Three weeks ago Best Buy announced that they are testing a new robot name “Chloe” for the automated 24/7 distribution of all media. This is now live in their NYC store. Hats off to Best Buy for taking that next step in delivering a better consumer experience. Not only do the old video/game/music racks take up substantial space but they are difficult to shop. At Kinetic we have deployed multiple connected retail robots for automated distribution of product in retail. The results have been amazing. We built a similar robot for Blockbuster two years ago. We were able to reduce the store footprint by 70%. At first we thought there may be a reduction in sales but the opposite happened. Consumers via an intuitive user interface were able to find product faster. The next amazing result was that the automation increased catalog sales in media by 38%. We attributed this to the recommendation engine helping push sales of older product. We are currently working on automated solutions for other high shrink product for major retailers. We expect to see a shift to automation to in retail as a means to add more for floor space for new products and reduce labor. Expect to see more retailers testing similar connected retail as Best Buy is doing in 2016.
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John Laspia III1st
