Retail Opinion - John Ryan explores the concept of checkout-free shops

Coming soon -

checkout-free toy shops?

It’s a year since Amazon introduced checkoutfree shops, and the technology looks likely to be available for indie retailers sooner than we thought, says John Ryan

There are times when visiting a toy shop is a bit much. Admittedly these periods are pretty restricted, but then so are the moments when large numbers of shoppers flow through a toy retailer’s doors.

For the most part, it’s about Christmas, with the rest of the year being a matter of satisfying the demands of your nearest and dearest as their birthdays draw near. How much better might it be then if, when the crowds are there, you could be on hand to advise and cajole in the manner that you should be able to? Yet it’s at exactly that time that the checkout queues exercise their siren call and dictate that you have to do something else.

So how about giving up on the cash register and mingling with the shoppers instead? Anyone who has been in London over the past year is likely to have encountered an Amazon Fresh grocery store. There are now 17 of these across the capital (the first opened just over a year ago in Ealing), and the premise is simple.

Using the Amazon app, which is linked to your bank account, you generate a QR code, which you wave over a scanner at the entrance barriers at each Amazon Fresh store. Hey presto, the gates open, you walk in, get what you want and then walk out without paying. Except, of course, you have.

Your progress around the store has been monitored by a combination of overhead cameras and weight sensors, and anything you remove from the shelf (unless you put it back) is totted up and your bank account takes the hit as you leave the store.

Meanwhile sales ‘associates’ (and there are relatively few of them) are busy filling and tidying up and yes, they have time to answer your idle enquiry about where you might find the parmesan cheese. Until very recently, it was only Amazon that was embracing this form of ‘contactlesss, checkout-free’ retail, but now others are beginning to follow suit.

The imitators are Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Carrefour, and others - and it makes sense. Time-pressed convenience store shoppers have no wish to spend their precious minutes in a queue at lunchtime as they wait to purchase a meal deal. But suddenly we have moved beyond convenience. In the US, travel retailer Hudson News, which sells paper, books, confectionery, cards and sundry toys, has opened two checkout-free stores, in Dallas and Chicago. Those hurrying to get to their gate on time can now make a dash into one of these, grab what they want, and still make the 10.30 to Austin, TX. And if this sounds a little far from home, then consider WHSmith. The UK high street name has opened a checkoutfree store - its first in North America - in New York’s LaGuardia airport. This may still be 3,500 miles from us, but WHSmith is a familiar name, and it has chosen to use Amazon’s technology to make its contactless vision a reality. Now you really can pick up a paper, a fluffy toy and a Hershey bar and make a run for it.

The reason this has happened is that the price of entry to the checkout-free revolution is crashing - and continues to do so. In this instance, there really is real second-mover advantage inasmuch as the potential hiccups that will almost certainly have been encountered by Amazon since its first Fresh stores opened have now been dealt with. The tech giant has gone to market with a system that not only works but is also increasingly affordable.

By this stage, gentle reader, you will have guessed where this is going. Will it be possible at some point in the notso-distant future (a year or two at most) for shoppers to be able head to non-food shops that are not part of a very big company and enjoy the benefits of ‘just walking out’, as Amazon puts it?

The answer is almost certainly yes. Less than a year ago, surveys seemed to be around everywhere asking how long before Amazon Fresh-style shopping becomes the norm, with the options being a year, three years, five years, 10 years or never. Things are a little clearer than they were in early 2021 and it seems probable now that we will see a mass change within the next five years, at most.

There will, of course, still be checkouts, as there are those of us who would still prefer this status quo, instead of trying to get an app to do its stuff. That said, there is no reason to presume mass resistance to this change and, done well, it makes shopping both easier and more efficient.

From a toy shop owner’s perspective, the positives outweigh the negatives. Getting down among your customers is what the best shopkeepers always wish to do, and not having to worry about the cash-taking operation would certainly be a step along this road. The cost of installation, even allowing for further price reductions, will naturally be hefty, but that doesn’t mean that it won’t be worthwhile. Frequently, shifting stock is about selling, and being freed up to do this is one way of ensuring that this takes place.

Futuristic perhaps, but by no means a pipe dream. Stores without checkouts are coming and your rivals will almost certainly be casting an eye over what’s possible and how it will improve their prospects.

John Ryan is Stores Editor of business magazine Retail Week. He has worked for the title for more than a decade covering store design, visual merchandising and what makes things sell in-store. In a previous life, he was a buyer.