Artificial Intelligence

Another January, another NRF “Big Show” in New York. The annual meeting officially kicks off on Sunday. Here’s my early take on what to expect from exhibitors at the show:

1. More Cooperation With Retailers

New York - Kurt Salmon, Tyco Retail Solutions, and Mobispoke are partnering to enable retailers to provide a more cutting-edge store experience that includes interactive mannequins, fixtures and fitting rooms, as well as connected employees. The alliance is anchored by an interactive demonstration lab at Tyco’s Retail Experience Center.  

As uncertainty continues to swirl around Bitcoin and its role in the future of payments, Overstock.com is rushing full-speed ahead in embracing the digital currency.

The online retailer has installed a Bitcoin ATM at its corporate headquarters in Salt Lake City. The ATM is accessible 24 hours a day and allows the public to convert U.S. dollars to Bitcoin, and Bitcoin to U.S. dollars.

This is the age of the empowered consumer. Energized by the rapidly accelerating global growth of mobile devices, shoppers now have immediate access to data on products, prices and competitive services. In addition to shifting the balance of power away from retailers and manufacturers, the spread of information and the growth of technologically sophisticated pure-play retailers have contributed to rapidly rising expectations about just how personalized and participatory the shopping experience can be.

Dallas – “Table commerce” (or perhaps “t-commerce”) is not a widely recognized channel of customer engagement, but The Neiman Marcus Group just may change that. Neiman Marcus is piloting three interactive tables from T1Visions in its Austin, Chicago, and Topanga, California, locations.

Mooresville, N.C. – Lowe’s is taking its Iris smart home program and trying to make it even smarter, with help from connected home platform provider Icontrol Networks. Starting in early 2015, many Lowe's Iris smart home devices will be certified through Icontrol's OpenHome Developer Program, allowing these devices to work seamlessly with Icontrol-powered solutions.

Lowe’s has a new partner in its pursuit of the connected home market and the lofty goal of making customers’ homes and lives smarter.

The nation’s second largest home improvement retailer will sell new smart home devices in 2015 certified by Icontrol Networks, the company behind the most widely used connected home platform in the industry.

Karenann Terrell, Walmart’s Chief Information Officer, is among a distinguished group of female executives singled out by Retailing Today sister publication Chain Store Age as The Top 10 Women in Tech.

Omnichannel access to the best merchandise in the world is the objective behind a new digital initiative at Neiman Marcus that has the retail embedding high resolution screen in shoe department tables.

The upscale department store operator worked with touchscreen technology provider T1Visions to create the interactive retail tables which are now live at Neiman’s Austin, Chicago and Los Angeles area stores.

Armonk, N.Y. – Retailers are suffering fewer cyber attacks, but for hackers it is becoming a situation of quality over quantity. According to findings released by IBM, despite a 50% decline in the number of cyber attacks against U.S. retailers, the number of records stolen from them remains at near record highs.