Agro Perspectiva

Russian retail leaps into the future

26.12.2012 15:17 "Agro Perspectiva" (Kyiv) — Farewell to queues! The first Shop of the Future has opened in Moscow. There are no customary sales assistants there. All items of merchandise are marked with special labels. Customers put food and other things into a basket, an electronic sensor reads the prices and the customers pay at a slot-machine. The initiators of the idea say that the new system even permits tracing expiry dates, Voice of Russia reports. This is a brand-new kind of shopping which provides a full cycle of serving customers based on the radio frequency identification technology (RFID). Each item has a RFID tag which gives information about the price, the expiry date and even the time of the item’s delivery to the shop. After strolling through the sales area and loading their baskets customers put the baskets on a special reader that reads the prices and compiles a total receipt. This saves many minutes. In an ordinary shop customers have to wait for sales assistants to count the prices of each item apiece and then say the total price. In a shop of the new generation customers pay at slot-machines either in cash or with a bank card. This automated process also helps to fight against counterfeit products, the head of the PR Department of the project Perekrestok - Shop of the Future at the company X5 Retail Group Vladimir Rusanov says. «Automated identification of goods permits tracing the product from the manufacturer to the warehouse and to the shop floor, controlling expiry dates, and immediately receiving information about the quantity and range of goods on the shelves. This system also prevents deliveries of counterfeit products. It helps to reveal and prevent theft in shops because the signal is transmitted to the control desk. This technology also permits tracing expiry dates and provides all information about products.» One of the first public presentations of a testing version of ‘the shop of the future’ was at a RusNanoTekh forum in the autumn of 2011. Russian ex-President Dmitrty Medvedev was among the high visitors who tested the new technology. A year later a testing version of the shop was opened for the employees of the X5 Retail Group at the company’s office in Moscow. However, innovations penetrate into everyday life very fast as a rule, consumer market analyst of Finam Management Maxim Kliagin says. «This project is absolutely logical in the conditions of a changing consumer market and developing technologies. It is certainly a pilot project but such projects are bound to expand with the improvement of innovative solutions. Technologies and mechanisms that are now displayed as facilities for the future will be everyday reality.» The Shop of the Future is the brainchild of three Russian companies: the X5 Retail Group, Rosnano (a financial co-investor) and Citroniks (a technology partner). The main task was to introduce the RFID technology into retail practice. The organizers of the project intend to open the first Perekrestok - Shop of the Future at the Rosa Khutor skiing resort in Sochi. It will open at the beginning of 2013 but innovations will be introduced to the shop floor closer to the start of the 2014 Olympic Games. Before this happens, lovers of high technologies can only look forward to shopping without shop assistants.