Vionvision Partners with Trio to Set A New Benchmark for An All-round Smart Retail Services in New Energy Charging Applications

To embrace the era of industrial upgrade of new energy, various applications of retail digitization and smart retail, including big data-driven advertisement reach-out, integrated marketing of regional EV charging stations network, intelligent tracking and analysis of customers’ moving trajectory, are emerging around the EV charging ecosystem.

Since early 2024, Vionvision Ptd. Ltd. (“Vionvision”), a pioneer in computer vision sensing and AI analysis technology, and Trio Industrial Electronics Group Limited (“Trio Group”), a leading manufacturer and distributor of advanced industrial electronic components and products in Hong Kong, have commenced an in-depth discussion and exploration of the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the smart retail sector. After more than half a year’s effort, leading by Ms. Zhang Jingjing, Chief Executive Officer of Trio Group, and Mr. Wesley Ma, Chief Marketing Officer of Vionvision, two parties officially signed the “Belt and Road” Regional Strategic Cooperation Agreement on 29th August 2024.

This strong alliance signifies that both parties will focus on exploring smart retail applications in EV charging stations, new energy chargers and advertising solutions. Targeting the customer traffic sensing and demographics analysis, coordination and synergization, as well as decision-making, both parties strive to establish a set of all-round AI innovative technologies and industry-level solutions which provide one-stop retail data services to the upstream and downstream cooperative enterprises and to enable them to reduce cost and increase effectiveness and efficiency.

“Cloud – Edge – Terminal” Smart Retail Solutions Are Coming True

As one of the earliest “explorers” of smart retail in the “Belt and Road” economic belt, Trio Group is building a network of more than 100 offline EV charging stations and advertising media, which is an important foundation for co-innovation and cooperation with VionVision. This foundation allows both parties to offer data-driven smart retail analysis and solutions to new energy charging station customers, advertising brands owners, store owners in the ecosystem and property managers.

Trio Group and Vionvision, after evaluating privacy applicability, edge computing capabilities, hardware integration, algorithm customization needs, and solution standardization, adopt the approach to fully integrate artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) and business intelligence platform (BI) in the collection, correlation analysis, and output of all retail data inside and outside the new energy ecosystem. The parties will focus on the following areas:

1. CPA (Cost per action)/ CPS (Cost per sale) advertisement placement: Based on the correlation between customer traffic and corresponding purchase/re-purchase behaviour during the advertisement airing time, instead of traditional cost per thousand impression (CPM) placement method, CPA/CPS can maximize ROI (return on investment) for advertising brands owners;

2. Data chain integration: With the jointly-developed OpenAPI, the two parties provide customized data aggregation and distribution rights to different categories of upstream and downstream users;

3. New energy chargers with intelligent customer traffic analytical function: Trio Group has developed a brand-new type of new energy charger fully integrated with AIoT devices, which senses and analyses customer behaviors, product transactions, and purchasing outcomes throughout the entire sales cycle, from when the customers enter and park at the charging area until they leave. It also offers opportunities for secondary marketing (repurchases and membership system).

4.Optimization of regional customer traffic and store leasing: By analyzing the store traffic and sales data of the flagship store(s), Trio Group and VionVision’s one-stop smart retail solution can amplify its aggregation effect to a certain extent, and effectively improve the overall retail performance and rental income within the charging junction hub;

5.A/B test and integrated marketing: Different unconventional displays, like new energy vehicles exhibition areas and pull-up advertising banners, are compared and analyzed through AI reports to give the most effective recommended results.

Ms. Zhang Jingjing, CEO of Trio Industrial Electronics Group Limited, stated, “After securing the development rights of Sinooil’s 143 charging stations in Kazakhstan, Star Media’s advertising media network and the e-commerce business of new energy vehicles, spare parts and ancillary automotive services with Alibaba in the region, we reached a cooperation agreement with VionVision who will provide the terminal-wise customers traffic analysis for the charging stations and charging junction hub and both parties will work together to complete the software integration. This collaboration enhances Trio Group’s business development in the region. Today’s Trio Group, keeping its origin as a high-tech manufacturer of EV charger and surrounding power supplies products, enters an in-depth cooperation with super-power partners, to develop master class new energy related industries. We shall exploit our capabilities from product R&D; production capabilities; supply chain management to sales marketing and after-sales services, on an OMO model. Coupled with our own developed AI and big data analytics tools applicable to the ecosystem of our EV charging stations, an economically viable business model is to be developed in the Central Asia region.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Wesley Ma, Chief Marketing Officer of Vionvision Pte. Ltd., also expressed his high expectations for this cooperation, said, “2024 is the ‘most practical year’ for the global AI industry to move from laboratory research to the execution of real application scenarios. At the critical moment when LLM companies are still looking for applications, Vionvision and Trio Group have found a mutual match in new energy, smart retail and multiple other fields through complementary advantages and industrial combination. With the enhanced edge-computing capabilities, non-biometric features and demographics extraction and correlation analysis of customer traffic, as well as enriched new retail functions on the basis of big data, the ReID (Person Re-Identification) smart retail service solution jointly explored by the two parties will iterate the data experience of retail operators in three dimensions: ‘Cloud – Edge – Terminal’.”

About Vionvision
Since its establishment in 2005, as the earliest generation of AI enterprises, Vionvision has been committed to combining AI applications and computer vision in the commercial retail industry, realizing one-stop innovation and application of “Cloud – End – Edge” solution. Up to now, Vionvision has accumulated more than 30 invention patents and over 300 related intellectual property rights. Globally, VionVision has served more than 1,800 shopping centers and department stores, real estate developers and property service groups with its pioneering ReID non-biometric people counting technology. Meanwhile, patented TrueFlow 2.0 staff exclusion and customized smart retail functionalities have supported more than 300 supermarkets, brands, food & beverage chain restaurants, automobile dealerships, pharmacies, and other retail clients to achieve data digitization and smart operations. In the future, with the extensive coverage of front-end AIoT sensing devices, VionVision is striving to become the leader in digitization upgrade for international commercial retail industry.

About Trio Group
Trio Industrial Electronics Group Limited is a manufacturer and distributor of advanced industrial electronic components and products in Hong Kong with 40 years of industry experience. It is also the first Hong Kong-based industrial electronic company awarded with the Industry 4.0 maturity certificate – Industry 4.01i level. The Group’s major products include smart charger, electro-mechanical product and switch-mode power supplies, which are widely used in smart city system, medical and healthcare sector, as well as renewable energy field. The Group has built up good reputation and become a trusted supplier to various international well-known brands. Majority of its clients comes from Europe and US while some from Southeast Asia and PRC. In addition, the Group and its partner has developed its own EV charger solution – Deltrix since 2017, which has been launched in the European market in response to the global efforts to develop smart economies.