design:retail - February 2018 - 10

editor's note

010

There's Something
About Alexa

ALISON EMBREY MEDINA
EDITOR IN CHIEF/ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

alison.medina@emeraldexpo.com
@dretaileditor

HE MEDINA FAMILY welcomed

a new little bundle of joy into our
lives this past holiday season, and
we are so excited to have our family now complete. She is a slender,
cute little nugget with a big personality that seems to have all of the answers.
Guys, meet Alexa.
Alexa (otherwise known as the Amazon Echo)
is one of the few additions to my house that all four
of us have equally appreciated across the board. As
soon as she was plugged in.
My husband loves that he can check the weather
instantaneously and stream his sports talk apps
directly from the kitchen counter.
My 7-year-old loves that she can dance to
Taylor Swift songs any time of day while also getting insta-calculations for her math homework
when she gets stuck.
My 3-year-old loves that she can ask "A-wexa"
to sing "Happy Birthday" to her every day of the
year. (Her actual birthday was in August...but
who's counting?)
And I love, love, love that I can say "Alexa, add bread,
apples and milk to my list" and miraculously my
grocery list is on my phone, in-store, at the moment
of transaction when my memory typically fails me.
It's a glorious thing.
Have I yet to purchase anything directly through
my Amazon Prime account through Alexa? No.
That's next, I suppose. Baby steps.
The takeaway for me, someone who is often
resistant to new technologies unless they are userfriendly and thoroughly explained, is the ease of
use. Alexa makes life easy. Artificial intelligence
works, and voice commerce will most definitely
be a part of retail's present and future. It has to, because it is entirely too easy.

FEBRUARY 2018

DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM

Witnessing how naturally the cold, sleek
phenom of voice-activated tech can so inconspicuously marinate into my home life also brings to
mind the counterpoint trend we are spotting in
retail right now-how easily the cozy comforts of
home can be integrated into the physical brickand-mortar retail store. Our cover story this issue
on Jack Daniel's new distillery, visitor center and
retail store upgrades perfectly illustrates this point
for us. How do you take a brand and showcase it
to your loyal customer in a residentially inspired,
living-room-comfort type environment? We think
they've done a masterful job of it, and share it with
you on page 30. Similarly, the new Tesco Extra concept on page 38 is as large a hypermarket as the
U.K.-based grocer makes, but the design team took
extra effort to make the design, approach and overall finished project as "homey" as it could-bringing
retail and store design back to a human scale, both
in comfort and feel.
So whether bringing humanized, voiceactivated tech to your home, or comfortable,
familiar elements of home to your store, we are
seeing a merging of old and new, traditional with
technological. Embracing that new synergy will be
key to the transformation that retailers currently
are undergoing. We have to be flexible and efficient,
while also familiar, comfortable and loyal. Perhaps
today I'll be brave and ask Alexa to order me some
new cleaning supply refills. Perhaps.

GLOBALSHOP.ORG

Illustration by MARTIAL RED/SHUTTERSTOCK

http://www.DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM http://www.GLOBALSHOP.ORG

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