Page 26 - HW December 2019

retail edge
The search for the “ultra- convenience” store continues
INTEREST CONTINUES TO develop in “autonomous” retailing. Its highest profile adherent so far has been Amazon Go.
Amazon operates nine automated Go stores in Seattle, Chicago and San Francisco and reportedly aims to open as many as 3,000 such units in the next few years.
Other online players are also interested in what injecting “grab & go” into bricks & mortar can do for their digital businesses.
Take JD.com with its automated X-Mart concept. Spanning some 20 outlets in China, the X-Mart system uses image recognition, RFID and QR codes.
Alibaba too, has its all-digital Freshippo format and is also testing automated outlets in the form of its Tmall Future Store. But there are more ways to reduce friction in retailing than
adapting fixed bricks & mortar. Take the staff-less NanoStore
concept from AiFi of Santa Clara, which melds the consumer benefits of the firm’s proprietary AI and cashless systems with
the retail convenience of pop-up and is a high profile and highly newsworthy way to showcase AiFi’s real end game – getting retailers to subscribe to its back end systems.
A quick-payback, “white
label” concept designed to be branded by the retail customer, NanoStore is a modular, portable, less than shipping container- scale presence with roughly around 18m2 of retail floor area, whose modest footprint allows placement in a wide variety of situations (photo below).
Customers use a credit card or mobile app to enter, shop
as usual and just walk out, having automatically paid for their goods (thanks to cameras with imbedded object algorithms which track every item on the shelves) using the retailer’s existing payment system and optionally checking their emailed receipt.
Although designed as unattended outlets, stock replenishment does of course require human intervention, with AiFi’s technology alerting the kiosk manager in real time on inventory needs.
Swiss convenience store operator Valora is an early NanoStore partner with its “K Kiosk Box” whose small scale enables easy
colocation at key sites targeting commuters (top photo).
NanoStore’s latest commercial application, for European food retailer Albert Heijn, is now operating at Amsterdam’s Schipol Airport, at the world’s fourth busiest international airport.
http://nanostore.ai/
24 NZHJ | DECEMBER 2019
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