Co-op UK And Digital Goode Expand Their Partnership With Deployment Of Headless Commerce

Digital Goodie, the Finnish creator of the award-winning Digital Goodie Connected Commerce platform, and Co-op, the British convenience store operator and consumer co-operative, have announced the next step in their cooperation around Co-op’s first dedicated online grocery shop and home delivery service. First launched in March 2019 as a proof of concept, the convenience retailer has plans to offer same-day online city-centre deliveries from 650 stores by the end of 2020. As of November the service has entered a new phase operating according to the headless commerce paradigm with Co-op developed consumer frontends in production use.

The combination will create one of the most powerful, scalable industry players with a complete suite of e-commerce applications.

The Co-op builds its online vision on the same strengths by which it excels in brick-n-mortar, convenience being a major factor. Co-op’s vision is to make ordering food online as convenient as ordering takeaway food. This vision demands a lot from the underlying e-commerce platform. Given the Co-op consumer promise, super-fast home deliveries are a requirement and the Co-op is aiming to have groceries delivered as rapidly as under two hours from order. Delivery is not the only aspect that needs to be fast, however, and the Co-op recognizes the need to be equally fast when it comes to the user experience innovation. This is where headless enters the picture.

Co-op’s online service and ecommerce operations run on Digital Goodie’s Connected Commerce platform, a software as a service (SaaS) platform. The platform is designed to provide an end-to-end service to retail customers, and includes commerce, OMS and in-store picking modules all optimized for FMCG. The commerce engine follows the headless paradigm, providing logical separation between user interface and business logic layers. Retailers can take full control of the end user experience, utilizing the open API’s of the platform to build and design their user experience without dependencies on Digital Goodie as the platform vendor.

When originally launched the Co-op’s service was using an online storefront designed by Digital Goodie as the initial launch version. The vision of Co-op was always to take full control of what matters most: the end user experience. Co-op’s Digital Team started designing & building their own storefront implementation, on-top-of the Digital Goodie platform, soon after the first online store went live in March. The first Co-op developed storefront went live soon after in August, and as soon as end November all traffic had been diverted to the Co-op’s own site. The Co-op case is proof of how fast development can take place, when supported by a robust platform.

The vision for the near future includes native mobile applications, which will again be developed by the Co-op’s own Digital Team. Co-op Digital Team has busy times ahead with all the planned functionality driven by the ever increasing speed of innovation in the industry and the demand for convenience by consumers.

Chris Conway, Head of Food Digital at the Co-op, comments: “Convenience lies at the heart of our offering and as part of this, we have major online expansion plans which will make it easier than ever for customers to shop with us. Such growth can only be facilitated with a digital partner that offers modern and agile technology and we’re delighted to continue our work with the Digital Goodie team who are intrinsic in bringing these plans to life.”

Moris Chemtov, Global CEO of Digital Goodie, said: “When we started our journey with Co-op we were impressed on how focused they are on digitalization, and how agile they are in their approach. The speed by which they were able to design and build their own storefront is a testament to these traits. However, it is also a testament to the robustness and completeness of Digital Goodie’s headless commerce platform. We are proud to be the first platform vendor to truly bring headless commerce to the grocery industry, and look forward to many more wins in the upcoming months”.

Digital Goodie’s customers include leading retailers in Scandinavia, the Baltic region and the UK. The company has built the entire digital shopping experience for Finland’s largest retailer S Group with more than a million consumers using Digital Goodie’s retail cloud shopping solution in the country. For Digital Goodie, the partnership with Co-op is an important expansion in one of the most advanced online grocery markets in the world.

About The Co-op
The Co-op is one of the world’s largest consumer co-operatives with interests across food, funerals, insurance, and legal services. It has a clear purpose of championing a better way of doing business for you and your communities. Owned by millions of UK consumers, the Co-op operates 2,600 food stores, over 1,000 funeral homes and it provides products to over 5,100 other stores, including those run by independent co-operative societies and through its wholesale business, Nisa Retail Limited. It has more than 63,000 colleagues and annual revenue of £9.5bn. For more information, visit www.coop.co.uk.

About Digital Goodie
Digital Goodie is a Finnish digital commerce technology company providing a modern and fully customizable connected commerce platform aiming at connecting online and brick and mortar worlds to one seamless and simple user experience. The Digital Goodie Connected Commerce platform was included in the Gartner Digital Commerce Vendor Guide 2018 among the leading applications of the digital commerce ecosystem. The platform runs on top of a new generation microservices architecture consisting of modular commerce and fulfillment solutions.

Digital Goodie was founded in 2009, and has headquarters in Helsinki, Finland. Digital Goodie is backed by the US based eCommerce growth fund Black Dragon Capital. For more information, visit http://www.digitalgoodie.com.