Future Retail Newsletter #116

This year pivotal for health and beauty with COVID-19 acting as an industry reformer. At Outform we have seen an increased demand for safe shopping tech, like heat mapping, touchless, voice, QRcode and motion sensors. In this blog post series we explore how people are shopping health and beauty in 2020.

As early as 2017, livestream shopping was being widely used in China. For western counterparts, livestream shopping, like most technology, only started to pick up steam as everyone looked for new ways to come together to engage safely and shop from home.

The US retail market has been the largest in the world for at least a century, and although China was inevitably on track to claim this mantle from the US relatively soon, we did not expect a transition point to come as early as 2020.

Some of the most creative and useful innovations we’ve spotted in recent weeks aiming to help stores cater to shoppers safely and efficiently.

England’s high streets and shopping centres are still half empty compared to last year, despite the easing of lockdown rules which has allowed all stores to re-open, showing the challenge faced by the government to get the economy moving again.

Chinese online e-commerce platform JD and Sony Semiconductor Solutions are working together to develop AR technology to measure foot size online.

Carrefour and Google have launched a new voice-based grocery shopping experience, via Google Assistant. Uncover how the service works and aims to simplify and personalize the grocery shopping experience in France.

Most US consumers are worried about the economy. Grocers, mass retailers, and other players in the retail sector will need to carefully refine their value strategies.

Countless designers have cited the ‘unfinished’ and ‘under construction’ aesthetics as inspiration. They’ve told tales of seeing materials awaiting installation – stacks of plasterboard or even pink fibreglass insulation and data cables – and had the sudden desire to stop there: not to conceal these oft-hidden elements but to elevate their status.

The features are particularly useful while the pandemic keeps customers inside, and consumer attention remains focused on the home.

The coronavirus lockdowns have sparked broad changes to how women discover and shop for beauty products by pushing more activity online, especially among older demographics who were previously wary, according to L’Oréal’s chief digital officer.

How are we doing? Please take a moment to provide your feedback on our Future Retail Newsletter.

Check out previous editions of the Future Retail Newsletter for even more on tech, innovation, design, and retail.