Leav

Leav is a Canadian retail technology company providing a cloud-based, smart store platform designed to automate and streamline in-store operations. The company was founded in 2019 by high school friends Olivier Roy, who serves as CEO, Charles-Étienne Simard, the COO, and Kaloi Tomov, the financial manager. Their entrepreneurial journey began with a mobile payment solution for restaurants; however, they were forced to pivot when the COVID-19 pandemic impacted the hospitality industry just one month after they had quit their day jobs. This led to the development of their current retail-focused platform, inspired by the operational efficiency of cashierless stores like Amazon Go.

Leav's core business revolves around its Smart Store Platform, which enables retailers to operate in staffed, self-service, or fully autonomous modes. This flexibility allows businesses such as bakeries, specialty retailers, and micro-markets to extend their operating hours, even to 24/7, without a proportional increase in staffing costs. The company's primary product is a mobile self-checkout solution, often called "Scan & Go," which permits customers to scan product barcodes with their smartphones and pay directly through the app, thereby reducing checkout times by as much as 85%. The system integrates with Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Shop Pay. Beyond customer-facing features, the platform offers retailers tools for real-time pricing updates across all stores, managed access control with digital keys, and analytics like heat-maps to optimize store layout and product placement. The business model is primarily subscription-based SaaS, with pricing starting from $99 per month, targeting a wide range of clients from small independent retailers to larger chains.

The company has achieved several key milestones, indicating steady growth and investor confidence. After an initial friends and family round of $150,000 in 2020 and a seed round of $113,000 the same year, Leav secured $2.3 million CAD in a seed funding round in December 2023. This round was led by Exo10.vc, a fund managed by serial entrepreneur Nicolas Bouchard. Leav's strategy includes deploying its solution to over 100 stores in Canada and exploring expansion into the United States market, targeting primarily apparel and "main street" retailers rather than large grocery chains.

Keywords: retail automation, mobile self-checkout, Scan & Go, smart store platform, cashierless checkout, retail technology, SaaS for retail, store operations, customer experience technology, POS solutions, autonomous stores, hybrid retail model, in-store analytics, digital pricing, access control for retail, Olivier Roy, Charles-Étienne Simard, Kaloi Tomov, Exo10.vc, retail innovation, Shopify POS integration, customer identification technology