Berlin-based location intelligence startup Targomo is in the midst of an international expansion of its location analytics platform. Users now have access to information on locations in a total of 24 countries, seven of them outside Europe, and including the US.

Last year, Targomo relaunched a retail-optimized version of its TargomoLOOP platform with data for Germany, Austria and Switzerland. “From the beginning, we designed our platform for global use,” says Henning Hollburg, founder and CEO of Targomo. “The huge demand from customers has surprised us and is fueling the growth of our platform, where we have now integrated more than 350 data sets – and more are being added every week.”

Much of Targomo’s expansion success is driven by German-based customers who are also taking advantage of the analytics platform in their international expansion, whether in retail, quick commerce, or planning for gyms, restaurant chains, and Ghost Kitchens.

The analytics platform is also successfully used in the health and beauty sector. “We use TargomoLOOP to optimize our network as well as for expansion. We can use reliable data sets and discover new areas to set up new partnerships”, says Fabian Zimmermann, Teamlead Retail Management & Expansion at DrSmile. The dental care startup distributes its invisible aligners through a network of partner dentists and now also uses TargomoLOOP in France, Spain and Italy.

TargomoLOOP is an AI-powered location network analytics platform. The analyses are based upon precise travel time calculations, which are combined with socio-demographic statistics, movement data, point-of-interest (POI) data and geo-related company data. By pulling in a full range of business relevant datapoints and linking them directly to mobility patterns, the platform helps companies identify success factors and quickly make data-based location decisions.

“TargomoLOOP allows us to plan our locations much more effectively and quickly. We used to spend weeks researching, now we can make decisions in a matter of days,” reports Luukas Castren, Head of Expansion at Finnish Ghost Kitchen provider Huuva.

Luukas, what exactly is Huuva’s business model?

Huuva offers a turn-key service for restaurants that want to expand and grow their business. We manage delivery and takeaway-only kitchens which are powered by our own proprietary software and technology. Our partner restaurants pay us a commission fee, already including delivery and rent costs.

This sounds like a shared kitchen?

Partly. In general, the restaurant brands get their own sub-kitchen inside the larger venue. What is being shared is the dispatching part. Huuva provides a shift manager who helps the restaurants in the packaging and dispatching the food to the delivery couriers. This operation is supported by our technology.

Compared to other ghost kitchen companies, what is different about Huuva?

We work to make the food delivery industry more enjoyable, convenient, and profitable for all parties involved: consumers, restaurants, and the delivery partners. For consumers, we bring top restaurants to their favorite food delivery platform. When ordering on a platform – whether it’s UberEats, FoodPanda, or whatever – they are able to combine menu items from different restaurants into a single delivery. You can think of this like having a food court in your pocket. Also, our customers can rely on hot meals and excellent quality, as the kitchens are optimized for delivery. From the restaurant perspective, our model is a low-risk and low-cost way to grow. Huuva doesn’t demand any multi-year rental agreements, we do not require any heavy upfront renovations or other investment cost, and we take care of regulations and bureaucracy that comes with setting up a new kitchen. With us, restaurants can start cooking and serving new neighborhoods in a matter of days. With respect to delivery companies, we are able to improve their KPIs and add quality restaurant offering to their platforms.

When you say that your kitchens are optimized for delivery, what does that mean precisely?

Optimization starts already with site selection. We choose locations that support high volume delivery operations, as they are frequently visited by couriers on bikes and scooters. We also plan a layout that minimizes the number of steps people have to make inside the kitchen. Besides the physical aspects of the kitchen, our software helps the different brands to schedule their cooking under one roof, so that multi-brand orders are getting done at the right time. This way, the cooks don’t have to do any tedious cross-organizing.

How are the restaurants reacting?

Restaurants faced enormous challenges during Covid-19 and the lockdowns. Additionally, we see that consumer demands and trends are changing quickly, especially among younger generations in large cities. Restaurant owners also see that change. As with startups, many restaurant brands don’t live more than 5 years, so you need to innovate constantly and ideally stand out from the crowd. We see that cloud kitchen approach can help the ambitious restaurant owner in tackling all of these challenges and support them with rapid concept development and testing alongside getting most value out of their existing brands.

As head of expansion at Huuva, how do you decide where to move your business next?

We have very ambitious growth plans over the upcoming years. Naturally, we started in our headquarter country Finland, but are already expanding abroad. We want to be present in the fast-paced markets with enough volume in the delivery business already today and an exciting, lively food and restaurant scene. One of the best parts of our job is to learn and immerse ourselves in neighborhoods, city and country-specific consumer trends and plan how Huuva would fit there.

Can you give an example of how these trends differ geographically?

It’s crucial for us to find out how common food delivery is in the specific markets. In the Nordics, a consumer orders a meal delivery twice per month on average. As a contrast, in Greece, the average number is 15. And in Central Europe it’s something in between. And the consumption profiles can differ quite a lot. For example, Indian is super popular in London and the whole UK, it is not as popular in all of the Central European countries. But there are also differences from city to city and even from neighborhood to neighborhood.

 What is your strategy when entering new markets?

We have two approaches: The first one is bringing top quality restaurants to underserved neighborhoods. We believe that the trendiest and hottest restaurants shouldn’t be the privilege of city centers or certain hot spots, so we want to bring them to areas where we see customer demand which is not currently met with the existing restaurant supply. The second approach is to work in these city centers and hotspots by helping the restaurants there to separate their delivery business from their brick-and-mortar kitchen. When the dining hall is full, brick-and-mortar kitchens quickly reach their capacity limit, making them miss out on potential revenue.

 How do you assess the potential of new sites?

We do our own scientific location analysis with Targomo’s platform TargomoLOOP. It provides us with all the relevant sociodemographic data that is key to understanding different possible delivery zones. Combined with its analytics functionalities, the tool allows us to explore geographic areas that are new to us and objectively compare locations. The second step is to then evaluate how the prospective venue supports our layout and operational requirements.

 Where do you see the delivery market moving within the next few years?

McKinsey & Company released a topical and on-point analysis on the food delivery market in September 2021 which highlights the fact that the restaurant industry requires new business and operating models now and in the future. The cloud kitchen space has already seen different models, from virtual restaurant brands, optimizing the use of existing restaurant kitchen space to simple kitchen rental models. At Huuva, we see that you need to consider the challenges of all parties involved in the restaurant and food delivery industry to drive real, sustainable change and growth. Nothing else is certain than change and we are committed at Huuva to delight consumers daily and enable restaurants and food delivery companies to do sustainable business.

Thank you for the interview!

If you want to use TargomoLOOP to expans your location network or create delivery zones, learn more about the location intelligence platform or directly book your demo!

A media management graduate of Mittweida University of Applied Sciences, Luisa Sieveking is currently heading up our marketing and communications team, where she is responsible for the marketing strategy and its implementation.

Skilled in integrated strategic communications, digital strategy, social media marketing, media relations and European campaign execution, a steady career in marketing was always in Luisa’s purview. “I started my career in B2B/B2C communications agencies communicating for all kinds of products,” says Luisa. “What I liked most about agency work was the variety of tasks and topics I was given. But soon I realized that communicating complex issues suits me more than making a big tam-tam about the launch of a new shampoo.” So Luisa continued to specialize in tech topics, freelancing for tech startups and then working for an international funding program that introduced her to some of Europe’s coolest deep tech startups. 

Then she joined Targomo.

What she values most about working for Targomo? Again the variety of tasks, enhanced with the opportunity to take ownership. “We are still a very small team in marketing at Targomo. That’s where good opportunities open up for individuals to take ownership of topics and drive them forward independently. At the same time, it’s very exciting to be in an innovative pioneering role. We have a great technology that has the potential to disruptively change industries. That makes communication challenging and fun.”

Luisa cites lifelong learning as the biggest key to success in her field. “In the marketing sector, new technologies are constantly coming onto the market,” explains Luisa. “Trends are changing and new channels appear. In this race for attention, it’s important to keep a cool head (particularly for the B2B sector) and always ask yourself how relevant these new channels for your specific target groups are.”

The aforementioned confirmation comes when the team’s hard work pays off, and a media article is published, a new client is secured or an award is won. Her advice? Thoroughly enjoy it. “If you work for days and weeks on a project and finally you get the phone call telling you that you are in – let your heart make a big jump!

When she’s out of office, Luisa moonlights as a mountain hiker and used to participate in countless races in and around Berlin. Her runner motto? “The time doesn’t matter; being there is everything… How you feel is most important!” Recently, she has had to slow down her running pace further and instead goes for walks several times a day with her new housemate, a young crossbreed dog who keeps her on her toes.

Retail as we know it has been around for millennia, but as tech innovation continually evolves so too does how people shop. Understanding these patterns is the key to unlocking future growth. 

When we think of modern retail, that really started in the 18th century, no better example is the expansion of the United States of America.

As new towns and settlements popped up, so too did an abundance of “mom and pop” stores; small, local, independent, family-owned businesses selling everything from food to medicine. But as large population centres expanded quickly in the mid 19th century, along with innovations in transportation and electricity for power and lighting, European cities like those in the US contributed to the disruption in retail. In the late 1800s, the first department store was born in central Paris, a consequence of this urban transformation, when Le Bon Marché was set up by Frenchman Aristide Boucicaut.

Now, unlike the clusters of small shops that were so prevalent during the gold rush era, in Europe, customers could experience a wide range of goods and services under one convenient roof. But these department stores didn’t just sell items, they provided experiences like demos and in-store entertainment that took the shopping experience to a whole new level. Soon, household names we’re still familiar with to this day began popping up in major cities across the world. Names like Harrods, Macy’s and Sears.

At around the same time, the cash register was invented – and this was more than a device to store notes and coins in. The cash register meant businesses had a better way of working out whether they were making a profit or loss. Today, the cash register is a sophisticated, connected touch point that continues to revolutionise retail.

Then along came the car and retailers were quick to adapt to the growing trend of out-of-town shopping experiences and people living in the suburbs. In the mid-20th century, as car ownership grew, so too did shopping malls, those large “one-stop-shops” that sold everything we could possibly need under one roof.

Even before the advent of cars, other means of transportation made new ways of selling goods possible. It was the completion of the continental rail network that gave rise to the development of general merchandise mail-order shops. According to Britannica, “the ability to sell a variety of merchandise to farmers, at comparatively low prices, a postal rate structure that encouraged the dissemination of mail-order papers and catalogs, and the establishment of the parcel-post system in 1913 all contributed to the expansion of mail-order operations”.

Nevertheless, the bricks-and-mortar concept continued relatively unchallenged until not so long ago with the advent of the internet and a new golden age of shopping. Companies like Amazon have changed the retail landscape more in 25 years than anything else in the last couple of centuries. 

At the click of a button, you can now have anything from a pair of shoes to a new TV delivered to your home, in many cases the same day. According to a recent report, it’s hardly surprising to learn that 96% of Americans these days shop online while only 65% of shopping budget is spent in-store. Not so long ago our ancestors were shopping in markets, now 43% of people are making their purchases from bed. 

But as great as it is to get almost instant shopping gratification without leaving home, the joy of browsing, holding and interacting with goods has been diminished. The social aspect of shopping has been lost. And it’s why, especially in small towns, there’s a growing trend for local commerce, a trend gaining strength as people make more sustainable choices.

Just as we’ve seen throughout history, pivotal inventions, trends and consumer behaviours will continue to shape retail as we know it. As a society, we now have access to more data than we ever thought possible.

As Britannica writes: “Retail analytics is the process of using big data to optimize pricing, supply chain movement, and improve customer loyalty. Big data analytics in retail enables companies to create customer recommendations based on their purchase history, resulting in personalized shopping experiences and improved customer service. These super-sized data sets also help with forecasting trends and making strategic decisions based on market analysis.”

Successful retailers use analytics to understand how the demand for their products changes over time and in different locations. When they add consumer spending data to their models, they can discover how to meet customers where they are and stock their products more efficiently based on supply and demand.

Locations and territories play a crucial role in the success of any brick-and-mortar business. Geomarketing links location business data with information about regional markets, analyzes it and derives correlations. This way, geomarketing allows business to weigh up risks and potentials and thus to make quick decisions. 

A software engineering graduate of ENSEIRB-MATMECA in Bordeaux, France, Hugo Lucas is currently in the A-Team, where he has been looking after Targomo’s application programming interfaces (API) for the past two years. “I am mostly responsible for the Places Layers API and Places Context API (or POI service API, as we say internally) and the Location Scoring API which are written in Java,” explains Hugo. “I took part in the conception of those APIs and their further developments. It is really fascinating to witness the birth of a product and watch it grow in popularity in real time.”

For instance, back in May 2020 the Targomo engineering team participated in EIT Digital’s “Data Against Covid-19” hackathon against 19 other teams. “We developed a geospatial tool to analyze and visualize the capacities of intensive care bed units (ICU) in the face of the coronavirus pandemic,” describes Hugo. “We worked for 48 hours straight to shape a tool that was utilizing our APIs.” Another bonus?  Witnessing the dedication and team spirit in action. “It was a very special moment for me,” adds Hugo. “I was able to discover a lot about how my colleagues from other teams were working.” Spoiler alert: Hugo’s team secured second place and a cash prize, which was spent on an espresso machine and a pressed sandwich maker for the entire office to enjoy.

As a small startup, aside from the shared hunger for gourmet coffee and a passion for location intelligence, the Targomo culture gives Hugo the freedom to diversify his daily to-do list and become much more confident in his abilities. “I am not only coding powerful algorithms—I am taking part in their specification, conception, testing, documentation, presentation to the users, etc.,” says Hugo. “What motivates me is that our product is based on highly proven science. It has so many practical use cases.”

Case in point: Hugo even uses Targomo in his personal life. “Six months ago, I was flat hunting in Berlin,” shares Hugo. “I used TargomoLOOP to have a quick look at the quality of the flats’ locations before asking for a viewing.”

When he’s completely off the clock, you can find Hugo hanging out on Twitter. Catch up with him at @HugoLucasBLN.

A native of Hamburg, Niklas studied International Economics & Development at Universität Bayreuth before starting his career in global trade. Three years ago, Niklas pivoted to tech. “Previously I worked in a very traditional, impressive business segment. When I wanted a change, I chose to make a complete 180 and give my career a turn by joining a promising, fast-moving startup,” explains Niklas.

That startup was Targomo, where Niklas started as Key Account Manager and was one of our first non-tech employees. He now sits within Sales & Business Development organization, tasked with selling our complex, novel platform products and nurturing new commercial client opportunities. His successful work with some of Targomo’s largest clients has led to his recent appointment as Head of Enterprise Sales.

“I have always had a strong affinity for innovative products and solutions, much like the interactive maps that enable us to foster the power of geo-referenced data in a fascinating way,” says Niklas. “At Targomo, we are able to share valuable business insights that answer complex questions related to location, reachability and mobility.”

“In my current role, I have the chance to gain international experience and diversify my business knowledge,” adds Niklas. “I am driven by developing new markets and hunting for new business opportunities. Building strong and long-lasting relationships with our global partners is my professional passion. Targomo’s technology is bringing location intelligence to the next level—I’m thrilled to be a part of it!”

As one of our key sales personnel, Niklas is a well-known face of Targomo for many touchpoints, from events and pitches to on-site visits and personal demos. When he’s off the maps and out on the road, you can find Niklas searching for an amazing adventure in Mexico, or training for an upcoming triathlon.

Want to work with Niklas? Check out our open positions or send a speculative application!

They look beautiful and can be incredibly powerful when added to interactive map applications: Isochrones. Whether you want to show which areas are within walking distance of an office building or analyze the accessibility of a school by public transportation, isochrones offer a quick and easy solution. In essence, they show how far you can travel from a certain starting point, and often the individual travel time segments are also color-coded for better clarity. Here we give a brief introduction to the different ways isochrones can be used.

Targomo offers a wide range of geospatial tools that can be used to perform powerful location-based analysis, visualize detailed statistics, and solve complex logistical problems. However, here we will focus on one of the simplest, but most useful and therefore most popular APIs: the Isochrone API. The Isochrone API is used to visualize reachable areas from a source or a group of sources as polygons. 

So what is an Isochrone? Merriam-Webster defines an isochron(e) as “a line on a chart connecting points at which an event occurs simultaneously or which represents the same time or time difference.”. The shapes returned by the Isochrone API represent this by connecting all the furthest reachable points in the routing network from the given sources into a polygon. We refer to these as “reachability polygons” or “isochrones”. The definition is somewhat broader in our case, as we can visualize both time and travel distance, and also provide the ability to define multiple sources and aggregate the resulting isochrones. 

This can be used in a variety of useful applications, all of which fall into one of the 3 following scenarios: 

Whenever you want to intuitively visualize the areas that can be reached from a starting point within a certain travel time or distance, isochrones offer a quick, easy and relatively simple solution. You can implement them in such a way that users can choose between car, bike, e-bike, walking and public transport.  

The travel mode is crucial, because the results will vary greatly. This is due to the underlying routing, which represents realistic travel scenarios:  When traveling by train, your journey is largely determined by the location and number of bus and subway stops. When traveling by car, speed limits, the road network and traffic lights determine how far you can travel. 

Since realistic routing always takes into account obstacles such as lakes, rivers, bays, bridges, and mountains, isochrones provide a much more accurate representation of reachable areas than a radius ever could, regardless of the mode of transportation you choose.   

Once you start adding source locations, you can visualize and analyze much more complex reachability scenarios. One of the industries where this is becoming increasingly important is real estate search: On many real estate portals, people looking for apartments can create their individual search area based on several personal addresses (e.g., the workplace and child’s school) as well as the preferred mode of transportation. In a related use case, companies looking for new office buildings are starting to consider their employees’ addresses and commute times.  

It is easy to create polygons with more than one source, and you can define how these sources interact with each other. In terms of Targomo’s Isochrone API, we distinguish between three intersection modes: 

When displaying a group of locations to a user (such as a client, a business partner, or simply as part of a larger presentation), you may want to filter them by their accessibility from one or more starting locations. This is particularly useful for creating lists that take into account the user’s travel time constraints – for example, displaying workplaces that can be reached within 30 minutes by car, or vacation homes that are a 15-minute walk from the beach.   

With isochrones, it is easy to display only the places that are accessible according to individual travel preferences. The algorithm only needs to check  

By intersecting the point with isochrone polygons, you can determine which time-band the points are within (i.e. “< 10 minutes by car”) and sort them accordingly. This way, you can conveniently filter locations that are either 15, 30 or 45 minutes away from the source and help your users make sense of the data displayed.       

If you want to display or analyze the exact accessibility of places in terms of travel time, you should check out Targomo’s Travel Times API.   

Are you interested to dive deeper into isochrone creation? Our developer Gideon Cohen created a detailed step-by-step tutorial showing you how to create your own polygon maps with JavaScript. You could also jump directly into the code in the corresponding Github Repository.    

Thanks to the global pandemic, the business of micro-fulfillment is booming. Here, we take an in-depth look at the trend, how it works, how it expanded recently and if it’s possible for those living outside of urban metropolis areas. 

Short answer? According to DHL, ‘Think of it as AirBNB for logistics.’ Long answer? It’s the accelerated last-mile delivery of goods, thanks to the efficient positioning of small-scale distribution warehouses that utilize location intelligence systems to fulfill orders at a fast pace. Shorter distances between retailer and consumer ensure online businesses can operate in a much more productive (and profitable) manner. 

Over the last couple of years, this particular business model has grown exponentially. Take grocery delivery for example—during the pandemic, newcomers like Gorillas, Weezy, Flink and Gopuff gained serious market share, and are now expanding across Europe and the United States. And they’re picking up traction in more ways than one. This year alone, US-based Gopuff acquired British-born Fancy, and Berlin-based Gorillas was valued at over $1 billion. As a result, we expect micro-fulfillment to grow rapidly across other continents as well. 

If you’re wondering how these companies make money, it’s quite simple. Let’s compare it to the traditional grocery store: While the supermarket needs a larger space in an area that is also visible, a micro fulfillment center or dark store can be as small as 300sqm because the product range is limited to mostly premium brands. This leads to lower rents on average for the quick commerce players. 

Of course, there is other overhead to be considered, like riders, pickers and the overall number of dark stores that are needed to serve a city. However, if all these elements are well planned, there is a very high probability to run the business net positive. 

It’s been proven that micro-fulfillment can work seamlessly in urban settings with high population density. That’s where the micro-fulfillment centers can get close access to consumers and retailers can offer faster delivery at a low cost. The key is to actually ensure that a critical number of potential customers can be reached within the promised delivery time. Tools like Targomo Loop help to analyze the areas around the micro-fulfillment centers, and to create an overview of the catchment areas.  

The analyses take demographic data such as population density, household size, purchasing power, and consumer profiles into account, which allow the delivery services to precisely calculate their potential markets. 

By combining location and demographic data, Targomo Loop can visualize not only how far an e-bike can travel from a central micro-fulfillment center in 10 minutes, but how many people it can serve. However, retailers may need to specifically look for certain target groups and identify the cities and regions with the highest target group density. 

In this example, we are targeting people with age between 20 and 50 years and with medium to high income in the city of Berlin. 

As you can see, the people reached by that micro-fulfillment center are 109,138. 

A sufficient number of orders and the size of the shopping cart are crucial to the success of the business model. This is the reason why the service mainly benefits residents of a region with a very high population density. But would this system be successful and profitable in a more rural, less densely populated area? Let’s find another place, far away from the city, where the same target group density can be guaranteed. 

As expected, this isn’t an easy feat. With Targomo Loop we checked the town of Brandenburg an der Havel. The business model of Berlin city would not work, as just 11,208 people could be reached within a 10-minute e-bike ride. If someone wanted to roll out the quick commerce business in this area as well, they would need to adjust the conditions. From a location intelligence point of view, it would be possible if: 1) you swap e-bikes for cars as a mode of transportation, 2) increase the delivery window from 10 to 25 minutes, and 3) extend the target group to other demographics. 

Let’s take a look at the numbers:  

With these adjustments, it’s necessary to rethink the entire model. Swapping e-bikes for cars would significantly increase the overhead for the start-ups. Furthermore, an increase in delivery time from 10 to 25 minutes will lead to riders delivering fewer orders a day. On the other hand, with cars covering larger distances, provided consumers order around the same time, more households could potentially be serviced on the same trip, saving on delivery times and labor costs. 

Our take? The last-mile revolution seems to find its most fertile ground in big urban areas and may not come to rural residents anytime soon. 

What’s clear is that, to work, the micro-fulfillment industry needs precise location analysis. Businesses need to integrate their own data to analyze and predict order volumes. They need to fully customize their catchment areas: select means of transportation, speed and travel time. They need to calculate how many households they will be able to reach from a specific location. They need to anticipate which products will be in high demand in specific areas. And if they have a location network, they need to learn where they should open new centers to serve as many customers as possible.  

SERIES: RETAIL TRENDS THAT ACCELERATED DURING THE PANDEMIC

Hyperlocal shopping and services have gotten a tremendous boost during the pandemic. Ever more people are favoring to visit neighborhood stores and order products for immediate delivery. In this third article of our retail series we’ll discuss why hyperlocal has become more important, and how retailers are responding to this trend.

The term hyperlocal has been around for some time, but it has gained a lot of traction recently. In the context of retail, hyperlocal shopping refers to consumers buying products in their neighborhood. The coronavirus outbreak has supported hyperlocal shopping in two ways. Firstly, the pandemic has limited the mobility of citizens, forcing many of us to work from home. Even as lockdown measures have been eased or lifted in large parts of the US and Europe home office remains a reality for many. When life returns to a new normal, many employees plan to keep working from home, at least part time. Moreover, Businesses are considering to implement hybrid models. This reinforces the importance of local offerings around peoples’ s homes like shops, cafes and restaurants.

Secondly, the pandemic has changed the attitude towards local shopping. People see an increased value in local offerings and they have come to realize that their local spending keeps neighborhood stores alive. An international study by Adyen and Opinium found that two-thirds of those surveyed want to continue buying from local retailers to help them stay open, even after the pandemic.

Sales figures clearly point to increased demand in local stores. Last year in the UK, when citizens endured two lockdowns, total consumer spending dropped 7.1 percent versus 2019. However, local shops saw revenue growth of 29 percent, according to Barclaycard payments data.

Local purchases expanded even stronger this year. UK shoppers spent an extra 69 percent at local food and drink retailers, such as butchers, bakeries and convenience stores, in May 2021 compared with May 2020, according to Barclaycard figures. This happened even as shopping restrictions had been lifted in the country a month earlier, and outpaced overall consumer spending growth of 7 percent in May.

For consumers, local shops offer clear benefits. Neighborhood stores are easy to reach, and take less time to enter and exit compared with their big-box peers. Similar to on-demand delivery of groceries or meals, these hyperlocal shops offer instant fulfillment, and therefore convenience. These benefits can outweigh the disadvantage of running a smaller product assortment, which is often the case for local stores.

Retailers are aware of the need for hyperlocal shopping and are resetting priorities. Even before the pandemic hit, businesses such as supermarket chain Target, sports brand Nike and fashion store Nordstrom had been opening smaller, local shops. This trend has accelerated. A few months ago, French supermarket chain Système U announced plans to open almost 400 new locations of its U Express convenience stores by 2024, up from 800 currently. Ikea, known for its car-friendly locations on the city’s outskirts, is opening 50 new small-format stores in urban areas around the world, including Queens, New York City. Customizing products and services to local tastes and reaching new target groups are among the prime reasons for Ikea to open these smaller, local shops.

In a research note, consultancy BCG sums it up as follows: “Where consumers value ultra convenience, retailers must evolve their physical footprint from large stores spread over wide areas to a dense network of smaller stores hyperclose to the point of consumption.”

Hyperlocal also refers to services and products fulfilled and delivered locally. Often, people order them online, such as groceries and meals, and receive them instantly. This is also known as hyperlocal e-commerce, quick commerce, or on-demand delivery. We’ve discussed examples in our previous articles about grocery delivery and ghost kitchens.

Home services such as appliance repairs, cleaning and personal grooming can also be classified as hyperlocal. Companies offering these services typically hire or contract a team of employees to work in specific geographic areas, where demand is expected to be high. The hyperlocal services market, which also includes food and grocery ordering, and logistics services providers, is expected to more than double to reach $3.6 trillion by 2027, according to Allied Market Research.

The higher importance of local shopping represents a big shift for retailers. Traditionally, footfall has been the key metric to determine where to open new branches, while neighborhood demographics mattered little. But when local shoppers are a retailer’s focus, data on residents become crucial in addition to the footfall in the micro-environment. Location selection needs to take this into account.

Furthermore, it has an effect on the product assortment. As Ikea’s example shows, knowing the local makeup of neighborhoods and residents’ preferences is essential to create the right offering in each area. The hyperlocal trend is closely linked to catering to local tastes. The focus on neighborhood communities allows retailers to trim down their product mix, and only offer what is in demand in a specific area.

Combined with people’s changed consumption and working behavior following the pandemic, hyperlocal shopping and service delivery may continue to be an important trend for many retailers in the future.

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Berlin / Winterthur – Swiss location intelligence consultancy Crosswind has teamed up with technology provider Targomo, offering companies in Switzerland even more options in the area of location and geo analytics. By combining deep knowledge of corporate processes, market expertise and state-of-the-art geo-technology, Crosswind and Targomo are making customized location analytics available to Swiss customers.

Crosswind, based in Winterthur, enables organizations to integrate geographic referenced data into existing business processes. It helps companies to develop tailor-made, geo-analytical procedures, making their operations more efficient and performant. “There is incredible potential in location-based data,” says Tobias Brühlmeier, managing director of Crosswind. “The spatial component in business intelligence is becoming more and more important, and the analytical possibilities ever more diverse. Targomo’s technologies, such as routing, offer customers the possibility to analyze geodata in very large quantities very quickly, and to visualize it in a way that is easy to understand for the customer.”

Targomo, a thriving Berlin-based technology company, offers TargomoAPI, a collection of data services to create custom maps and geospatial data and geospatial analysis applications. Crosswind has already successfully used these applications to analyze, for example, customers’ travel times in the retail industry, or to calculate the costs of relocating telecommunications cables.

Through the cooperation, Swiss customers now also have the opportunity to use location intelligence platform TargomoLOOP at an enhanced level with professional support from experts in business and geo analytics. “With Crosswind’s expertise and market knowledge, country-specific consulting is now available,” says Hennig Hollburg, managing director of Targomo. “This includes the procurement of Switzerland-specific data as well as the enrichment of corporate data with geo-referenced data, which Swiss companies can benefit from.”

TargomoLOOP not only enables businesses in retail, hospitality and logistics to analyze their locations and optimize their networks. They also gain valuable insights to increase sales, save costs and create decisive competitive advantages. Organizations in the mobility and energy supply industries can also profit from TargomoLOOP, for example, when it comes to planning a network of electric charging stations.

Crosswind is a company specialized in location intelligence, analysis of geographic information and optimization of geo and address data. Geo-enabling business processes, geographic profiling of customers and branches, process-optimized preparation of geodata and the cleansing and consistent structuring of address data are our passions – since our founding in 2013. Customers include BKW, KünzlerBachmann, Mobility, Swisscom, Sunrise UPC and Volvo, among others. www.crosswind.ch

Targomo helps business and public organizations harvest the power of advanced spatial analysis. Targomo was founded in 2013 and is based in Berlin and Potsdam. The Location Intelligence company was awarded as one of Europe’s top five Deep Tech companies at the EIT Digital Challenge in 2020. Targomo has customers in more than 20 countries and include retailers, such as Deichmann and Getränke Hoffmann, and real estate portals like SeLoger, Immowelt and newhome.