Artificial Intelligence

Trends offer new opportunities, responsibilities

The next great thing isn’t a piece of tech, an improved process, a branded message, or a fast-changing business model. It’s all this — at once. The fact is the next great thing is retail itself.

Retail lies at the convergence point of some of the most profound changes any business can experience. More, it plays out in front of customers and the rest of the world in real time. Retail brands that quickly harness new ideas by learning the details that make them work well become the winners.

There’s no denying that Amazon has changed the face of retail, but there are many misconceptions about how the company actually operates. Unfortunately, these fallacies are leading many retail companies into making bad strategic business decisions as they try to duplicate Amazon’s success.

The following is a breakdown of some myths — along with a few takeaways:

Retailers looking for dramatic energy savings at the lowest cost should think radical – and that means using an integrated design process right from the start.

“Radically efficient buildings are, among other things, 75% more energy efficient than typical construction” said Paul Westbrook, president of RE:source consulting, at the SPECS session, “An Improved Road to Energy Savings.”

As digital commerce forces brick-and-mortar stores to innovate, industry experts share their views on the future of physical retail.

From department stores to discounters to home improvement chains, nearly all retailers are engaged in the same game: trying to imagine what stores of the future will look like in an increasingly digitized world.

Menswear retailer bullish on Internet of Things, RFID

While most retailers continue to dip their toes in the Internet of Things waters, Thomas Pink has jumped in with both feet — and is seeing results.

The luxury menswear brand is involved in an IoT proof-of-concept test at its store on Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. Using a cloud-based IoT platform from Acuitas Digital, the retailer has the backbone it needs to seamlessly integrate networking, hardware, software and analytics solutions — all necessary pieces to digitize the physical store.

What will the stores of the future be like? It’s certainly not a new question, but it’s one that seems to have taken on increased urgency as the shift to digital continues and retailers, some of them under siege from more nimble online competitors, wrestle with how to ensure their stores remain relevant going forward. It’s also a question that is sure to be top of mind for the shopping center owners and brokers who gather at the end of May in Las Vegas for RECon, the annual retail real estate confab.

Retail and restaurant executives, architects, suppliers and other industry professionals involved in store design/planning, construction and facility management gathered together for Chain Store Age’s 53rd annual SPECS conference.

The event, held at the Gaylord Palms in Kissimmee, Fla., focused on the evolution and innovation of physical stores in a digital age, and explored industry trends that are transforming how stores are designed, built, operated and maintained.