S Group and Foodie.fm win gold at the Channel Innovation Awards

HELSINKI, May 23, 2012 /PRNewswire/ --

The awards highlight cross-channel success

S Group, Finland's leading grocery retailer, and Digital Foodie, the company behind Foodie.fm, the world's first fully personalised social shopping platform for groceries, have been awarded gold in the Channel Innovation Awards. The second annual Channel Innovation Awards by US based Retail TouchPoints honour retailers achieving cross-channel success.

Foodie.fm is a personalised eCommerce and recommendation platform developed by Digital Foodie Ltd. At the awards, the service outshone leading retailers such as Marks & Spencer and Target. The Channel Innovation Awards highlights the benefits of cross-channel marketing and services to consumers.

"We are extremely pleased with this international recognition. Online commerce for groceries is evolving fast and the level of competition for the awards was high. However, we know that the work we do for personalised social groceries is something that no one else in the world has yet done," rejoices Kalle Koutajoki, CEO of Digital Foodie.

In less than two years, Foodie.fm has grown from a digital cooking assistant to interactive and personalised eCommerce platform for groceries. Foodie.fm already has over 220 000 users in Finland, which is impressive for a country of 5.3 million inhabitants. In addition to the integrated online community Foodie.fm operates a full-scale online grocery store for S Group. This enables S Group's customers to buy groceries online as well as from their iPads and smartphones.

Foodie.fm is at the heart for all S Group's digital grocery services. S Group continues developing new services to ease the everyday life of their customers.

"Our goal is to develop new interactive and personalised services that make shopping groceries easier and fun. Foodie.fm is continuously evolving to become more transparent and customised for individual needs. Currently we have real-time price and assortment information available online for 630 stores and by the summer we will have information online of all our stores. This level of pricing transparency is unique even on a global scale," explains Ilkka Alarotu, Director from the S Group Grocery Chain Management.

Notes to editors:

2012 Retail TouchPoints Channel Innovation Award Winners
Platinum winner: Republic
Gold winner: Tesco
Gold winner: S Group
Silver winner: Envelopes.com
Silver winner: David's Bridal
Bronze winner: Marks & Spencer
Bronze winner: Target
Bronze winner: Step2
Honorable Mention: Stop & Shop

To view the complete report, please visit http://www.slideshare.net/G3Com/channel-innovation-awards

About S Group

S Group consists of 21 regional cooperatives and SOK Corporation, which is owned by the cooperatives. The S Group's purpose is to provide services and benefits for its co-op members - 2 million Finnish households. The total of retail sales in 2011 was 11.461 million euros. The store network consists of 1,668 outlets employing over 42,000 people. S Group operates a number of retail brands and provides services for the supermarket trade, service station store and fuel trade, the department store and speciality store trade, the tourism and hospitality business, the motor trade and accessories as well as the agricultural trade. S Group is the market leader in grocery business of Finland with market share of 45,2%. There are 62 Prisma hypermarkets in Finland. In addition to Finland, the Prisma chain operates in the Estonian (7), Latvian (3), Lithuanian (2), and St. Petersburg markets (9). S-market is a supermarket chain, which has over 430 outlets. Sale and Alepa chains consist of almost 340 neighbourhood stores. http://www.s-kanava.fi

About Digital Foodie Ltd.

Foodie.fm is a multi-platform service designed by Digital Foodie. It is a fully personalised social shopping platform used by major food-retailers and brands. The core of the service is formed by highly personalised food and product recommendations that make everyday shopping easy and fun. For retailers, the Foodie.fm platform provides all the tools needed to run modern eCommerce operations and home deliveries. Foodie.fm is currently available on the web, Facebook, iPad, iPhone, Android and Nokia platforms. Digital Foodie is headquartered in Helsinki, Finland. http://www.foodie.fm