Market Report: Goods-to-Person Ecommerce Fulfilment Robotics 2023

2022 revenue remained high. Good confidence for 2023 despite confusing economic indicators. Further ipos expected in 2023 & 2024

2022, year of post-covid reverberations

• 2022 followed a year of exceptional growth in the g2p sector. However, whilst revenue remained above prepandemic levels, yoy growth largely dissipated and bookings more or less returned to pre-pandemic levels
• Younger startups reported
• Supply chain disruption continued apace and some observers hinted at a potential 20-30% revenue impact
• Geopolitically and economically, 2022 was a tough year with russia’s war in ukraine, inflationary pressures and a general sense of instability
• China retained many covid restrictions throughout 2022 complicating international ambitions for many vendors

G2p trends in 2022

• Raas was a more frequent topic and leading vendors released new pay-per-presentation solutions, however, the most popular raas format was rental raas
• Multiple startups appeared to have matured during the pandemic and may have found a niche in the market
• Insurance became a topic in the g2p sector, especially regarding fire protection and prevention
• The trend for larger system integrators to merge into mega-sis continued, however, there were also signs new integrators entering the sector with very strong customer propositions and engineering pedigree
• Warehouse execution became a thing in 2022 with plenty of vendors actively marketing software packages as wess, up from only a handful a few years ago

Prospects for 2023

• 2023 revenue was expected to continue at a good level across the sector based on existing order books from prior years
• However, there was also a level of trepidation for order bookings in 2023 with signs some customers were delaying decisions to gain more visibility where markets or retail sales were heading
• Most of the g2p startups were bullish about 2023, but this is to be expected

Continued supply chain disruptions

• Supply chain disruption continued throughout 2022 with higher prices and longer lead times causing margin pressures and scheduling problems for vendors and system integrators
• A few interviews hinted at things starting to return to normal, but planning for chaotic disruptions remained difficult

Ipo, m&a, etc.

• M&a activity in the g2p sector increased in 2020 and 2021, however, vc inflows declined in 2022 largely as a result of rising interest rates and geopolitics
• The queue of potential exits contained c.60 startups with 13 companies having raised >$100m each
• Rumours of potential ipos always fly around, but these strengthened in early 2023 and stiq expects at least one startup to go public in the year

Long & short term prospects

• The longer term health of the sector was positive despite underlying problems for warehouse operators such as lack of staff and increasing warehousing costs
• In the short term, increased competitive pressures was expected in the north american market as a few large retailers, notably including amazon, cancelled projects