In 2003, in a dimly-lit bedroom in Surrey, England, Eagle Eye was born. Although the business started "sort of by accident" (Steve Rothwell, 2022), it was founded on one core principle – treating people as they'd like to be treated.
The company was founded in 2003, with its origins traced back to a simple yet ingenious idea by our founder, Steve Rothwell. He was stuck at home, unable to meet his friends for a drink, and so came up with a solution to enable individuals to buy digital beer coupons which could be redeemed in their local pub. The aptly named buymeabeer.com perfectly combined Steve’s three passions - solving problems, seeing things he’s built in the hands of real people in the real world and, of course, beer. The solution worked, but that was just the start. Within the next few years, the small team of Eagle Eye-ers (many of whom are still working here today) had secured contracts with the likes of Tesco, Pizza Express and Asda (all of whom are still customers today).
In 2016, Tim Mason joined Steve Rothwell, becoming Eagle Eye’s CEO and bringing with him 30 years of experience working at Tesco in a number of senior management roles. Most notably, Tim was CMO from 1995 - 2006, where he was responsible for the launch of Tesco Clubcard, a very early pioneer of loyalty and something he is still deeply passionate about today.
Now, more than 20 years since its inception, it’s safe to say we’ve come a long way and that the Eagle (Eye) is soaring - you can check out our milestone moments here. We are now a team of +250 problem solvers, powering personalized marketing at a massive scale for some of the biggest and best-loved retailers in the world. But the core principle of treating people as they would like to be treated remains at the heart of our organization and serves as the secret behind our resounding success.
Our award-winning technology is designed to empower retailers to treat their customers how they wish to be treated (aka - in a personalized way), aligning with our own internal culture, which is driven by the same concept.
"You should treat people right because it’s the right thing to do. But great things happen when businesses apply this to their marketing too."
Tim Mason
In January 2023, Eagle Eye were delighted to announce that they had completed the acquisition of Untie Nots, a French high-growth SaaS company, delivering AI-based personalization solutions to enterprise retailers. Founded in 2016, Untie Nots’ mission was to deliver more effective tools to improve digital promotions and loyalty through gamification, and through their acquisition, we were able to add Carrefour, E. Leclerc, Auchan and other leading brands to the Group’s customer base.
"We are thrilled to join forces with Eagle Eye and extend the reach of our combined solutions. Our companies share the same vision for retail personalization and customer engagement, transforming the one-to-one relationship between brands, retailers, and consumers.”
Cédric Chéreau, founder of Untie Nots, Jan 2023
In January 2024, Untie Nots became EagleAI, the data science arm of the Eagle Eye business, focused on building and delivering next-generation personalization solutions to leading retailers worldwide.
EagleAI is a modular, customer-centric, and AI-based solution built specifically for the grocery and retail sectors. By using customer data to generate – and execute - personalized customer experiences at scale, EagleAI represents the next generation of data science for retail marketing, one that is focused on meeting each customer's wants and needs individually, optimizing promotional spending, and increasing ROI, and enabling true one-to-one engagement that ultimately drives loyalty.
Through Eagle Eye and Untie Nots' combined solutions, enterprise retailers worldwide can deliver personalized promotions to individual customers at unrivalled scale, accelerating their personalization strategies and improving the overall performance of their loyalty and promotional initiatives.
"With Eagle Eye AIR's ability to bring together multiple customer and contextual data points to create real-time offers and communications and EagleAI’s ability to activate customers through gamification and AI-powered logic to deliver the most relevant offers and rewards, the possibilities for retailers are almost limitless."
Tim Mason