Imagr

Imagr develops smart shopping carts augmented with advanced image recognition cameras as well as software that models and registers items in a store for cashier-less checkout purposes. After setting up the system, Imagr can also be more-or-less seamlessly implemented across multiple locations of the same chain of stores. Customers of these shops must pair their smart carts to their phones to register each product placed within the cart. To check out, the customer pays via the Imagr mobile phone app. 

The company claims that image recognition from cart to phone has a latency of less than 1 second. Imagr also offers the store an operations app to monitor the carts and manage the system via an API (application programming interface) framework integrated into the store’s POS (point-of-sale) system. The  company stated that full-store system pilots of its smart cart will be priced starting at around EUR 65,000 (approximately USD 77,600) and that it has finalized deals with two European retailers as of March 2021. Imagr has headquarters in Auckland with offices in Japan and Europe.

Key customers and partnerships

In 2019, Imagr started a pilot of its smart carts at Japanese supermarket operator H2O Retailing Corporation, which operates around 150 stores. The Imagr smart carts were also launched at a 9,000-square-foot store in Osaka, Japan, with around 8,000 SKUs. In June 2022, Imagr partnered with Netto, a Danish supermarket chain, to pilot its smart cart technology across five Netto stores in Denmark. The pilots will initially be carried out in Netto’s stores across Copenhagen and Aarhus.