The five most important retail tech news stories of the week

It’s Friday, the week is nearly done, so let’s kick back and reflect on another eventful week for the retail technology space. Here's your briefing on some of the most important and interesting stories from the past five days.

1. McKinsey & Co. makes bricks and mortar innovation move

Global management consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has opened its first ever retail space at Mall of America.

The aim of Modern Retail Collective is to test new technologies and analyse shopper behaviour. McKinsey has initially partnered on this with four fashion and beauty brands: Kendra Scott, Eleve Cosmetics, type:A Deodorant and ThirdLove. Tech partners include Microsoft, Square, Chatter Research, FaceCake, Farfetch and Zebra Technologies.

2. Rent the Runway left red-faced after WMS mishap

Fashion rental service Rent the Runway has been forced to refund and apologise to disgruntled customers following a botched warehouse management system roll-out. It also isn’t accepting any new subscribers or new event rentals until 15th October.

3. Sainsbury’s taps Google Cloud tech for new shopper insights

Sainsbury’s commercial and technology teams, in partnership with Accenture, are building machine learning technology solutions on the Google Cloud Platform to spot shopper trends and adjust inventory accordingly.

4. Amazon Go tech could be coming to airports, cinemas and sport stadiums

Amazon is looking to bring the technology that runs its Go cashierless stores to other retailers.

5. Tesco throws its weight behind Trigo Vision

Tesco has made an undisclosed investment in Trigo Vision’s frictionless shopping platform.

This was revealed as the retailer announced a so-so performance in the first half of the 2019/2020 trading period and said that boss Dave Lewis was resigning and handing over to Ken Murphy.