Time reports that Cooler Screens claims to have spent $45 million making and installing doors in the first 700 stores, $88 million on doors that haven’t been installed and more than $100 million on third-party vendors.Ĭooler Screens is seeking injunctive relief to prevent Walgreens from removing the smart door technology that is installed, and compensatory damages of $200 million for breach of contract. Walgreens officially terminated its agreement with Cooler Screens in February 2023, according to the Chicago Tribune, at which point Cooler Screens claims that fewer than one-third of the smart doors called for in the agreement had been installed. Specific financial details of Cooler Screens’ arrangement with Walgreens have not been disclosed, but in the complaint Cooler Screens says that it agreed to invest $200 million in the technology and deployment for the 2,500-store rollout. Lipsman is a major proponent of in-store retail media and also worked briefly at Cooler Screens in 2021. The company also has agreements in place with Kroger and Circle K.īecause the investment required to put these new technologies in place can be hefty, many startups in the space operate under retailer tradeoffs for example, the technology company takes on the CapEx costs of integrating the new devices in exchange for revenue shares on the advertising, explained Andrew Lipsman, Principal Analyst for Retail and Ecommerce at Insider Intelligence in a conversation earlier this year with Retail TouchPoints. In-store activations are widely seen as the next big area of opportunity in the burgeoning retail media sector, and Cooler Screens has been one of the biggest players bringing this technology to life in stores to date. As current Chairman of Cooler Screens, Wasson was central to the negotiations with Walgreens and is now a named litigant in the complaint against his former company. In a further wrinkle, Cooler Screens was co-founded by Walgreens’ former Chairman, CEO and Board member Greg Wasson, who led the retailer from 2009 to 2014. However, the lawsuit asserts that those plans began to fall apart in 2021 when current CEO Rosalind Brewer took over and “decided she did not like how the screens looked and she wanted them out of the stores.” According to Cooler Screens’ account, all was going well in the initial years of the arrangement, which included a successful three-month pilot in 2018 at six locations, followed by plans to expand to 2,500 stores.

Cooler Screens is seeking $200 million for breach of contract and is seeking to prevent the retailer from removing the screen technology from its stores.Ī detailed timeline released by Sitrick and Company, the law firm representing Cooler Screens, outlined the deterioration of the companies’ relationship, which began in 2017 under former Executive Chairman and CEO Stefano Pessina. In-store digital media startup Cooler Screens is suing Walgreens, previously one of the highest-profile adopters of its technology, which integrates smart screens onto cooler doors to power in-store advertising.

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