Audience analysis technology start-up Glimpse has raised €1.5 million in funding and has rebranded as VisionR as it targets further growth outside Ireland.

The company has also secured a partnership with Spar International that will see its technology rolled out across the company’s 13,500 stores in 48 countries.

The round was led by Delta Partners, with further backing from Movidius cofounder Seán Mitchell, joining investors such as Enterprise Ireland. It brings the total raised by the company to more than €2 million.

The Dublin-based company, which was founded by Oran Mulvey and Shane O’Sullivan, said the funding would be used to support its growth and expand its staff.

It has just moved into new offices in Dublin’s Merrion Row, giving VisionR the space to grow in the coming years. The company is actively recruiting, looking for front and back-end developers, and some sales staff. VisionR has committed to keeping its development team based in Ireland

“We have these offices in Dublin city centre – we want to target young developers who want to work on new, exciting projects,” said Mr Mulvey.

Rich data sets

VisionR’s solution allows bricks-and-mortar retailers to gain insights into their customers through its retail analytics platform that combines hardware and software to anonymously capture customer data. That gives retailers insights similar to their ecommerce rivals.

“It’s focused on retailers,” said Mr O’Sullivan. “Retailers everywhere are used to getting rich data sets online from ecommerce , but those data sets don’t translate to their offline stores. The online stores can optimise layout using this data, they can reduced abandoned baskets, they can personalise shopping – all the stuff that maximises revenues. But for physical stores, the same optimisations can’t be done because that same data set has never existed when it comes to the physical store.”

The data that the VisionR system, known as Scout, can capture includes footfall, dwell times, the age profile of shoppers, their activity within the store, product engagement and the impact on revenues. However, it does not use facial recognition, but rather facial detection. That distinction could reassure customers worried about their privacy.

‘Retail nervous system’

“We developed this product back in 2017, as GDPR came into law. VisionR has only ever existed in a GDPR environment,” said Mr O’Sullivan. “We do not collect any personally identifiable information, we do not store video, we do not collect photos, and nobody can be identified at all, even by repeat visits.”

The company’s models can detect a shopper, and guess if it is a man or a woman, or age profile, and all the work is done on the computer in the shop. That means no photos or videos are sent away to be processed or stored anywhere, only anonymised metadata.

Mr O’Sullivan said the company’s ambition is to become the “retail nervous system”. “So understanding everything about shoppers when they come into your store, from when they decide to come into your store, through the purchases they make while they’re inside. We allow retailers to personalise that whole journey.”

In the future, that could include allowing shops to push out special offers depending on the profile of the shopper crossing the threshold of the store, affect digital signage in the shop, or send alerts to the manager to inform them of new shoppers they may want to engage with.

Reporting: The Irish Times