Last week’s biggest retail technology plays at a glance
RTIH rounds up the stand out retail systems deals, deployments and pilots from the past seven days. Featuring Walmart, A.S. Watson, Sephora, McDonald’s, Amazon, and Printemps.
Walmart has announced Electric Fest, building on last week’s Roblox metaverse announcement.
This past weekend, users could jump back into Walmart Land’s Electric Island, which was inspired by the world’s greatest music festivals.
For the first time on Roblox, the retailer was hosting a festival experience, featuring Madison Beer, Kane Brown and YUNGBLUD, for people to enjoy from the comfort of their own homes.
Electric Fest was a motion capture concert that aimed to “celebrate self-expression through music”.
It was available in Walmart Land on Roblox from Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 7 pm EST each evening.
Check out a behind the scenes look at how this all came to life.
👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻👇🏻
Health and beauty retailer, A.S. Watson, has taken the wraps off Skinfie Lab, a tool that creates personalised skincare product recommendations based on customers’ selfies.
This is making its debut at Watsons Hong Kong and will be rolled out to Thailand, Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia by early 2023.
It builds on the launch of an AI powered skincare advisor at Superdrug in the UK last year.
Design company, West Elm, part of home retailer Williams-Sonoma, has announced the launch of its own virtual world, West Elm Home Design, on Roblox.
This is comprised of the West Elm Hub and the West Elm Neighbourhood.
The former features a furniture store, coffee shop and merchandise boutique. Users can customise their homes with over 150 products, replicated to be nearly identical to the physical goods.
In the West Elm Neighbourhood, users can acquire homes and appoint them with West Elm furniture, lighting, garden and decorative accessories. They can also collect and wear West Elm branded avatar accessories like T-shirts, hats, and bags.
Beauty retailer Sephora has implemented a new distributed Order Management System (OMS) from Fluent Commerce.
The platform, deployed in partnership with Accenture, has been launched in Australia, marking the start of a broader roll-out across the rest of its markets in Southeast Asia and Oceania.
Dallas Fort Worth International Airport has opened its first checkout-free store, powered by Zippin.
This is Zippin’s third airport store, with locations at Tom Jobim International Airport (“Galeão”), in Rio de Janeiro and New York’s JFK International Airport.
In Dallas, the firm worked with Puente Enterprises to make the 1,400 square-foot store - the largest in Terminal C - a reality.
It offers more than 900 products: from grab and go snacks to bluetooth headphones.
Shoppers tap their credit card at one of the four turnstiles to enter, select their items and exit the store to make a connecting flight or head home.
McDonald’s is now accepting Bitcoin as a payment method in the city of Lugano in the Italian speaking region of Switzerland.
A video of someone ordering food on a McDonald’s digital kiosk and then paying for it at a regular checkout with the help of a mobile app was uploaded on Twitter by Bitcoin Magazine.
The Tether (USDT) logo can be spotted next to the Bitcoin symbol on the payment terminal (NB: earlier this year, the city of Lugano announced it would accept Bitcoin, Tether and the LVGA token as a legal tender).
Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles is gearing up to launch two new grab and go locations powered by Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology.
Visitors will have the opportunity to take what they want without having to stop to checkout while shopping at the Bud Light Seltzer Market and the Michelob Ultra Market, located on the main concourse between sections 105 and 108.
The stores are debuting this October in time for NHL and NBA preseason games.
To enter, guests insert their credit card at the entry gates and start shopping. As they select food and beverages, Just Walk Out technology determines what they take from or return to the shelves.
After they exit, the credit card will be charged for the items they took.
Furniture and homewares retailer Made.com has launched its first Idea Ads with Paid Partnership campaign on Pinterest, making it the first brand to do so in the UK.
To support its Never Ordinary campaign, the company’s collaboration with two creators on the platform (Kerry Lockwood and Little Big Bell) aims to inspire Pinners to style unique spaces in their houses with bright and colourful touches.
Printemps, a retailer focused on beauty, fashion, accessories and menswear with 20 department stores in France, is inviting people to visit its first ever immersive, virtual location in the metaverse.
It will offer anyone purchasing a product from said store the chance to enter a prize draw to win NFTs created in collaboration with the artist Romain Froquet.
30 NFTs, exclusive digital works, will be offered to customers via the Arianee platform.
Possession of one will also allow the holder to receive the original painting by Froquet, exhibited in the atrium of Printemps Haussmann during the campaign.
Hudson, which has more than 1,000 stores in airports, commuter hubs, landmarks, and tourist destinations across North America, has unveiled its combination Decanted and Hudson Nonstop concept at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW).
This is powered by Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology and the Amazon One biometric payments solution.
Spanning more than 1,600 square feet in Terminal B, the space brings together Hudson’s first ever wine bar and its travel essentials store, which uses the aforementioned Amazon checkout-free tech and palm recognition service.
