Retale

Retale operated as the U.S. extension of Germany's Bonial.com Group, a global entity in digital circular advertising. Bonial.com was established in 2008 by Christian Gaiser, who brought experience from finance and consulting roles at firms like Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Company. Retale's business model was centered on digitizing traditional print retail circulars for mobile-first consumers, connecting them with local deals and driving in-store traffic for its retail partners. The company generated revenue by charging retailers for featuring their promotions on its location-based platform, which served a large user base across multiple countries.

The platform's core service was a mobile app and website that provided users with location-based access to digital versions of weekly retail ads. This allowed shoppers to browse deals, search for specific products on sale, create shopping lists, and receive alerts. For its clients, which included major retailers like JCPenney, Target, and Macy's, Retale offered a way to reach consumers who were migrating from print to digital channels. The company guaranteed increased foot traffic for some promotions, providing a tangible metric of its service's effectiveness.

A significant milestone was the February 2017 acquisition of Out of Milk, a popular shopping list application with nearly ten million downloads at the time. This move was strategic, aiming to integrate a different stage of the consumer's shopping journey—list creation—into Retale's ecosystem and nearly doubling its U.S. user base. However, Bonial Group later ceased Retale's U.S. operations in November 2017, citing an inability to achieve desired profitability. Subsequently, Bonial sold the Out of Milk app to InMarket in June 2021.

Keywords: digital circulars, mobile shopping, retail advertising, location-based deals, shopper marketing, customer journey, retail technology, foot traffic generation, mobile coupons, shopping list app