Artificial Intelligence

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Wayfair Next innovation lab at Wayfair’s downtown Boston headquarters.   My genial hosts, Wayfair co-founder Steven Conine and Wayfair Next director Mike Festa, explained the lab’s mission and let me demo some very cool technologies.  

Determining if an online clothing purchase will fit properly is a challenge for many women.    Launched in May 2016, e-commerce site Fovo curates apparel selections that are tailored to female shoppers’ specific body shapes.   “The way forward is personalization,” said Fovo cofounder Kiana Anvaripour in a Chain Store Age interview. We want to help women optimize the experience of shopping online for apparel so the ‘endless scroll’ doesn’t exist.”

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Wayfair Next innovation lab at Wayfair’s downtown Boston headquarters.   My genial hosts, Wayfair co-founder Steven Conine and Wayfair Next director Mike Festa, explained the lab’s mission and let me demo some very cool technologies.  

Chain Store Age recently visited Wayfair Next, the in-house innovation lab in the Boston headquarters of online home furnishings retailer Wayfair Inc.

Steven Conine, co-founder of Wayfair and Mike Festa, director of Wayfair Next, discussed the lab’s mission and the importance of innovation in retail.

Apple is training the next generation of coders — in its stores.   The company is expanding its Apple Camp workshops to include a course designed to teach children the basics of coding, Techcrunch reported.   The “Coding Games and Programming Robots” course, open to children ages 8 to 12, will also allow kids to program Sphero robots.   

Walmart is trimming administrative positions in some 500 stores in the West.   According to multiple media reports, the discount giant will cut three backroom accounting and invoicing positions at each store, for a total of 1,500 jobs. Affected employees will not be laid off, but instead offered front-of-store roles such as pharmacy technician or assisting pickups of online orders. Invoicing tasks will be shifted to corporate headquarters in Arkansas, while accounting functions will be automated.  

Target Corp. is continuing to hire tech experts for its ultra-secret “Goldfish” project, with the newest recruit being the former chief technology officer of sports news website Bleacher Report.     The Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal reported that Sam Parnell has joined Target with a title of VP of innovation, and be based in the company’s office in Sunnyvale, California.

Cars that drive themselves are yesterday’s news. The next big thing may be shopping carts that essentially do the same.