Like Autio CEO Woody Sears told me about autonomous vehicles, Joe Jorczak believes the future of shopping at retail is autonomous.
“We’re on the tipping point for autonomous retail to go mainstream, largely driven by customer desire for a better shopping experience,” said Jorczak, who works at retail tech company AiFi as its head of global revenue. “Operational leaders across many segments are realizing how AiFi can open entirely new regions and locations that don’t make sense for traditional stores and the innovations on our roadmap will make autonomous shopping the norm faster than most people realize.”
“I joined the company because it’s changing the future of in-store retail by using AI to create an entirely new customer experience,” Jorczak said.
AiFi uses artificial intelligence to improve the shopping experience for businesses and, ultimately, customers. Jorczak, who joined AiFi last December after stints at places like Oracle and IBM, explained the company “provides the most flexible AI platform that enables retailers to affordably deploy and scale autonomous shopping solutions across their businesses.” He added AiFi’s computer vision technology, which leverages AI, ”allows shoppers to purchase items in-store without having to wait in line or stop to scan or pay.” Moreover, Jorczak told me that AiFi’s tech is flexible; it can adapt to store formats without the need for shelf sensors that provide what he described as “advanced tracking algorithms” that have the ability to scale up to 10,000 square feet.
At a high level, Jorczak said AiFi exists to modernize and expedite the shopping experience by reducing long lines. The company’s technologies, he added, “makes shopping easier and faster for customers at convenience stores, stadium concessions, college campuses, and more.” Of course, a simplified shopping experience can be immensely beneficial to those in the disability community; not everyone can (or wants to) stand in a long checkout line, nor can everyone easily communicate with the cashier and use the credit card terminal. In sum, the accessibility story of, say, grocery shopping entails many potential points of friction that puts the overall user experience in peril. Jorczak caveated that even the most technologically forward-thinking stores can have problems when execution is done poorly. People with mobility disabilities, he said, are more likely to encounter trouble with navigating narrow aisles within stores; the issues involve not only restricted movement, but also ample passageways for vehicles like wheelchairs and scooters. Likewise, people who are Blind or low vision may have difficulty using the computers which power self-checkout lanes.
“Our primary goal is to reduce friction in the shopping experience for everyone, which means working alongside our retailers and technology partners to solve problems like these,” Jorczak said.
Jorczak keenly emphasized that although accessibility and expediency is a key component to what AiFi strives to achieve, comfort and safety are just as crucial. The rise of more automated shopping experiences during the pandemic’s apex, he said, had the unintended upside of allowing customers to feel more comfortable in quickly getting what they need without human interaction. In addition, college students have reported feeling more at ease when shopping at AiFi-powered stores because there’s no fear of a possibly awkward, anxiety-inducing conversation with a human at the register. (As a lifelong stutterer, this reporter can attest to said anxiety.) For disabled people in particular, Jorczak told me AiFi ensures retailers have ADA-compliant gates and ask store employees to be ready to assist someone in obtaining out of reach items.
“Providing physical infrastructure in the stores is still a responsibility of the retailer, but AiFi is committed to enable scenarios that are more inclusive for those living with disabilities,” he said.
As for feedback, Jorczak said it’s been positive. AiFi is a trusted partner of Microsoft, while its product has been adopted by the NFL’s Detroit Lions at Ford Field and the Golden State Warriors’ home in San Francisco’s Chase Center. The Los Angeles Clippers, whose all-new Intuit Dome opens next year, has tapped AiFi as the provider of its autonomous shopping experiences at the arena. As to the Lions’ feedback, Jorczak reported the team store saw a 50% decrease in transaction and queuing time while sales saw a 170% increase.
Like with cars, most people think of autonomy as a matter of convenience. And it is convenient to have a robot do the driving for you—but it’s accessibility too. The rise of autonomous vehicles (or shopping or even vacuums) allows disabled people to perform tasks independently rather than ask someone for help. As I often say, most abled people have a tendency to conflate convenience with accessibility. They are close cousins, but they are two distinct concepts. To wit, riding in a autonomous vehicle or doing self-checkout at the store may indeed be convenient—and yes, cool to a degree—but what’s convenient to one person may well be accessibility to another. It’s a nuanced point (as matters of accessibility often are) to make, but important nonetheless.
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