Unstaffed retailing gets moving with Moby Mart

Today Moby Mart - an autonomous unmanned store on wheels - takes sight on the future of retail. This is a store that comes to the customers instead of the other way around. Always available, everywhere.

By putting the store on wheels retailers can avoid the increasingly high rental prices in many cities. Instead of leasing a brick-and-mortar store they can patrol the bus in the center during the busy hours, stopping for customers by the sidewalk. This turns every parking space in the world into a potential new 24-hour store.

The Moby Mart can also drive from a commercial area during the day to a residential area during evenings and restock in a central location during the night. Or it can move from village to village to aggregate the customer base, making even the smallest of places viable for a store. It is, of course, electric to reduce both sound and air pollution.

For the customer, it’s a familiar experience. Just like with Wheelys other unmanned solutions customers use an app to locate and enter the store, scan the items they want to buy and pay with a click. But unlike the fixed retail spaces, the Moby Mart can come to the customer if they call it over through the app.

The first version of the bus is deployed in Shanghai, China where it will run in test mode during the summer, starting today. In the autumn, more buses will be created with an updated tech portfolio to further push the retailing experience. The bus will be ready for entrepreneurs around the world when self-driving solutions become legal.

The solution is built by Wheelys Inc in cooperation with Hefei University and Himalafy. Wheelys has quickly turned into a technology leader in the hot unstaffed retailing space. By acquiring the first-to-market company Näraffär and then debuting the first 24/7 store in China, Wheelys are pushing the boundaries forward in a lightning fast pace.

Quotes:

“This is a huge leap closer to my original vision of retailing for everyone, everywhere.”, Robert Ilijason, Founder of Näraffär and Himalafy

“In the coming decades, retail as we know it will disappear. Stores will become powered by apps, they will become accessible 24/7, and they will become mobile.”

Per Cromwell, CTO Wheelys