SandStar Helps to Push the Boundaries of Retail Under Different Scenarios With Its AI Vending Machines

CHARLOTTE, N.C., November 1, 2020 (Newswire.com) - ​​When we talk about retail scenarios, we don’t just care about the upgraded shopping experience for customers under different scenarios made possible by technology, but also care about how to help the operators use smart retail solutions to further explore the purchase needs of customers and facilitate conversion under different scenarios.   

Smart vending machines as the smallest sales units have their own advantages in terms of flexible deployment and convenient operation, and their value under different retail scenarios is constantly being demonstrated.

At the technical level, as a tech company that was the earliest to address AI+ retail, SandStar adopts computer vision as the key technology for its Smart Kiosks. Thanks to the company’s unique “advanced semantic action recognition” algorithm, the cameras within such a Smart Kiosk can identify the items inside like human eyes and recognize customers’ actions of taking them from the shelves and putting them back. When you swipe a card or scan a QR code to open the door, you can take any items you want from the shelves, and after you close the door, the payment will be made automatically with your phone. The shopping process is so convenient that you no longer have to go through the cumbersome and inefficient process of a traditional vending machine again where you press a button to choose the item you want to buy and bend over to pick up the item after paying for it.     

In actual use, over the past six months, the deployment scenarios for SandStar’s Smart Kiosk have been expanding. In July, they entered the offices and employee cafes in Beijing’s CBD area, to enable office workers to conveniently buy snacks including drinks and ice creams during tea breaks or lunch time. In August, they entered resorts and school campuses, to enable travelers and students to also enjoy the convenience of technology.   

SandStar believes that the deployment scenarios for its Smart Kiosk can be roughly put into two categories: one is the traditional retail scenarios such as shopping centers and convenience stores; and the other is the emerging, non-traditional retail scenarios such as resorts, school campuses, employee cafes, and office buildings. Compared to traditional retail scenarios, although there are very obvious peak hours for the foot traffic under scenarios such as resorts, school campuses, and employee cafes, such scenarios have the advantage of “being closer to consumers with less competition in the surroundings within the unit distance” when it comes to the deployment of Smart Kiosks, so they are sales outlets that can really help to meet the “last 10-meter” shopping needs of consumers. Meanwhile, the rent is usually lower under such scenarios.

Similarly, under traditional retail scenarios such as shopping centers, convenience stores, and chain restaurants, Smart Kiosks will be able to enjoy advantages such as the high foot traffic and the good shopping atmosphere, to provide a higher sales conversion rate for the operators. Previously, the Smart Kiosks of SandStar had already been widely used under multiple scenarios such as shopping centers, chain restaurants, supermarkets, and convenience stores.

In actual operations, compared to traditional vending machines, SandStar Smart Kiosks can help brands reduce the restocking cost by 40%. In the meantime, the data collection and analysis function of Smart Kiosks can help suppliers optimize a series of business strategies for offerings, pricing, display, and so on, so as to help them increase sales by 30%.   

SandStar is committed to empowering retail with AI. In the future, they will bring the convenience of AI to many more retail scenarios, to provide a better shopping experience for consumers, to increase sales for merchants, and to help them reduce costs and increase efficiency.

Source: SandStar