Tobi has partnered with Poq, a SaaS-based native app platform developer for retail, to relaunch its mobile app in time for the 2018 holiday season. The fast fashion brand, which serves customers in more than 100 countries, will debut the new app in November.
“Poq’s feature-rich SaaS platform, deep domain expertise, best-of-class support and unrivaled reputation working with global retail brands made this a clear decision for us,” said Kenneth Chan, CEO of Tobi in a statement.
The retailer’s app relaunch coincides with a new Visual Search functionality offering from Poq. The image recognition feature enables shoppers to snap or upload a picture and quickly receive similar matches to the desired item, all within the mobile app.
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“Users can ask what the product is, or seek a closest match to the image,” said Poq Co-Founder Mike Haan in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “It’s a much more exciting and modern way to shop on mobile. The old-school way to do it would be for the shopper to type ‘Long red dress, size 10, with frills’ into a search box.”
Additionally, the UK-based Poq is increasing its investment in U.S. operations by opening a New York City office. The solution provider held a $13 million Series B funding round earlier this year that brought its total raised to date to more than $21 million.
“The U.S. always has been an important part of our vision,” said Haan. “We started to gain traction with customers here in 2014. We’ve been fortunate that we had early adopters such as Tobi and Urban Planet, a Canadian retailer. We found that North American companies wanted to partner with us even though we are based in the UK.”
Other new functionalities in the latest iteration of the Poq mobile app offering include:
• Currency Switcher: Retailers can add multiple currencies, allowing consumers to switch between countries and currencies, allowing them to more easily target and engage customers beyond their borders;
• iOS12: Poq leverages new iOS12 features that are designed to quicken in-app actions and group notifications, and increase control over app screen time; and
• App Performance: A new settings microservice is designed to distribute configurations more efficiently and improve app performance. The feature enables users to store bag and wish list information locally on the device and remove API calls.
