. According to the M&A KnowledgeBase, acquisitions of retail technology firms – anything from e-commerce businesses to supply-chain software firms that specialize in serving retailers – declined 30% in 2017, with just 232 transactions.
After a few years of expanding, valuations among this group are coming down a bit. For the first time since 2012, we didn’t track a single multiple at or above 8x trailing revenue in 2017 for businesses with more than $2m in annual revenue. The decline in the highest multiples comes as overall deal value for the category rose to $18bn, from $16.8bn a year earlier, as buyers – both retailers and the tech vendors that service them – sought out more mature businesses at higher prices, but lower multiples, than startups dabbling in the latest technology.
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