Israeli firm Storee, which develops technology for automatic management of retail chains, has raised $6.8m and completed a seed round of about $8m.

Established by Asaf Shapira, Idan Sergi and Chen Cohen, the company develops store-management technology enabling an automatic, smart and efficient operation of sales teams and exhibition spaces.

“The Covid-19 crisis constitutes an exceptional opportunity for Storee due to the growing demand for long-distance stores management and lack in human resources employed prior to the pandemic,” said CEO Shapira. “I am delighted to announce the current seed round. This round is proof of the demand for operational technologies in the retail sector. Our product offers an algorithm for business management according to different factors, eventually allowing retail stores to follow Gett’s and Uber’s influence in the taxi sector.”

Founded in 2016, Storee operates in the field of data sciences and business intelligence. The product advances retail chains operation enabling technological functions such as store storage regulation, exhibition spaces advancement, sales amplification and automatic tasks formation for the organisation’s employees. These reduce the need for people, enabling a monthly cost-saving for each chain.

All tasks are executed using artificial intelligence. The company chose to concentrate on developing computerised intelligence as an assisting tool for various ranked executives and affect the management decision-making process.

Technology developed by the company is based on existing customer data composed of sales history, available products storage and customer’s bank, gathering issues and shortages that arise from such data. In addition, the technology enables optional products presentations and examines the implications of such trials on future sales, allowing sales enhancement.

“We believe that the automation provided by Storee will cause the needed change in the retail world currently depended on a thick human chain of managers to deliver information the old-fashioned inefficient way via emails and WhatsApp,” said Shapira.

The round was led by private investors along with retail and consumer stores, including the American jewellery corporation Signet Jewelers. Funds will be used to extend the company’s operation in Israel and abroad.

“Retail chains must ensure their stores will benefit from similar operations as online web sites and cover the gap between physical and online commercial arenas,” said Oded Edelman, chief digital innovation advisor at Signet Jewelers. “Global leading chains have a demand for a technology that will enable the use of their accumulated big data, allowing quality data analysis and extracting insights to advance the customer experience. We identify Storee’s ability to fill this gap and are delighted to become their partners.”

Ido Barak, commercial direction at Estee Lauder Israel, operating about 600 sales locations and one of Storee’s customers, added: “We congratulate the cooperation with the young start-up company during the past two years. Storee’s technology allows advancing the communication with all our sales stores by a smart digital method automatically operated according to our DNA, enabling different brands owned by us to reach top-level strategies. Foreseeing the future, we realised that this type of technology serves our unique needs and enables growth.”

Storee employs 22 people and is in 35 retail and consumer chains across Israel and Europe, operating more than 2500 stores in the apparel, cosmetics, accessories, eyewear and footwear fields.