The software-powered retail-as-a-service company b8ta has partnered with Google to showcase an interactive in-store shopping experience featuring Made by Google products. Shoppers in seven b8ta flagship locations will be able to test out and shop Google’s Home products in interactive home-like vignettes. These experiences are part of the b8ta mission — to get shoppers to try out new tech products in brick-and-mortar stores before they buy them. All b8ta stores “are designed for software to be a primary component that drives the experience,” said CEO and Co-Founder Vibhu Norby in an interview with Retail TouchPoints.

As businesses investigate new ways to automate redundant tasks at a macro level, retail is a vertical ripe for disruption. There has been a lot of buzz in the press this year about hamburger-slinging robots and automated baristas creating machine-made mochaccinos, but one new approach to automation has gotten the attention of retailers: the introduction of the Amazon Go concept. Eliminating checkout lines and cashiers using next-gen tech is ushering in the era of frictionless retail that more and more shoppers, especially the smartphone-obsessed Millennials and their younger Gen Z cohort, are expecting. Amazon Go opened their first store in Seattle in January of this year. There are now three in that city with plans to open others in San Francisco and Chicago. A total of six are in the works. Shoppers use a smartphone app with a unique QR code that gets scanned outside a set of glass doors, similar to the kinds of entryways many corporate employees pass through every day on the way to work. Once inside, shoppers have a range of food choices like grocery essentials as well as grab-and-go breakfast, lunch and dinner options including salads and sandwiches. The store is set up with a…

Wegmans, a supermarket chain based in the Northeast, has implemented a combination of technology and human assistance for blind and low-vision shoppers, to make their shopping experience easier across all its 97 stores. All Wegmans stores are now Aira Access Locations, giving any member of the blind and low-vision community free access to Aira’s service while in Wegmans stores.

Birchbox is piloting new beauty experiences in select Walgreens stores in the next few months, signaling that the retailer is realizing the benefits of expanding its brick-and-mortar presence. The pilot will debut in six stores in December in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Minneapolis, and will extend to five more stores in early 2019. Walgreens will take an undisclosed minority stake in Birchbox as part of the partnership. Earlier this year, one of Birchbox’s existing investors, Viking Global, acquired a majority stake in the company by investing an additional $15 million into the brand.

Walmart will distribute 17,000 Oculus VR headsets to all U.S. stores beginning in October 2018, to train more than 1 million Walmart store associates on how to use the technology, according to a company blog post. With this expansion of the VR training program, every associate — including those on the floor — will have access to the same training that their managers and department managers get at the company’s 200+ training Academies. The company first started training store managers in 2017.

Snapchat is bringing a new visual search tool to its app, enabling users to search for products on Amazon from the Snapchat camera. The visual search will allow Snapchat users to point the app's camera at an item or barcode, find it on Amazon and buy it straight from the social messaging app, the company said in a blog post. When the item or barcode is recognized, an Amazon card will appear on-screen, surfacing a link for that product or similar ones available on Amazon.

Macy’s has partnered with Cosmopolitan magazine and Perfect Corp., the creator of the YouCam AR-powered makeup app, to deliver a virtual try-on feature through an eight-page native content package. The pages will showcase select Juicy Couture products. Using a smart device, readers can snap a photo of a special QR code, which will bring them to a destination on Cosmopolitan.com where they’ll be able to choose a try-on experience, test out the look using YouCam Makeup facial mapping technology and shop the products directly from the page.

Women Who Tech, which showcases and funds women-led ventures around the world, has selected 10 finalists for the Women Startup Challenge Europe. Hundreds of female-led startups from 35 countries competed for the chance to pitch to top investors and tech leaders. The final 10 will compete at an event co-hosted…

Amazon is reportedly considering a plan to open as many as 3,000 new Amazon Go cashierless stores by 2021, with more than 50 locations in major locations by 2019, according to Bloomberg. The e-Commerce giant would not comment on the report. The challenge to Amazon’s potential growth plan, regardless of how many checkout-free stores they end up building, is the high cost of opening each location. The original Amazon Go in downtown Seattle required more than $1 million in hardware alone, according to Bloomberg.