Tech Co Trax Buys Shopping Rewards App Shopkick

Trax, a global technology company based in Singapore, has acquired U.S.-based Shopkick, a rewards app that tracks customer behavior, according to a report by Bloomberg.

The move adds to Trax’s stable of retail tech. Shopkick users can earn rewards and gift cards by watching videos, browsing offers, traveling to stores or scanning items on shelves. The amount Trax paid for Shopkick wasn’t disclosed, but it was acquired by SK Telecom in 2014 for $200 million.

Shopkick has clients like EBay, General Electric, Unilever and Lego, and it tracks customer usage and loyalty for those companies.

“Bringing together shelf and shopper data will deliver new and powerful insights to consumer-packaged-goods brands and retailers,” Trax Chief Executive Officer Joel Bar-El said.

Trax is also finalizing the finer points of a deal that would raise $100 million at a valuation of more than $1 billion.

Large brands, including Coca-Cola and Nestle, use Trax’s technology to track their products on retail shelves. The company has 175 clients in 50 countries. Warburg Pincus, the largest shareholder in the company, became aware of Trax when team members kept hearing the company’s name. It was a similar experience for shareholder Boyu.

“We were impressed by the wide recognition of Trax’s cloud-based, one-stop-shop solutions,” Boyu Managing Director Joey Chen told the news outlet. “We believe that Trax is best positioned to help clients in China navigate the digital transformation.”

Trax originally began not as a way for brick-and-mortar retailers to fight back against eCommerce’s rapid gains, but rather as a way to balance the precise data of online shopping with the familiarity and convenience of browsing an actual shelf. However, the scales are tipped in that fight — online retailers don’t need to contend with limited floor and shelf space when displaying products on a site.

With Trax’s SaaS-driven solution to in-store displays, retailers can start designing product layouts based on factors most likely to induce sales, simply by snapping a picture of a shelf and waiting for Trax to crunch the numbers on how it could be improved.

The company is planning an initial public offering (IPO) within the next two years, and it’s in contact with the Singapore Exchange over a potential dual listing. The company was founded in 2010.