We’ve all been there: queuing up in store to return a faulty item only to be told you can’t as you have lost the receipt. This is exactly what happened to Tash Grossman and became the lightbulb moment for her award-winning retail tech startup, Slip.
The self-confessed shopaholic was on a date when she popped into Zara to exchange her pair of damaged trousers but, after waiting for half an hour, was told she wasn’t allowed to as she didn’t have the receipt.
Fortunately for Grossman, her date wasn’t put off – he is now her husband (the couple got married in July) and the idea for Slip was born.
Slip is a mobile app that is revolutionising the retail experience for both consumers and retailers.
Using the app, consumers can store their receipts all in one place while stores can offer the customers a digital receipt without having to ask for and type in an email address.
Using the app, consumers can store their receipts all in one place
But Slip isn’t just about “ditching paper for digital” says Tash, 27. It provides retailers with valuable insights into the consumer’s shopping habits and preferences, in turn allowing them to provide targeted marketing and personalised rewards.
A former management consultant at KPMG, Tash tells Jewish News: “I became fixated on this problem of paper receipts and there being a better way, so I decided to brainstorm. I wrote down ‘receipt app for shopping’ on a whiteboard.”
Tash Grossman had a ‘lightbulb moment’
Tash, who was working at leading digital and business transformation consultancy Gate One at the time, spoke to some retailers in her network and “quickly realised that the problem wasn’t just about lost receipts but also about working out a way for retailers to gain information about consumers” and so she built an omnichannel proposition around that.
Leaving Gate One in 2021, Tash spent 18 months building the business, which she launched in April 2023 together with CTO Eddy Herman, 29. The business is chaired by Brian Kalms, retail and technology expert with over 30 years of experience in the industry.
Earlier this year, Slip raised ￡2.5 million in seed funding, adding to the pre-seed ￡750,000 round they secured back in 2022.
And they are not alone in seeing the potential. Slip has partnered with major retailers including JD Sports, which have rolled out the technology in 400 of their stores, as well as Beyond Retro, which witnessed a 226 percent increase in newsletter sign-ups in a month as a result.
The round was led by Adjuvo and joined by Haatch Ventures, Unbundled VC, the Side by Side Partnership, and a range of angels including ASOS’ executive vice president of customer and marketing Dan Elton, and former CIO at Frasers and former CTO at John Lewis Julian Burnett.
“I think retailers are really buying into that post-purchase experience and being able to access data about the consumer,” says Tash, who was recognised as one of the Top 10 Disruptors and Innovators in Retail by the Retail Technology Show and Retail Insider earlier this year.
UK retail has faced a challenging 12 months. The UK high street has seen the collapse of a number of major brands due to rising costs and shoppers spending less. Yet while physical retail is suffering, the sector in general is facing a technological renaissance, with a variety of AI and machine learning innovations redefining consumer and brand experiences. From autonomous self checkouts, to mobile and voice ordering, to augmented reality try-before-you-buy solutions to digital receipts, the value of automated retail is expected to reach $33 billion U.S. dollars by 2030, according to Statista and estimates provided by Next Move Strategy Consulting.
Tash says retailers in the UK risk falling behind when comes to tech and digitisation as “they are having so many other challenges to contend with such as Brexit, regulation and rising business rates.
“It’s definitely an interesting time to be selling into retail.” She adds: “Almost no customer shops exclusively in store on line – it’s an omnichannel approach and that is where the future lies and we at Slip want to find out the reasoning behind consumer decisions.”
