Shopping – Page 4 – Impact Lab

Business, City Planning, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Shopping

How an Exodus from cities will reshape retail

June 22, 2020

The work-from-anywhere revolution will accelerate the coming of a post-digital age for shopping, argues Doug Stephens of Retail Prophet.

Throughout history, cities have played a central role in the evolution of retail. From the grand bazaars of ancient times to the opulent department stores of the 1800s to the venture-backed start-ups of the 2000s, cities have offered the stage, the audience, and ultimately, the financial prosperity to power retail through the ages.

But in major developed economies like the United States, we are set to see an outbound migration from cities the likes of which we have not experienced since the 1950s. Just as the IBMs and Microsofts of the world did 40 years ago, migrating to the boundlessness of the suburbs, today’s corporate giants are rethinking location once again, except this time encouraging their employees to live and work wherever they like.

On May 21st, Facebook announced that it would give its employees not only the freedom to work from home permanently, but also to spin a globe and point to wherever they’d like “home” to be. Mark Zuckerberg told The Verge, “We’re going to be the most forward-leaning company on remote work at our scale… I think we could get to about half of the company working remotely permanently.” That same day, Shopify and Twitter both made similar announcements. Shopify founder and CEO Tobias Lütke said he expects most of the company’s employees to choose the work from home option, adding: “The choice is really, are we passengers on this tidal wave of change? Or do we jump in the driver’s seat and try to figure out how to build a global world-class company by not getting together that often?”

Continue reading… “How an Exodus from cities will reshape retail”

Coronavirus, Economy, Money Talk, Science & Technology News, Shopping

The rich have stopped spending and that has tanked the economy

June 22, 2020

A worker paints over a Louis Vuitton storefront, boarded up after the coronavirus outbreak, on March 30 in San Francisco.

The wealthiest American households are keeping a tight grip on their purse strings even as their lower-income counterparts are spending a lot more freely when they emerge from weeks of lockdown. That decline in spending by the wealthy could limit the whole country’s economic recovery.

Researchers based at Harvard have been tracking spending patterns using credit card data. They found that people at the bottom of the income ladder are now spending nearly as much as they did before the coronavirus pandemic.

“When the stimulus checks went out, you see that spending by lower-income households went up a lot,” said Nathan Hendren, a Harvard economist and co-founder of the Opportunity Insights research team.

However, the wealthy are not matching them. “For higher-income individuals, that spending is still way far off from where it was prior to COVID and it has not recovered as much,” Hendren said.

That’s potentially crippling because consumer spending is a huge driver of economic activity. In fact, so much of the country’s economy depends on shopping by the top income bracket that the wealthiest 25% of Americans account for fully two-thirds of the total decline in spending since January.

Continue reading… “The rich have stopped spending and that has tanked the economy”

AI, facebook, Machine Learning, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Facebook’s new AI tool will automatically identify items you put up for sale

June 5, 2020

‘We want to make anything and everything on the platform shoppable’

Facebook is launching what it’s calling a “universal product recognition model” that uses artificial intelligence to identify consumer goods, from furniture to fast fashion to fast cars.

It’s the first step toward a future where the products in every image on its site can be identified and potentially shopped for. “We want to make anything and everything on the platform shoppable, whenever the experience feels right,” Manohar Paluri, head of Applied Computer Vision at Facebook, told The Verge. “It’s a grand vision.”

Continue reading… “Facebook’s new AI tool will automatically identify items you put up for sale”

Coronavirus, Food, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Walmart is piloting a pricier 2-hour Express grocery delivery service

May 18, 2020

Record usage of grocery delivery services amid the COVID-19 pandemic has led to delayed orders, fewer open delivery windows and, on occasion, an inability to even book a delivery time slot. Walmart now hopes to capitalize on the increased demand for speedier delivery with the introduction of a new service that allows consumers to pay to get to the front of the line. The retailer confirmed today it’s launching a new Walmart Grocery service called “Express,” which promises orders in two hours or less for an upcharge of $10 on top of the usual delivery fee.

The service has been in pilot testing across 100 Walmart stores in the U.S. since mid-April. Walmart says it plans to expand the service to nearly 1,000 stores in early May and it will be offered in a total of nearly 2,000 stores in the weeks after.

Some Walmart customers may have recently received a push notification alerting them to the launch.

Continue reading… “Walmart is piloting a pricier 2-hour Express grocery delivery service”

Automation, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Shopping, Trending

The pandemic is bringing us closer to our robot takeout future

May 10, 2020

Starship

“We saw that business double overnight,” startup says of UK grocery deliveries.

On the morning of March 30, I set out from my home in Washington, DC, to the campus of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In only a few hours, DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and Virginia Governor Ralph Northam would issue coordinated stay-at-home orders. But I was going to GMU’s campus to check out a new technology seemingly tailor-made for the moment—technology that could help people get food without the risks of face-to-face interactions.

Campus was eerily quiet; most students and staff had long been sent home. But as I approached a Starbucks at the northern edge of GMU, I heard a faint buzzing and saw a six-wheeled, microwave-sized robot zip along the sidewalk, turn, and park in front of the coffee shop. The robot looked like—and essentially was—a large white cooler on wheels. It was a delivery robot from Starship, a startup that has been operating on campus since early last year.

Continue reading… “The pandemic is bringing us closer to our robot takeout future”

Coronavirus, Great New Product, Health & Fitness, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Avoid touching anything with this $18 antimicrobial hand tool

May 2, 2020

Save 28% on a device that you can use to press buttons, open doors and pull levers. If only 2018 could see us now.

Since the start of the coronavirus, I’ve had the immortal words of Sgt. Apone ringing in my head, when he admonished the Colonial Marines in the movie Aliens: “Nobody touch nothin’.” Good advice when exploring a deserted space colony, and good advice when venturing outdoors during a global pandemic. I never imagined I’d ever write these words, but here goes: If you want to avoid having to press buttons, open doors and generally touch stuff with your bare hands, add a hand tool to your key ring. Right now, you can get CleanKey’s Antimicrobial Brass Hand Tool for $18 when you use discount code CHEAP10 at checkout.

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Business, Coronavirus, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Calvin Klein owner: ‘Retail companies are not built to have their stores closed’

April 23, 2020

Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger and other PVH stores in North America and Europe have been closed since mid-March.

The company has furloughed about 75% of its workforce in North America.

With stores closed, the retail industry is struggling with inventory piling up in warehouses and no place to sell it, the head of the company that owns such names as Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger told CNBC on Wednesday.

“Retail companies are not built to have their stores closed for extended periods of time,” PVH CEO Manny Chirico said in an interview with Becky Quick on “Squawk Box.”

PVH’s stores in North America and Europe have been closed since mid-March, along with many other businesses. The closures as expected to drag on for weeks if not months as the world tries to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

The company has furloughed about 75% of its workforce in North America, Chirico said, adding to the hundreds of thousands of furloughs taking place in an industry that employees more than 50 million people in the U.S. alone.

Continue reading… “Calvin Klein owner: ‘Retail companies are not built to have their stores closed’”

Driverless vehicles, Electric Vehicles, Science & Technology News, Shopping, UPS

UPS orders 10,000 electric delivery trucks, plans driverless truck test

April 10, 2020

ATLANTA – UPS ordered 10,000 electric delivery trucks from electric vehicle maker Arrival, in what it calls a move to accelerate electrification of the fleet.

It is the largest single order for electric vehicles from the shipping giant based in Sandy Springs.

The two companies are working together to develop electric vehicles with advanced driver assistance systems, including the potential for automated movement in UPS warehouses, technology that it will test starting this year.

UPS also announced that it is partnering with Waymo to test autonomous vehicle package pickups in the Phoenix area. UPS said Waymo’s Chrysler Pacific minivans will transport packages from UPS stores to a UPS sorting facility, with a driver on board to monitor operations. The technology allows the company to test subsequent pickups at UPS stores.

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Automation, Coronavirus, Driverless vehicles, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Despite setbacks, coronavirus could hasten the adoption of autonomous vehicles and delivery robots

April 8, 2020

This week, nearly every major company developing autonomous vehicles in the U.S. halted testing in an effort to stem the spread of COVID-19, which has sickened more than 250,000 people and killed over 10,000 around the world. Still some experts argue pandemics like COVID-19 should hasten the adoption of driverless vehicles for passenger pickup, transportation of goods, and more. Autonomous vehicles still require disinfection — which companies like Alphabet’s Waymo and KiwiBot are conducting manually with sanitation teams — but in some cases, self-driving cars and delivery robots might minimize the risk of spreading disease.

Continue reading… “Despite setbacks, coronavirus could hasten the adoption of autonomous vehicles and delivery robots”

drones, Futurist, Science & Technology News, Shopping, Tom Frey

Virginia town where drone deliveries are daily

April 6, 2020

Paul Sensmeier awaits his drone delivery

Futurist Thomas Frey has predicted that drones will become the most disruptive technology in human history. In a quiet residential neighborhood in Christiansburg, Virginia., one happens to be disrupting the work of two landscapers.

The workers silence their weed eaters, looking to the sky in wonder as the whining drone slows, descends, steadies, then hovers about 23 feet above the front yard of Paul and Susie Sensmeier, two retirees in their eighties.

The drone carries a three-pound plastic package, attached by a cord and a hook. It lowers the package until it softly touches down on the turf. The hook detaches, the line is reeled back in, and the craft zooms off into the horizon at 70 mph.

“There’s been no complaints that I know of from the neighborhood, and there’s quite a few customers that live here,” says Paul, a retired engineer who knows a thing or two about innovations in technology. His son works as an aerospace engineer, and his son-in-law is a researcher at the nearby Virginia Tech Transportation Institute. “It is the wave of the future, and it’s exciting to be a part of the developmental process.”

Continue reading… “Virginia town where drone deliveries are daily”

Coronavirus, Employment, Food, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Instacart is hiring 300,000 grocery shoppers

March 29, 2020

The company will provide with paid sick leave in case they’re diagnosed with COVID-19.

Instacart plans to hire an additional 300,000 “full-service” contractors to help it deliver groceries to people during the coronavirus pandemic. With so many individuals and families stuck inside as a result of social distancing measures and shelter in place orders in states like California, Instacart says order volume has increased by 150 percent over the last few weeks, with people buying more per cart as well.

The company currently operates in about 5,500 cities across the United States and Canada. Instacart’s plan will see it hire broadly in states like California and New York. In the former, for instance, it plans to bring on approximately 54,000 new full-time shoppers. In other states like Texas and Florida, it will hire thousands of new contractors as well, and provide them with paid sick leave if they’re diagnosed with COVID-19 or need to self-isolate.

Continue reading… “Instacart is hiring 300,000 grocery shoppers”

Amazon.com, Coronavirus, Food, Science & Technology News, Shopping

Amazon looking to buy four Fairway stores amid coronavirus chaos

March 25, 2020

The Woodland Park, New Jersey Fairway Market (pictured) is one the locations Amazon is targeting.

Amazon is on the prowl once again — and this time it’s eyeing a handful of supermarkets owned by New York City grocer Fairway Market, The Post has learned.

The tech juggernaut run by Jeff Bezos is bidding on four stores owned by the bankrupt Fairway in New York and New Jersey, including one in Brooklyn, home to a popular waterfront mega-market in Red Hook, sources told The Post.

The auction, which kicked off Monday and continued into Thursday, comes as the coronavirus brings the country to its knees, raising recession fears. But COVID-19 has also proven a boon for Amazon’s online ordering business as people hunker down at home.

Continue reading… “Amazon looking to buy four Fairway stores amid coronavirus chaos”