Amazon is the company all retailers love to hate. On the virtual playground that is the e-commerce marketplace, Amazon is the monstrous big kid that takes your pocket money during the lunch break and leaves you clenching your fists in frustration. In the comics universe, Amazon is all the brute villains rolled into one. And it’s not just because of the annoying fact that Amazon made around $75 billion in 2013 net sales, being larger than the next dozen e-commerce compa...

Retail is not dead, neither is it knocked out. Statistics show that brick-and-mortar stores still play an important role in customers’ lives, even if their role is changing. At first glance it may seem like e-commerce is their biggest challenger (see trends such as showrooming, taking profit away from physical stores). Yet if we look behind the numbers, we see that instead of fighting fist to fist, the two are increasingly intertwined.

Online shoppin...

Until now, ‘dark stores’ have been little more than a useful but mysterious element of back-end retail operations, hidden from customers’ eyes. Thanks to the brand new wave of retail technology innovation using smart glasses like Google Glass or Epson or wearable cameras like an Android device, the ugly duckling can soon turn into a swan.

Dark stores: the dark horse of grocery e-commerce & retail

In general, dark stores are brick-and-mortar locations or ded...