Euclid raises $17.3M to go deeper into retail analytics

Retail analytics service uses sensors to measure foot traffic, bounce rate and line length in stores

E-commerce had a record setting holiday season, breaking spending records on both Black Friday and Cyber Monday, but the vast majority of items sold are in good old fashioned brick and mortar stores. Still, with the increased competition from the Internet, storefronts are being forced to become smarter and more in sync with their shoppers, what their needs are and how to best appeal to them.

That is where a company like Euclid, a real-world shopper analytics service, comes in. They give storefronts insights into customer shopping habits, so the store can better optimize its marketing and sales.

Retail analytics seems to be a pretty hot space right now. Only a week and a half after Nomi, one of Euclid's competitors, raised $3 million in seed funding, Euclid has announced that it raised $17.3M million in Series B financing.

The round was led by Benchmark Capital with participation from NEA, Harrison Metal, and Novel TMT Ventures. Euclid had previously raised a $6.3 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $23.6 million.

The money will be used to invest in the product by building out the engineering team, Euclid CEO Will Smith said in an interview with VatorNews. 

The money will also go toward supporting existing customers, making it easier for them to get the data and insights from Euclid sensors, and make it simpler for them to understand what the data means.

In addition to the funding, the company is also announcing the addition of Bruce Dunlevie, general partner at Benchmark Capital, to its board of directors.

Palo Alto-based Euclid is "Google Analytics for the physical world," Smith said. The company uses sensors placed inside retail store to gain insights and information about store shoppers, including how shoppers spent in the store, and how long lines in the store were. Euclid then reports this data back to the retailer so that it can use it to optimize the performance of their marketing, merchandising, and operations, as well as boost traffic, engagement, loyalty, and revenue.

For example, Euclid can see the bounce rate for an individual store, meaning how long a customer spent inside before leaving. If the bounce rate was high, meaning that people let quickly, it may be because lines were too long, and because the store was not staffed correctly by not having enough cashiers or employees assisting customers by the door. Retailers can quickly fix these types of problems by using Euclid's analytics.

The average customers for Euclid are very large retail chains and brands, Smith said. The site does allow small retailers to use a free, lite version of the software on its website, which gives a more limited view of the collected data, but all of the company's customers currently use the premium version. Each store pays Euclid $200 a month for each sensor that it installs.

While Smith would not reveal how many customers Euclid has, he did say that the company is "acquiring customers as a rate that would have been unthinkable only a year and half ago." 

The goal behind the company is to be the easiest, most widely deployed analytics solution, Smith said. And the company expects to do this by answering questions that have been asked by retailers for hundreds of year, but have remained unanswered.

"These are not new questions," said Smith, "but we are finally delivering the answers."

Competition

Of course, Euclid is not the only company in the retail analytics space, with services like Nomi and ShopperTrak doing similar services.

What sets Euclid apart from these other companies, especially Nomi, Smith said, is basically that it has been around longer and has been able to accrue a large number of customers. While Euclid was founded three years ago, Nomi was founded in August 2012, and has only been operational since September, giving Euclid a big advantage in terms of time.

Smith also pointed to what he called the "dream team" at Euclid, which includes Scott Crosby, the co-founder of Google Analytics, who is Euclid's COO and Michael Linton, enterprise CMO at Farmer's Insurance, who serves on the board of directors.

(Image source: https://euclidanalytics.com)