For retailers to survive, a key aspect of their business is maintaining up to date inventory records.  Without taking inventory a retailer would not know what items need to be restocked or what items are the beset sellers.  Inventory also helps retailers keep track of damages and lost product, keeps customers happy, and increases revenue.  For some retailers like grocery stores that deal with perishable merchandise inventories need to be taken continuously, which is why they have permanent staff dedicated to just inventory processing.  For most retailers they can get away with bi-annual inventories.  Anyone who has ever worked in retail knows just how big of a hassle inventory day can be. 

Many stores will close for the day, or do a partial close to complete their inventory.  This means a whole day that employees need to get paid while the store makes no revenue.  On top of that the inventory process is a long and tedious one.  For example, if a clothing store is taking inventory every single item needs to be organized by type, style, and size.  So if there is a rack of jeans with both slim and boot leg styles, they need to be separated.  Then all of the correct sizes need to be put together.  Once everything is organized usually two employees will begin manually scanning each item to be uploaded to a server that will count the inventory.  While one person scans the other checks and records everything on a log.  This log is then compared to the data collected by the scanners for discrepancies.  After all of this most retail inventories are only around 65% accurate.

A company based out of Austin, Texas is aiming to not only simplify the inventory process, but to also perfect it for more accurate results.  Pensa Systems was founded in 2016 by a group of entrepreneurs in retail inventory, AI learning, and robotic technology to create a flawless inventory system.  Their motto is “See every item.  Every store.  Every shelf.”  And as explained on their website, “Our autonomous perception system delivers a dramatically lower cost, highly accurate inventory visibility solution.  Brands and retailers can optimize shelf inventory at scale without forklift upgrades or high capital expenditure.”  The way they have been able to revolutionize the inventory process is with the use of small drones.
The retail industry brings in roughly $8 trillion.  The process of taking inventory can cost retailers millions of dollars a year.  This past May, Pensa announced that they had raised an initial seed round of $2.2 million from a wide range of investors.  Then in November they got an additional $10 million from investors to see their system brought live into stores.

Already Pensa has successfully used their drones to take live inventory in retail spaces.  The drones are small, light weight, and quiet.  They are fully enclosed in a globe like cage making them perfectly safe to be around people and merchandise.  They can be used while a store is open in selective areas, or during after hour times.  As the drone flies around it gathers data and then computes that data into an AI program, learning over time what a store’s shelves and inventory should resemble.  All the data collected is automatically sorted and uploaded to a computer system that keeps track of inventory.  The website goes on to explain, “Pensa flags and reports on stockouts and predicts low stock. Real-time actionable data is collected faster, more frequently, with greater accuracy and at a lower cost. It can compare shelf performance of a major brand against a competitor for stockouts, share of shelf and other shelf conditions impacting revenue.”

What this means for retailers is that they can take accurate inventories as often as they need to get a complete picture of their merchandise needs.  It helps to keep shelves filled, cuts down on lost and damaged goods, costs less than traditional inventory measures, and keeps employees free to do their normal jobs.  When all of these things line up a retailer can increase their revenue by restocking only what is necessary.  McCann Investments & Advisory is one of the current investors in Pensa’s inventory drones.  James McCann, the investment firm’s CEO, spent many years leading grocery stores around the world and is well aware of the importance and difficulty of the inventory process.  Of this new venture Mr. McCann said, “It is now clear that the combination of AI and vision technology will have an enormous impact on retail store operations.  Having looked at the different start-ups in this area, I believe that Pensa’s combination of industry leading accuracy and much lower CapEx requirement will make them the winning options for most retailers.”

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