Robotics technologies deployed within retail, food service and hospitality already are reducing the number of humans needed to perform their jobs. But the growth of these technologies also can provide help for employees handling a wide range of functions — whether it’s tracking inventory, identifying where a store aisle needs to be cleaned up or even assisting on last-mile delivery. The latest change comes in where robots are being tested and deployed. While retailers have been using robotics for years within warehouses and distribution centers, advances in the technology are extending use cases into stores, where there are multiple opportunities to automate tedious, repetitive tasks. In fact, a survey from Bossa Nova Robotics indicated that: 76% of retailers say the introduction of robots in stores would improve employee productivity; and 74% said that while inventory accuracy would improve as a result, increased profits would be another direct result of introducing in-store robots. At this stage, a select few major retailers are on board with robotics pilots of their own, with merchants such as Walmart, Ahold Delhaize’s GIANT and Stop & Shop chains, Albertsons and Lowe’s all implementing the technology at different points within the retail ecosystem. MIT Professor: Don’t Fret Retail…

Retailers and Quick Service Restaurants often use pop culture tie-ins as a way to amplify consumer excitement about a blockbuster movie or TV show. The risk they face, particularly when it’s a QSR investing in toys for giveaway, is that the film will flop when it’s actually released. AT&T faced a different challenge when the retailer linked up with HBO’s Game of Thrones, a popular show that dominated consumer conversation even among those who didn’t watch it. In order to stand out and create unique brand interactions at four of its flagship stores, the retailer and experience design agency Twenty Four 7 had to “tease” the events of the final season without knowing the specific story lines, or which characters would survive. (Game of Thrones has a notoriously high mortality rate.)

Generally, when a brand decides it wants to open a pop-up store, team members have months to plan and some idea of how to carry it out. But with the lofty goal of opening a 2,000-square-foot pop-up shop in under four weeks, the Brooklinen operations team had to move quickly. Before opening the pop-up in New York’s SoHo neighborhood in November 2018, the Brooklinen team managed both to find the ideal location and centralize its merchandising efforts to deliver the right products to its shoppers. Brooklinen, a direct-to-consumer brand selling luxury bed sheets, pillows, comforters and blankets, had been an online-only seller since its inception in late 2014. Co-founders/husband-and-wife duo Rich and Vicki Fulop launched the company on Kickstarter, and within two years grew it to $25 million in revenue. But in late 2018, the retailer found a “great real estate opportunity that we couldn’t ignore and we had to jump on it,” and decided that it was a necessary move to get a minimum number of viable products in front of its audience.

RFID may not have lived up to every extravagant prediction about how it would revolutionize retail, but the technology is actually doing very nicely, thank you. It has been adopted (often without fanfare) by a large number of retailers, and it serves as a foundational technology for many key omnichannel functions, including BOPIS, ship-from-store and product recommendations. This year, RFID Journal LIVE! Retail will be incorporated into the new RetailX event (along with Retail TouchPoints LIVE!), June 25-27 at McCormick Place in Chicago. Mark Roberti, Director of RFID Journal, spoke with Retail TouchPoints Editorial Director Andrew Gaffney about the power of RFID to cost-effectively provide accurate, real-time inventory information, as well as technology improvements that should open up even more roles for RFID in the future. Retail TouchPoints (RTP): Can you update me about why RFID is becoming such a critical part of retail transformation? Mark Roberti: We believe that RFID is the foundational tool for digital transformation not only in retail but in other sectors as well, because RFID provides a low-cost way of collecting an enormous amount of information on what's happening in the real world — along with the ability to know exactly how many items you…