High Tech Retail Debuting as a New Marketplace in CES

High Tech Retail is being elevated as a new discipline of breakthrough technology in 2018 CES, starting Jan 9th.  Every year ahead of the International CES, the Consumer Electronic Association releases the list of areas featuring new breakthrough technologies. This year High Tech Retail is one of the new dedicated areas of exhibit and programming. This is significant for it to gain such distinction alongside the technologies that saw some huge improvement last year, like, Artificial Intelligence.

2017 was a year that saw drastic cool-down of one of the hottest technologies in fashion — smartwatch. Not only behemoth like Apple didn’t release any new design, the year saw chip/hardware leader Intel retracting from this segment. On the other hand, we have seen the biggest shift from brick and mortar retail to online, as evidenced by the most severe shut-down of retail stores. Buoyed by the upsurge of ioT and big data, high-tech retail has been taking over as THE area where consumers experience fashion with technology. Featured technologies include, virtual mirrors and apps, that help consumers to make style decision, and apps that help retailers provide customer service. You may remember FashioNXT being the first ever fashion week event to show magic mirror in 2011 as an Intel activation.

Obviously we will continue to watch intently what technologies end the slump in fashion-wearables, especially for instant and customized fashion — 3D printed fashion, and design-process hacks through which brands enable consumer to do in-store customization of the items. 2017 FashioNXT Week debut the first ever ready-to-wear designer’s line of 3D Printed shoes with Feetz and Seth Aaron.

Stay tuned at FashioNXT to see the latest in Fashion-Tech in CES 2018.