Betabrand is no stranger to forward-thinking experiential retail: the company leverages a crowdfunding platform that enables online shoppers to decide what clothes get designed, manufactured and sold on Betabrand.com. In 2019, Betabrand has expanded on its experiential roots with a very nontraditional store feature — a “Podcast Theater” that hosts podcasts in front of a live audience. The company brings small- to medium-sized podcasts to its San Francisco store every Thursday and invites nearly 100 guests to listen in, well above the average of 20 to 30 people who visit the store on a typical Thursday night. Podcast booking became so popular that Betabrand ended up with three months of shows programmed in just three days, booking through the summer.

Lowe’s is putting its money where its mouth is as it continues to invest in technology. The retailer will occupy a 357,000-square-foot global technology center in Charlotte, N.C. dedicated to employing 2,000 of the company’s tech professionals. The home improvement retailer is investing $153 million in the project and will occupy 15 of the 23 floors within the tower, which will serve as the “epicenter for the team Lowe’s is hiring to help modernize its IT systems and build future retail experiences,” according to a statement. The tech center will create 1,600 new jobs, with 400 employees relocating from the company headquarters in Mooresville, N.C.

Starbucks has closed a deal that will supply clean power to the electricity grids serving 3,000 of its stores by 2021. A three-project, 146-megawatt renewable energy portfolio will tap wind and solar farms in North Carolina, Oklahoma and Texas. The portfolio was constructed with the help of LevelTen Energy, a technology-enabled power procurement platform. “As we continue to strive towards building and operating the world’s largest green retail business, we know we need to find innovative business models to achieve our renewable energy goals,” said Patrick Leonard, Energy Manager for Starbucks company-operated stores in the U.S. and Canada in a statement. “Not only does this portfolio model allow us to support new solar and wind farms that will deliver the clean energy equivalent to the electricity powering over 3,000 stores, it also opens the door for many new buyers to cost-effectively source smaller amounts of renewable energy.”

Sofia Kaman Fine Jewels has debuted a new augmented reality (AR) app on its web site called My Treasure, which enables customers to upload photos of their hand from their mobile device to virtually try on any ring or to curate a ring stack within the app. The feature is designed to be user-friendly, enabling shoppers to simply click the top left corner navigation icon on their phone to sign in or create an account and use the My Treasure app. Shoppers can immediately select a ring and scroll the photos to the My Treasure hand icon. Once they tap the hand image, they can take a photo of their hand or upload a new image.

Two of the biggest traditional players in U.S. retail, Lowe’s and Kroger, have each made major pushes in the past year to ensure they are keeping up with major industry innovators. But this week these retailers made even bigger splashes, with Kroger launching an accelerator fund for consumer brands and Lowe’s acquiring retail analytics technology from Boomerang Commerce. Kroger has partnered with Lindsay Goldberg, a private equity firm, to form PearlRock Partners, a platform designed to identify, invest in and help grow emerging consumer product brands.

Amazon is opening its first Amazon Go store in New York City in lower Manhattan’s Brookfield Place, marking the twelfth Go store overall. The 1,300-square-foot space also is the first Amazon Go store that will accept cash for payment. The cash option is a major departure from other Amazon Go stores that have opened in cities such as San Francisco, Seattle and Chicago, which include no checkout points. Shoppers seeking to pay cash will have to be swiped in by an employee, then have their chosen products scanned by a staffer, who conducts the checkout process for them.

Farmstead, an online grocer of locally sourced produce based in San Francisco, has introduced a Smart Shopping List feature, designed to predict what products customers need based on factors including weekly shopping history, buying signals and what’s already in their cart. The grocery company uses proprietary AI and machine learning technology to predict grocery trends and consumer purchasing habits. The technology helps Farmstead keep prices for certain products below the averages in Bay Area supermarkets.