Trax-Stor.ai Partnership Brings Flex Workers to E-Commerce Boom

A new partnership between Stor.ai and the computer vision firm Trax is offering grocery retailers access to crowdsourced shoppers to relieve cost pressure and service strains of meeting heightened consumer demand for online grocery.

Stor.ai, formerly known as Self Point, is a digital commerce software for grocery retailers. Trax, as part of its suite of merchandising solutions, has access to on-demand labor it calls Flexforce. The companies said this combination could enable retailers to respond to online order surges efficiently and cost-effectively.

“With the exponential increase in online sales there is a clear need to provide holistic solutions for retailers to provide customers with positive online shopping experiences without straining their budgets,” said Mendel Gniwisch, EVP of business development for Stor.ai. “I am delighted to partner with Trax, a trailblazer in the industry, to further our ambition to create a one-stop solution, which is easily accessible for all kinds of grocers who are constantly striving to preserve their unique and distinguishing features while offering consumers the conveniences they have come to expect.”

The COVID-19 pandemic expedited a consumer shift toward online grocery, with projections of its growth now some 60% higher than pre-pandemic estimates, Stor.ai said. This has put retailers in a precarious spot: They need to provide those services for shoppers but need to find the most effective means of essentially having shifted the labor of shopping from the consumer to the retailer.

“Grocers cannot prosper without widespread online activity and therefore need new methods to make picking, delivery and collection services more cost-effective,” the companies said in a release.

The partnership gives retailers an opportunity to respond as needed.

Stor.ai’s online platform includes a white-label e-commerce solution integrated with grocers’ legacy systems, and a Picker-App, which customizes and maps in-store grocery fulfillment. Trax Flexforce’s on-demand crowd marketplace provides access to more than 1.4 million experienced retail representatives across North America and supplies stores with the right person for the task through a proprietary matching algorithm that processes store experience, location and workload.

Trax built its merchandising workforce in part through an acquisition a year ago of Survey.com.

“Our partnership with Stor.ai further enables us to meet the growing demand for transformational solutions to long-standing retail pain points,” said Bob Kothari, chief revenue officer of Trax. “With online grocery shopping continuing to rise, we are pleased to partner with Stor.ai to help retailers adapt to this unprecedented period of industry growth.”