Greetings from the Big Apple!
In January, we went on a New York trip full of inspiration, innovation, and information – and we want to share our key takeaways with you!
We enjoyed fun days in great company with partners and customers. We were proud to join as partners with Retail Institute, who arranged this annual New York trip and also hosted their popular CityWalk through the streets of New York.
NRF and the future of retail
NRF’s Big Show was a great opportunity to see first-hand how the technology and product landscape in retail is evolving. We got a glimpse of the retail future – and that didn’t disappoint! Technology is advancing rapidly, and it’s exciting to see how the retail industry can benefit from technological developments. New technology can support retailers in meeting their customers’ demands and creating a more customer-friendly shopping experience.
For retailers, there’s a huge pain related to security when it comes to the rising SCO trend. It’s therefore comforting to see how new technology can make the SCO shopping experience more secure to the benefit of both the retailer and the customer. An exciting initiative to optimize security is shopping basket control.
Shopping basket control to prevent theft
To prevent theft when using SCO solutions, retailers usually do random spot checks of baskets. But there’s another way! You can implement a shopping basket control at checkout. When customers have scanned their goods through your app, they’ll have to place their basket on the basket control at checkout to ensure the weight of the basket is consistent with the scanned goods. We snapped a picture for you to see this new initiative:
Self-checkout shopping carts with SCO
Another exciting new initiative is self-checkout shopping carts. They come in different variations with different features – the one in the picture enables the customer to scan their products as they’re placing them in the cart. The customer can pay for their goods directly from the cart without having to remove them for scanning. This is especially ideal for bigger purchases, where the customers can keep the goods in their cart all the way to their car in the parking lot.
Major hardware producers do pilots on AI product identifiers
Another trend, especially for the convenience market, is AI product identifiers. Solutions that can identify your products without using the traditional barcode but instead use advanced camera technology to identify the products based on shapes, colors, text, etc. Many vendors have these solutions in pilots, and a few are live in stores, e.g. Mashgin, in Maddison Square Garden, and other places.
The user experience is great – simply place your products on a plate and let the technology capture and transfer your basket directly to the POS. It makes you ready for check-out in a few seconds. This is faster and more convenient, and thereby creates shorter lines and a faster shopping experience. The future is here!
Unattended shops are evolving
This one is especially exciting to us! The retail technology for unmanned shops is evolving to ensure safety and user-friendliness. We can expect to see more unattended shops in the future – an exciting upcoming trend in retail! And the reason why it’s especially interesting for us? We’ve just launched our newest product 52UNATTENDED for unmanned shops!
We’ve also done a deep dive on the topic, diving into the need, the concept of unattended shops, technology and security, FAQ, and how to get started. Follow the link below, and get your article.
We enjoyed our New York trip and have returned with exciting new knowledge about the future of retail. It has been a trip full of inspiration, innovation, and information. We can’t wait to see how these new trends will shape the future of retail!
