The world’s first bricks-and-mortar store selling only items that are trending online in real time will open its doors in London next month.
The Trending Store will be open from July 3 – 7 at Westfield London, operated by trend foresighting platform Nextatlas, and partnered with charity Save the Children.
A ‘How We Shop’ concept store of the future, The Trending Store has been created in response to shoppers’ needs, bringing together the smart intel of online shopping and the human interaction of shopping ‘in real life’ for the first time. How We Shop is Westfield’s retail research and trends platform, now in its sixth year.
NextAtlas will track 400,000 of the hottest influencers or ‘trend innovators’ to analyse what they are speaking about or wearing and pick 100 items across an array of price ranges it deems to be that day’s trending items. Stylists will be on hand to hunt out looks as instructed by Nextatlas’ AI technology, to stock the store each day, and be inside the store helping customers pick out key items to suit their own individual styles.
Mario Coletti, Managing Director at Nextatlas, said: “Traditional retailers have always used stores to gather customer information. The Trending Store is revolutionising store management by using Nextatlas’ platform to make stores a destination of data science rather than a source of it. It’s a pioneering example of how AI will be relevant for customers as well as a way to make stores more effective in generating enhanced Customer Experience.”