Start-ups in retail technology are growing and Retail Week is highlighting some of the best. This week Foko is in the spotlight.

Foko is a private photo-sharing platform that allows in-store staff to share merchandising displays and receive feedback. Co-founder and chief customer experience officer Eric Sauve explains more.

Key facts

Founded 2014

Investment £1.4m seed round from investors including seed venture fund Real Ventures.

Retail partners Whole Foods, Esprit

Founders Eric Sauve, Marc Gingras, Colin McDonald

What it does

Foko is a photo-sharing app for retail teams.

Dubbed ‘Instagram for retailers’, the app allows staff to upload and share photos on a private and secure platform for faster merchandising validation, easy best-practice sharing and  communication with other teams.

Foko's app allows in-store staff to share merchandising displays and receive feedback

Foko

Foko’s app allows in-store staff to share merchandising displays and receive feedback

Foko is designed to give retailers real-time insight into all in-store operations across their estate.

Co-founder Eric Sauve says: “Foko helps build a culture of excellence around display and store management.

“Users can share images of merchandising and layouts, displays that worked, displays that are broken, and pictures of the people behind the work, while significantly reducing the amount of time spent on merchandising validation.”

What problem it solves

Foko’s mobile app is designed to streamline the traditional merchandising validation process for bricks-and-mortar retailers.

Staff can take photos and upload them directly to Foko’s platform, which can be viewed on a mobile or desktop computer. Regional managers can then offer feedback via comments and visual annotations.

Retail staff can sign up to Foko’s app using their company email address and are then added to platform that is shared by all other users with the same domain name.

“The majority of retailer’s in-store staff are millennials, so it’s a no-brainer for retailers to employ the millennial tool of choice — mobile — to engage their staff and share best practices,” says Sauve.

More information: Foko.co