After the success and the results obtained by the Accelerator for the FinTech and the InsurTech, Digital Magics, the most important incubator of "Made in Italy" digital startups active all over Italy, launches "Magic Wand Retail Revolution": the first program acceleration in Italy dedicated to the Retail sector aimed at early stage startups.
Auchan Retail Italy, Cisco, Nava Design, Nexi, RDS 100% GREAT SUCCESS, SisalPay and UBI Banca are the partners of the program and will be directly involved in the selection, mentorship and development of the chosen startups, which are creating innovative and original products and services for the retail market (platforms, infrastructures and technological tools, Artificial Intelligence, smart stores, product digital customization, customer experience, logistics, advanced payment systems and blockchain).
"Magic Wand Retail Revolution" represents a system alliance between important Italian brands that have understood the strategic nature of innovation in the relationship with their customers. The aim is to innovate the market for retail and retail services, and to improve the offline and online customer experience for an increasingly connected, intelligent, integrated and multi-channel company. The program aims to support the development and growth of the best Italian startups, which are designing internationally scalable business models, bringing them to the "go to market"
The Retail market is growing all over the world: in 2017, retail sales of products, online and offline, record + 10,1% in China, + 3,8% in the US, + 2,5% in the UK, + 2,2% in Germany, + 1,4% in France and + 1,2% in Italy. The only e-commerce product market is worth 670 billions of euros in China, 400 billions in the USA, 70 billions in the UK, 50 billions in Germany, 45 billions in France and 12 billions in Italy (Source: 2017 Research of the Digital Innovation Observatory in the Retail of the School of Management of the Polytechnic of Milan - www.osservatori.net).
Today there are more than 1600 Italian innovative startups that potentially deal with Retail, about 17% of the over 9.700 registered in the Register (43,5% e-commerce, 16,3% AI, 11,3% IoT, 10,9% Big Data; 9,7% logistics; 3,7% retail and GDO; 2,7% Bot and Chatbot and 1,9% fidelity and loyalty program (Source: Digital Magics processing on InfoCamere, Atoka, CERVED data).
To apply for "Magic Wand Retail Revolution" you must submit your project within 13 January 2019 on the http://magicwand.digitalmagics.com platform. The 10 startups that will pass the selection will begin the acceleration program in February 2019, inside the Digital Magics incubator in Milan, and will immediately receive a contribution from 5.000 Euro.
The first 2 months of the course will be dedicated to qualified training: over 300 hours of courses, workshops and master classes with managers of the various areas of a sales point, CEO of large companies and successful startups, managers, marketing experts and growth hacking, creatives and developers of platforms and interfaces.
In 2019, there will be a further selection in April: the 6 best 10 startups initially chosen will become part of the stock exchange incubator portfolio and will complete the acceleration process. The 6 startups will also receive, together with the start of the second phase, a cash investment of Euro 15.000, in addition to the investment in acceleration services, by Digital Magics.
A Program Manager, acceleration program partners and mentors of the Digital Magics team will support the 6 startup finalists in the last 4 months, following them with periodic meetings to bring forward their growth: work on KPIs and product and service, define the objectives and metrics to be achieved and to improve the business model up to the "go to market".
At the end of the program an Investor Day will be organized for the winning startups of "Magic Wand Retail Revolution", which will present their innovations to the most important Italian and international business angels and investment funds. Digital Magics will in turn invest in the investment rounds of the 6 startup finalists.
"The satisfaction and success, in terms of quality and results, obtained from our Magic Wand acceleration program dedicated to FinTech, which ended last July, convinced us to start immediately with a second project, this time focused on the Retail world: ' Magic Wand Retail Revolution '. By constantly analyzing the digital trends on an Italian and international level, the worlds of retail, retail and e-commerce represent in my opinion the areas that have changed more than others over the last ten years and which will change again, in the future next, thanks to the technologies. For this reason we have chosen to open a specific focus on Retail. We want to contribute strongly to innovate this market starting from the startup business models, which will work together with us and partner companies to create new retail players and stores of the future ", states Layla Pavone, Digital Magics Chief Innovation Marketing and Communication Officer.