Traxlo, the platform connecting gig workers with retail businesses, which for the last three and a half years has been successfully redefining how European grocery retailers source, price and verify work, has announced its UK launch. From today, it will be offering its outcome-priced, pay per task model to the UK grocery trade delivering the key benefit of added flexibility to manage operational issues, cover for peak times or for staff absence and sickness.
In its first three years, Traxlo started collaborations with 60% of the largest commerce players in Europe. In the same period, it delivered over 300,000 tasks, the top six being shelf restocking/replenishing; gap scanning; pallet handling; inventory control; product expiry management and e-commerce orders picking.
According to the European Parliament, 43 million Europeans are expected to work for digital labour platforms by 2025, a figure that Traxlo believes should be interesting to the UK grocery trade who are still struggling with the impact of Brexit. It is the combined challenge, of lack of full-time employee’s vs need for maximum flexibility at an affordable cost, which Traxlo helps overcome.
CEO and Co-founder, Paul Vezelis explains: “Brexit is just one challenge for the UK. There are plenty of reports and statistics about declining retail staff morale, a worsening labour market and the impact of higher wage costs and tax increases. Having tested and refined our model in Europe for the last few years, we are now in exactly the right position to empower UK retailers to manage a flexible, specialised, trained human resource on a pay per task basis. This model brings with it a time and cost reduction but also enables internal staff to focus on core, high-value tasks and improves a store’s local community engagement as it becomes recognised as both a place to earn as well as spend.”
The Traxlo process itself is straightforward and works both for grocery in store and warehouse requirements. Retailers, either at HQ or local level, set payment levels for each task in advance with Traxlo’s assistance and guidance. Tasks typically range from £3 to £50 and multiple tasks can be offered in a single retail outlet in one day. Tasks are then distributed locally via Traxlo’s gig worker app (tasku.app) which allows local gig workers to view and chose tasks they are qualified to undertake. Traxlo handles all quality control including initial legal right to work checks and task training with gig workers remaining the responsibility of Traxlo not the retailer.
Traxlo is run by CEO and co-founder, Paul Vezelis, who has a background in grocery technology and is also the author of Adoption of artificial intelligence tools by retail organisations. CTO and co-founder Almantas Zemblysbrings the technical software knowledge having previously worked at Swedbank for over four years. Traxlo is a graduate company (2020) from the Antler startup accelerator in Sweden and has already received more than €2.7m venture capital investment, from Antler, Iron Wolf Capital, Coinvest Capital, Bad Ideas Fund, Plug and Play, NGL and others.
