Trax retail technology brings reform to the FMCG sector

– What is the mission of the company?

Trax is the leading global provider of computer vision and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for the retail industry. Our proprietary platform enables users to see and understand what is happening on the shelves of their stores.

– What trends inspired the founders to start Trax Innovation?

Joel Bar-El and Dror Feldheim, the two founders, identified a gap in the market for manual inventory management in retail stores. They believed a more advanced and automated method could provide CPG manufacturers with a good answer on how to improve their retail inventory management. They observed that for fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), there is still a need for physical stores and warehouses for all players in the ecosystem. All players need to have all the information about exactly what is happening on their shelves. Trax’s computer vision and machine learning platform analyses shelf images to provide CPG brands with a real-time map of product presence – current and out-of-stock, shelf contents and out-of-stocks – to facilitate planning, scaling and analysis.

– All this would require a pretty serious development team, how big is the company?

Trax employs hundreds of people in its offices worldwide, including more than 100 in Budapest alone. Around 25 of the world’s 30 leading CPG companies from more than 50 countries around the world are partners of Trax.

– I understand you have created a platform that can revolutionise retail execution, merchandising and shopper engagement in the FMCG segment?

Trax’s solutions, based on proprietary computer vision methods, are enabled by fine-grained image recognition algorithms that enable retailers and online shoppers to see what is on the shelves of their stores. One Trax solution, Trax Dynamic Merchandising (now available in the US), is essentially a marketplace that helps brands and retailers sell. Trax also helps brands and retailers with shopper activation with Shopkick, our shopper solution.

– How does the algorithm distinguish between products?

The software identifies goods by their SKU, or product number, or product label.

– Can you give us a concrete example of how innovation can be a response to these challenges?

Imagine, if a shopper goes into a perfume store, they will find that there are several similar products on the shelves. Hair dyes, for example, are now available in many different shades, but the packaging is the same. However, fine-grained image recognition and imaging technology can accurately identify the product.

– What message would you give to decision-makers to maintain their competitiveness?

For an FMCG player to succeed in a fast-changing and hybrid world, it must be able to compete with the biggest players, such as Amazon. To do so, it needs to accelerate the development of its omnichannel experience platform, introduce state-of-the-art artificial intelligence solutions, integrate IoT cameras and Big Data-driven analytics, and develop its pricing and promotion systems. (x)

Barak Turovsky

Barak Turovsky
chief product officer
Trax

Chief product officer responsible for product management and design at Trax. Within Google’s Artificial Intelligence team, he led product management for Natural Language Understanding AI and Google Translator for 10 years. Before joining Google in 2011, he was a product director at Microsoft’s mobile advertising division, head of mobile commerce at PayPal and CTO of an Israeli start-up. //