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Street Market 360 brings e-commerce to the market stalls

Street Market 360 brings e-commerce to the market stalls

Cedeo, Archibuzz and Synesthesia successfully conclude the research project, soon they will found a startup

How does it work

Every morning an operator takes 360-degree photographs of the products on sale that day, which are published in the Street Market 360 e-commerce. In this way, anyone can browse the market stalls every day with their computer or smartphone. The products are selected by clicking on the hot spots inside the photos and a virtual cart is filled with products from one or more counters. Everything you buy is aggregated into a single shipment and finally you can choose whether to receive the product at home or in the office, or collect it at one of the delivery points available in the city.

Innovation and value

Street Market 360 is very advantageous for merchants, because it enables them to sell online, transforming each counter of the market into an online shop within a virtual marketplace. In this way, market traders have the opportunity to reduce food waste and expand the business, without having to revolutionize their way of working, thanks to effective and intuitive technology.

The e-commerce experience is enriched for the consumer: from the standard photo of the online supermarket to the visual experience of the fresh products of the day. The quality is guaranteed by the relationship of trust and the rating system, which rewards merchants who choose the best goods to ship.

Street Market 360 leverages on economic operators already present in the agri-food market. It does not aim to shorten the value chain by cutting distribution intermediaries, nor does it harm the positions of existing operators. Indeed, it amplifies its reach in terms of its ability to reach new customers in new and captivating ways. The service also wants to place itself on the market as an environment-friendly solution, preferring collaborations with companies that deliver products with zero-impact vehicles, such as bicycles, tricycles and electric cars, which today are funding new companies that are appearing, with considerable success in many cases, in the context of micro-distribution, which is what StreetMarket360 has to do with.

Finally, it is worth remembering that a new link is opening up to support and feed proximity trade. Those who already frequent the market can use e-commerce when they are unable to physically go to the place, maintaining the relationship of trust with the merchant they know. Those who were not used to frequenting the markets have a new opportunity to buy quality products at an average price lower than the large-scale retail trade or other forms of intermediated purchasing.

How the project started

The idea started – in addition to the passion for shopping at the market – from some data: in 2017 the turnover of the Italian agro-food sector reached € 137 billion. The online Food & Grocery market has reached a value of 812 million euros, up by 37% compared to 2016, but the sale in public areas, which covers about 10% of the sector’s turnover, has not yet entered the e- Commerce. This is due to a series of inhibiting factors of a technical, economic and logistic nature to which StreetMarket360 wanted to find a solution within the project.

The project was born from the collaboration of three Turin companies belonging to the ICT Polo operating in the Web / ICT / Digital sectors: Archibuzz, Cedeo.net and Synesthesia. Inserted in the 2016 Research Agenda of the ICT Pole, it was then approved and co-financed under the POR FESR 2014-2020 of Piedmont and realized with the competition of resources of the European Regional Development Fund (FESR), of the Italian State and the Piedmont Region.

“The support of Torino Wireless was essential for the launch of the project” recalls Riccardo Chiariglione di Cedeo “In the preparation phase of the application we received in-depth information and useful advice to make it successful. The final phase was a fight against time, but thanks to teamwork with the Polo team we presented the project within the required time frame”.

Acknowledgments and next steps

The Italian Federation of Public Areas Sellers (FIVA) Confcommercio played a fundamental role in the project, acting as a main partner in involving sellers in public areas and institutions, and actively contributing in the collection of requirements and in the definition of system components in such a way to be integrated in the best possible way in the operators work cycle

The Santa Rita Market Association, its governing body and the nine traders who were the first to join the trial of the service with passion and enthusiasm, which will take place between January and February 2019.

The project was publicly presented on December 5 in Turin, District 2, gathering the enthusiasm of the Department of Commerce of the City of Turin and the interest of many other subjects.