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Insights And Opinions From NRF 2020

January 21, 2020
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We review our time at the worlds biggest retail event: NRF 2020.

NRF bills itself as ‘Retail’s Big Show’, and the 2020 edition did not disappoint. The show ran from January 12th-14th at the Jacob K. Javits Centre in New York and provided event-goers and exhibitors alike with an in-depth look into the current technology trends in retail and what the future holds.

CEO & Co-founder of Enjoy Technology, Ron Johnson presenting his keynote

Kicking off the event, we had the pleasure of showcasing MishiPay at the coveted Innovation Mansion which was created by Current Global and held in a private townhouse in Soho. The event brought together major C-Level executives from Fortune 500 companies as well as including keynote presentations from the likes of Ron Johnson, CEO & Co-Founder of Enjoy Technology Inc., and Ben Kaufman, CEO & Co-Founder of CAMP. Also on display was ‘The Hot 12’ tech showcase which revealed 12 tried and tested technologies that are set to transform businesses in 2020. We were fortunate enough to be included in this group amongst a host of other cutting edge technology. For a full recap of the Innovation Mansion event, click here. A big thanks to Liz Bacelar and her team for inviting us and organising such an interesting event.

Back at the Jacob K. Javits Centre, we had two exhibition spaces at this year’s NRF; we had our own booth and also partnered with Avery Dennison at their stand. Here we showcased a live demonstration of how our technology works seamlessly in tandem with RFID, giving event-goers an insight into a complete end-to-end mobile self-checkout shopping experience. The demonstration involved replicating a shopping scenario where items purchased using MishiPay enabled our patent-pending technology to deactivate the RFID tag found within the item. This allowed the ‘shopper’ to leave the stand without any alarms sounding. When a ‘theft’ was attempted, any items that had not been purchased were picked up by the ceiling-mounted RFID sensor, alerting staff. Thanks to the team at Avery Dennison for hosting this amazing event space with us.

As with previous NRF events, this year boasted some of the best presentations and exhibitions from worldwide business leaders and overall industry experts. Here are our top insights we gathered at NRF 2020:

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella gave an insightful keynote on the first day of the event, talking about how retailers can make the most from the data captured from shoppers and how this data is a demand signal for the future. “The fact that there are 40 petabytes of data generated every hour in retail, is what’s shaping the economy in some sense”. You can catch the full presentation here.
We also attended presentations held by Ocado that proved to be both thought-provoking and insightful. Ocado talked about simplifying their business operations and returning to a “back to the future” market and how that offers “service and customisation from days gone by”, especially in the age of the hypermarket. Read the full recap here.
It was also positive to see from our own observations on the show floor the high numbers of exhibitors showcasing technology aimed at eliminating friction from the in-store shopper journey. This shows that more and more retailers are listening to shoppers and are cognisant of the benefits of these solutions. However, a number of the solutions we saw on display were still hardware-dependent and are often tied to a fixed location, which doesn’t facilitate a truly mobile and frictionless experience.

It was great to see the solutions and technologies on display at NRF 2020 with the common goal of enhancing customer experiences. As 2020 ramps up, we’re excited to see the impact of these solutions in brick and mortar stores.