CES 2018 - Highlights from Tech West & Eureka Park

Relevant Retail and CPG Trends at CES Tech West 2018  Each year Tech West at CES features a combination of all things connected (home, health and  wellness, fitness and sports and family tech) as well as Eureka Park, which showcased nearly 1,000  individual tech startups in 2018. This year, MediaLink’s Tech West floor tours focused on the emerging  technologies that will impact retail, QSR and CPG food/beverage. MediaLink curated the floor around  specific interests for our clients including:    ● Future of Retail/Shopper Experience  ● Health & Fitness  ● Personalization  ● Impact of AR/VR, AI and Automation  ● Packaging Technology  ● Other Must-see Tech and Gadgets 

  Fast-moving consumer goods companies and their distribution and retail partners maintain symbiotic  relationships that have been fine-tuned over decades. At CES this year, we see technology moving in  faster than ever to disrupt those long-standing roles and partnerships. Below are some relevant  examples we experienced at CES 2018’s Tech West venue that provide a glimpse into how technology  is shaping the future of retail and CPG/food & beverage. 

  1. PHYSICAL RETAIL DISRUPTED AND REINVENTED 

Autonomous and Augmented Physical Retail  Aipoly -​ ​www.aipoly.com  Aipoly’s mission is to turn any retail space into a fully autonomous  market with no queues and no checkout. Aipoly uses visual  recognition technology and AI to track individual shoppers  throughout a store and recognize each item they take from shelf or  case and automatically charge shoppers upon exit. Aipoly cleverly  solves the “occlusion problem” (difficulty deciphering overlapping  individuals and shapes in 3D space) using technology that maps  unique relationships of human joints.    Robomart ​- w ​ ww.robomarts.com  Groceries are soon to be a $1 trillion business worldwide, and  perishables like fresh produce make up around 60% of all groceries  sold. However just a tiny fraction of that - less than 5% - has moved  online because people like to pick their own produce. To solve this  and create other retail opportunities, Robomart is building a fleet of  on-demand, self-driving stores that will be licensed to retailers to  create affordable on-demand delivery services.    Page 1 of 6

CES 2018 - Highlights from Tech West & Eureka Park

2sens -​ ​www.2sens.co  2sens is a smartphone-ready VR/AR software platform that enables virtual  content to be naturally incorporated into the real world providing what they call,  “true mixed reality.” Their unique technology analyzes a scene in real-time  through a smartphone camera and enables 3D virtual content to naturally  interact with the real world. Like Aipoly, 2sens is tackling the vexing “occlusion”  problem by interpreting 3D objects in the environment and knowing where  virtual content should exist and be rendered in 3D space (e.g., on top of a shelf,  in front of a package, etc.). 2sens can have many VR/AR media applications  including making retail experiences more fun and engaging.    Count3r​ - w ​ ww.count3r.com/en  Retail and technology expert, G ​ ene Munster Managing  Partner​ of L ​ oup Ventures​, believes that eCommerce will top  out at 55% of total retail sales. Count3r is a solution built to  augment and bring the other 45% at physical retail into the  future. As part of S ​ tartupDelta​ and ​Holland’s Startup Pavilion  at CES, Count3r showcased their tablet-based personal  assistant platform that helps store associates provide the in-depth information  that smart shoppers demand in high-spec, high-consideration retail categories.  The company has already proven the platform’s ability to increase in-store  conversion and basket sizes by up to 20% while saving sales associate time and  increasing knowledge on the store floor. 

Voice and Content Partnerships Bring Food/Bev Discovery Home  Whether it’s ambient home speakers, smart kitchen appliances or in-car media, this  year saw a slew of partnerships between content publishers and connected device  manufacturers. Two most notable are the acquisition of Yummly by Whirlpool and the  growth and pervasiveness of Meredith Digital’s Allrecipes platform across the digital  ecosystem.    Whirlpool+Yummly​. Acquired by Whirlpool in 2017, Yummly will integrate curated  cooking experiences into Whirlpool. The Yummly app identifies recipes, orders  groceries and sends recipes to appliances as Yummly and Whirlpool seek to simplify  meal times.    Meredith’s​ Allrecipes is Everywhere. T ​ he #1 food media brand globally,  Allrecipes.com​ reaches 55MM uniques worldwide, is a top 10 social site and a  staple of meal and recipe discovery on the internet. Allrecipes can now be found  powering Amazon Alexa as an exclusive first-party skill for cooking and the site’s  owner, Meredith, has also forged partnerships with Samsung to power recipes,  list-making and food preferences in their smart, “Family Hub” refrigerator and  begun work with a major automaker on in-car integrations.  Page 2 of 6

CES 2018 - Highlights from Tech West & Eureka Park

  2. Home Dispensing Disrupts the Manufacturer to Consumer Value Chain  B2B Cosmetics (EMUAGE) -​ ​www.e-muage.com  Emuage u ​ ses a home dispensing system  containing the active ingredients found in  most skin care products to prepare  personalized cosmetics in minutes at home.  The Emuage system is designed around a  smart system of water demineralization,  QR-coded ingredient capsules and an app  capable of skin scanning and generating  customized recipes for cosmetics and skin  care regimens. The company is bringing a new  level of personalization and transparency in cosmetics production to the consumer.    Altopa (Oblend)​ - w ​ ww.oblend.com  Altopa’s dispensary enables consumers to make custom  herbal remedies at home. O ​ blend​ creates teas, tinctures,  culinary oils, massage oils, lotions, aromatherapies and  supplements from legal herbal extracts and essential oils. The  company produces capsules of essential oils and extracts of  legal herbs like echinacea and lavender and then provides an  app with recipes from experts and an online community to dial  up precision blends.    LifeFuels​ - w ​ ww.lifefuels.co  LifeFuels​ is a water bottle that provides optimized beverages  customized to one’s unique metabolism and daily routines. Their  Bottle works by providing simple and easy choices for vitamins,  energy supplements and natural ingredients to help athletes and  everyday people perform at a higher level throughout their day.    Mitte​ - w ​ ww.mitte.co  Mitte​ enables consumers to create their own mineral water, just as  nature does. Inspired by natural purification and mineralization,  Mitte is a smart home water system that enhances water through  a process that replicates the natural water cycle. It works in two  simple steps: first, it purifies water with a proprietary  distillation-based method then enhances it with essential minerals.  Page 3 of 6

CES 2018 - Highlights from Tech West & Eureka Park

3. TECH MEETS ORGANIC AND FOOD TRANSPARENCY MOVEMENTS 

Want Pure, Traceable Foods? Grow it Yourself.  Grow​ - ​www.hellogrow.com  My personal favorite of CES 2018, ​Grow​ promises to bring the ease and enjoyment of the “Blue Apron”  home cooking business model to growing your own plants and vegetables. The company has created  the world’s first intelligent planter that waters and monitors moisture, temperature and sunlight  conditions, effectively providing a mini weather station. The company ships these modular planters  preloaded with soil and provides ready made “seed sheets” for a range of greenery and edible  vegetation. The result is a turnkey approach that empowers novice gardeners and their families to learn  while eliminating the mistakes that can ruin an entire season and discourage lifelong enthusiasm for  growing.                       

  Opcom​ - w ​ ww.opcomfarm.com  Opcom takes “locally grown” to a whole new level with its  modular, hydroponic Opcom Farming and Growpod system.  It enables controlled indoor growing of food and plants from  small kitchen setups to retail and large-scale industrial  applications. Their futuristic Growpod exhibit inspires  thoughts of future kitchens equipped to grow their own  food, juice bars or grocery stores that redefine “fresh” for  their shoppers, schools that teach kids how to live  sustainably or even Martian installations that enable space  explorers to sustainably grow fresh vegetation.    Spirugrow​ - w ​ ww.spirugrow.it  Billed as “the food of the future” and "the ideal food for mankind” by the UN,  Spirulina is an algae-based whole superfood rich in minerals, vitamins and  proteins that can be consumed by humans and animals. It packs in more  nutrition than any herb, plant or grain on the earth; e.g., 180% more Calcium  than milk, and 670% more protein than Tofu. Spirugrow is pioneering  consumer technology to grow this at home and begin to infuse it into  different aspects of cooking and daily food consumption.   Page 4 of 6

CES 2018 - Highlights from Tech West & Eureka Park

 

Food Quality, Safety and Supply Chain Traceability    Aryballe Technologies, NeOse​ - w ​ ww.neosepro.com  Just as computing and sensing technologies have come to rely on visual and  auditory inputs, smell is on track to become a new sense incorporated into our  AI-enabled and autonomous future. Arybelle is early to market with their portable,  universal odor sensing technology that records scents with unique detailed digital  signatures that can be used for a wide array of applications. In food and beverage,  their technology will be used in manufacturing to monitor quality and consistency,  cosmetics companies will engineer highly nuanced fragrances and consumers will  see this technology appear in their refrigerators to detect when food has spoiled.        Merck Pharmaceuticals - aCe Project​ - w ​ ww.merckgroup.com  The global black market for counterfeit pharmaceuticals and fake medicines  is estimated to have reached $75B to $200B per year. This not only impacts  pharma profits but represents a global health crisis not only because patients  are not getting the medicinal cures they need but many fake drugs can have  negative health effect. To combat the global counterfeit pharmaceuticals  problem, Merck’s aCe provides an anti-counterfeit solution that combines  novel nanotech scanning with a robust blockchain architecture. aCe scanning  technology reads QR codes down to the the digital ink signature level, making  it very difficult to counterfeit, and then uses a robust blockchain architecture  to record and verify supply chain and distribution transactions. This technology promises to have  applications well beyond the pharma industry to food, beverage/spirits as well as apparel and luxury  goods.   

Takeaways and Implications Going Forward  At CES this year, we see the continuing evolution and blowing apart of traditional food and beverage  industry value chains by things like eCommerce, home dispensing, autonomous retail and new delivery  capabilities. At the same time, technology is providing more power and transparency than ever over the  choices we make in the nutrition and remedies that support our lifestyles. CPG and retail companies  need to adapt to these new pathways in discovering and purchasing what we consume and continue to  solve for some important challenges such as:  ● Just how far will consumers go to personalize and control the ingredients and attributes of the  foods they consume?  ● What will be the role of traditional CPG brands in a world of personalized foods and beverages?   ● How will these new tech-enabled pathways to discovery of products and ingredients impact  how marketers reach and engage end-consumers?  ● How will physical retail continue to evolve as a complement to eCommerce and increasingly  connected shopping behaviors?  Page 5 of 6

CES 2018 - Highlights from Tech West & Eureka Park

  For more information on MediaLink’s innovation strategy offerings for brands and agencies,  go-to-market and growth strategy for media and technology companies as well as curated journeys at  important industry events like CES, SXSW, Cannes and other venues contact:    Bill Westcott, SVP  MediaLink  1155 Avenue of the Americas, 8th Floor  New York, NY 10036  [email protected]  www.linkedin.com/in/billwestcott/  O: 646-722-3610  M: 917-687-6915 

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