NO SHOPKEEPERS IN STORE

Text by Jeff Photos by CFP Translation by Hu Nan

NO SHOPKEEPERS IN STORE

Text by Jeff Photos by CFP Translation by Hu Nan

Seventeen years after people celebrated the dawn of the 21st century, traditional retail is still struggling to win back its customers, those who have grown up in an online environment.

Although a number of online retailers seized the chance and made their money, they realise the era of pure e-commerce will soon pass as competition is becoming increasingly fi erce.

To cope with the approaching “new retail era”,traditional and online retailers are both targeting the“smart store” business. And most recently, the top players are all putting self-service stores on their agendas.

The U.S.-based e-commerce giant, AMAZON, took a big move at the end of 2016, announcing their upcoming offl ine shop, Amazon Go. Instead of lining up for the cashiers, customers of the Amazon Go are just supposed to scan their phones and take away what they need. However, AMAZON has delayed the launch of this project, which was originally scheduled for July this year, and continues to keep costumers waiting because of the technical problems.

The one that started this business earlier (though not the earliest) is Alibaba's TAO Coffee. Ma Yun,founder of Alibaba, announced this self-service coffee shop and put it to test in Hangzhou during the Taobao Maker Festival on July 8th. Soon, TAO Coffee had been expanded to most big cities in China such as Xi'an.

Even before TAO Coffee, the fi rst self-service supermarket “Bingo Box” kicked off in Shanghai on July 1st, though it was forced to stop the next day due to the failure of temperature control. On July 2nd, a chain supermarket group also declared to start their self-service counter in Shenzhen…And while the author was writing this article, another self-service supermarket was offi cially launched in Chengdu, showing the game players' ambition in this fi eld.

超市，無人看守

時間已經走到了21世紀的第17個年頭，傳統零售業的苦日子還沒有到頭。如何把那些逐漸習慣于躺在沙發里，拿著手機在電商平臺上點點戳戳大把揮灑金錢的客戶，拉回到街上、吸引到自己的店鋪里來，仍然是擺在世界各大老牌零售企業面前的最大難題。

而對于那些喝到了“頭啖湯”狠狠賺過一票的電商大佬們來說，慘烈的競爭也讓他們意識到，純電商的時代即將過去。

面對迫在眉睫的“新零售”時代，無論是老字號還是新大佬，都不約而同地打起了“智慧商鋪”的主意。這一次，被大佬們推上風口試水的，是無人超市。

美國老牌電商巨頭亞馬遜去年年底放了個大招，宣布即將推出全新的線下商店 Amazon Go。這是一家無須排隊結賬的實體店，顧客要做的事情很簡單：刷手機進店、選品、拿貨，走人！不過因為還有技術問題沒解決，這個原定在今年7月份就會落地的項目至今還沒有進一步下文，可以說是起一大早，趕了個晚集。

趕上早集（雖然仍然不是最早）的是阿里的“淘咖啡”。馬云的無人超市于7月8日正式在杭州的淘寶造物節上內測并向公眾亮相，隨之便開始在西安等全國多個大城市鋪開。

在這之前，國內第一家無人超市“繽果盒子”于7月1日在上海開業，雖然隔天就敗給了高溫被迫停運，卻搶在了馬云的前頭。7月2日，一家國內的超市連鎖集團也宣布在深圳實現了自動收銀……而就在筆者撰寫本文的同時，又有一家無人超市正式在成都開業。真是好一派爭先恐后，你追我趕的熱鬧局面。

BASED ON THE PREVIOUS CASES, WE SEE FOUR MAJOR BUSINESS MODELS OF THE SELF-SERVICE STORES:

從目前的實例中可以看出，目前無人零售的模式大概有四種：

The Large scale automatic vending machine. Compared to normal vending machines, they are just larger in terms of scale and product variety.

大型無人售貨機，只是規模更大，商品種類更加豐富。

RFID chips. This is a non-contact automatic identifi cation technology, which is also known as electronic labelling. RFID is now a well-developed technology but its cost is still rather high. The model of “Bingo Box” belongs to this category.

采用RFID芯片。這是一種非接觸式的自動識別技術，俗稱“電子標簽”，是一種比較成熟的技術，但存在成本比較高的缺點。“繽果盒子”就屬于這個類別。

The Self-service counter in the supermarket. The case in Shenzhen I mentioned earlier belongs to this category: customers can scan and pay for their products in the self-service counters of the stores. However, this model does pose challenges to the payment checking and management. It's diffi cult to count on people's self-consciousness.For example, when a supermarket in Beijing just started its trial of the self-service counters, it found a customer took away bottles of expensive alcohols with only 10 yuan.

大型商超里的自助結算系統。深圳的例子屬于這個類別：消費者選擇好商品后，可以在自助收銀臺掃描商品自行結算。這種方案的缺陷在于難以核對和監管。如何才能保證消費者不會多拿少付呢？靠自覺是困難的，北京一家超市也曾經做過類似的嘗試，結果出現有顧客扔下10塊錢抱走數瓶高價酒，讓人哭笑不得。

Image capture and machine learning system. From the perspective of their shopping process, AMAZON GO and TAO coffee belong to this category. According to Alibaba, their self-service stores adopt technologies including vision sensors, pressure sensors and IoT payment.

機器視覺智能識別方案。從Amazon Go和“淘咖啡”的購物流程來看，應該是屬于這一類。據介紹，阿里的無人超市采用的是視覺傳感器、壓力傳感器以及物聯網支付等技術。

Besides, some “smart stores”continue to adopt the QR code technology and a model closed to traditional retailing. The author believes this is no more than a transitional category. Once the technologies used in AMAZON GO and Tao Coffee are further developed and promoted,this selling method, which needs to scan every product purchased by the customers, will no longer feed demand.

此外，也有一些“智慧商鋪”沿用二維碼技術，模式比較接近傳統零售。筆者相信這只是一個過渡類型，因為一旦Amazon Go和“淘咖啡”所采用的技術最終成熟并開始推廣，這種顧客每買一件商品就要做一個掃碼動作的銷售模式，將很難免遭遇被淘汰的命運。