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From the warehouse to the corner shop, retail is being rethought and reconfigured. At WIRED’s annual Retail conference, startups, thought leaders and investors discussed a new era of retail where technology and data are at the forefront. In the Test Lab, those new ideas could be seen in the form of the latest innovative products, all newly launched or available in beta.
On the Keynote Stage, the brightest minds in retail revealed their insights into the future of the industry. John Lewis’s own futurologist, John Vary, gave a sneak peak inside Room Y: the basement of the department store’s HQ on London’s Oxford Street. There, engineers and designers tinker away at workbenches using 3D printers, laser cutters and toy furniture to test out ideas and bring them to life. He says that continuously questioning the future of the industry is the only way to stay ahead. "What will voice be like in 2030? Will we even have smartphones then? What can we change now that will make life easier for us in the future? These are the questions you need to ask," he says.
Those questions are being answered by technology such as augmented and virtual reality. Head of innovation at the London College of Fashion, Matthew Drinkwater told the audience how he has adapted a range of photography techniques for use in online retail and developed AR and VR systems for showcasing new products. At the most forward-thinking retailers, depth sensing, image quality and facial recognition are changing how brands sell to customers."It's going to allow us to start placing almost photorealistic people and products into the real world with consumers,” Drinkwater said, describing how this will improve how high fashion is displayed online.
Jeni Fisher, business development manager at Google Play Apps, agreed, saying retailers need to start making use of smartphone functions such as cameras and sensors: “When you think about in-store experiences, many of my clients are trialling scan-and-pay technologies. That enables things such as eliminating the need to queue." These sorts of capabilities are not just what is becoming available, but what consumers are expecting, says Karen Pepper, head of UK at Amazon Pay. She told the audience that consumers are becoming more digitally savvy and now expect online transactions to be quick, seamless and secure, which will further drive the need for convenience and simplicity while shopping online.
Sandrine Deveaux, managing director at online retailer Farfetch’s “Store of the Future”, said the key to her vision for the retail future is linking the online and offline worlds. “It’s about a seamless merge of a fantastic physical experience with powerful yet subtle technology – not technology for technology's sake,” she said. For Kira Radinsky, eBay Israel’s chief scientist, people’s offline lives are another piece of the puzzle. “In the past we had our online existence and our offline experience,” she said. “We’re going to unite these with AI.”
An example of this is happening at Facebook. Martin Harbech, director of retail, e-commerce and fintech at the social-media giant, said people are now being confronted with products – razors, slippers, mattresses etc – they never knew they needed. He calls this “the disruption of mundane things”, a phrase that encompasses the recent flurry of startups that take boring products in saturated markets and made them interesting to new audiences.
This theme explored during a lunch panel with Qubit CEO and founder Graham Cooke, director of technology at ColourPop, Nathan Dierks, and CEO of Wolf & Badger George Graham, who agreed that AI is transforming mobile shopping. A prime example is Qubit Aura, which launched in beta this year. The software changes the products a person sees on a mobile site based on their personal behaviour.
Away from the Keynote Stage, there was ample opportunity for delegates to network. In partnership with B2B software platform Stuart, multi-award-winning creative innovation company Inition, and RFID-based microchip technologies company Taglette, WIRED Retail featured an interactive exhibition of the latest retail technology that could be tested by the guests. One of the highlights included Berlin-based Twyla, an AI-powered customer-service chat platform that offers a “conversational enterprise” layer for online businesses – claiming better-educated chatbots powered with data. Piccadilly On marked the activation of the newly refurbished light wall at Piccadilly Circus by asking people to sponsor a pixel colour within the spectrum to collectively build up a wall of colour in aid of Barnardos.
On the Access Stage, the a selection of up-and-coming startups pitched their ideas to a panel of judges. The winner, Stowga, was congratulated for its innovative solution for making use of empty warehouse space – think Airbnb for warehouses. Founder Charlie Pool launched Stowga's on-demand warehouse marketplace with the aim of helping retailers scale their logistics needs in line with their business needs.
Helen Merriott, consumer products and retail leader at EY UK, said the retail landscape will need to disrupt within itself to keep up with consumers’ changing needs and values. “Today, there’s now complete transparency in price and in what people are saying about products, which means consumers have this massive expectation,” she said. As millennials gain more spending power, what they want matters, and their values now prioritise a traceable product that comes back to a brand with a bigger purpose than just making money. Janine Albrecht-Webb, GM digital and technical marketing integration at Shell, echoes this call for reinvention and letting go of brand heritage. “We have to embrace the digital transformation journey," she said. "And make sure we are always relevant."
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
