LONDON (ShareCast) - (Sharecast News) - Intellectual property investment company Tekcapital updated the market on its wholly-owned portfolio company Lucyd on Friday, which develops smart glasses and an online retail shop for advanced eyewear.
The AIM-traded firm said Lucyd was expanding its online presence to Walmart.com and other new platforms, in addition to its presence on Amazon.

It said that presented a new opportunity for the company to reach the "rapidly expanding" Walmart online customer base, which was estimated to make up around 6% of the entire e-commerce sector in the United States.

There were around 45 million monthly visitors to Walmart.com, and about 75% of the products sold came from third-party sellers.

In fiscal year 2019, Walmart.com saw a 37% growth in sales, with much of that growth coming in the fourth quarter.

Tekcapital said that in the wake of the changing retail landscape, Lucyd was "aggressively expanding" its online direct-to-consumer efforts, in a global push to make its smart glasses available to consumers that needed them.

In addition to the Walmart.com presence, where Lucyd would provide direct fulfilment, the company had also listed its flagship 'Loud 2020' line on both the eBay marketplace and the Mercari selling app.

The large audiences on those marketplaces would help Lucyd reach even more customers, with eBay estimated at 167 million active users worldwide and Mercari at approximately 15 million.

All new platforms that Lucyd had joined were likely to experience an uptick in sales traffic, the board claimed, due to the increased reliance on ordering online as a result of the closure of non-essential shops due to the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic.

Furthermore, Lucyd had joined several other new and growing marketplaces, including the OfferUp app, the Letgo app, and had also opened an Instagram shopping portal.

Those new platforms afforded a greater degree of customer engagement, it claimed, compared to the "relatively unilateral" experience on most channels, in addition to providing contactless delivery.

Tekcapital said it believed the new developments would have a positive impact on Lucyd's brand visibility.

"Buyers, particularly our core audience of millennials, are consistently shifting towards decentralized marketplaces such as Walmart.com and Amazon, and peer-to-peer selling apps," said Lucyd chief executive officer and co-founder Harrison Gross.

"These new marketplace presences are part of our broader plan to modernize the eyewear industry, and bring our next-gen frames to cutting-edge retail experiences."

At 0934 BST, shares in Tekcapital were down 0.66% at 15.15p.

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