Are the robots coming for us?

Retail as an industry is a good candidate for automation because it has many low-skill tasks that require high resource. As new employment laws lifting minimum wage, cheap labour has become less so, and there are diminishing margins in an industry where staff already make up the majority of retailers’ costs.

At our breakfast event, we explore how we can keep with the times, whilst holding our businesses to their visions.

We cover:

1. What technologies are retail businesses currently adopting?

2. Where we are headed?

3. With bricks and mortar still making up 90% of retail sales, what does this transition look like and how do we make it seamless?

Speakers:

Hilary O'Conor - Co-founder and Technical Director - we live in the experience economy, Hilary speaks about creating digital humans who respond to facial recognition and cues and demonstrates some of the advancements in chatbot technology.

Pier Smulders - Alibaba - Alibaba is China’s — and by some measures, the world’s — biggest online commerce company. It's three sites have hundreds of millions of users, and host millions of merchants and businesses. Alibaba handles more business than any other e-commerce company.They talk about the advancements they have made in automation tech.

Jo Mackie - Founder, Asset Factory - This disruptive company are automating fashion and product photography and are taking hours out of the process. Jo talks about automating in the ecommerce space.

Shaun Quincey - CEO of Genoapay (recently acquired by Latitude Financial Services) speaks about automation and convenience when it comes to finance, as well as his technology journey.

We also have live demonstrations from technology companies.

This event is sponsored by Latitude Financial Services, New Zealand and Australia’s leading consumer finance business. Latitude have forged solid, long term partnerships with some of the region’s most iconic and successful retailers, with the Gem brand in New Zealand. Specialising in retail finance, Gem personal loans and the Gem Visa credit card. Now including Genoapay.

Event Details:

Date: Wednesday 19th June, 2019

Time: Arrive at 7am for a coffee, the panel will begin around 7.30am, and we will be wrapped up by 9.15am ish.

Venue: Freedom Furniture 77 Broadway, Newmarket.

Enjoy networking, coffee / tea and a light breakfast.

Parking available at The Warehouse opposite the venue, or within the building on the opposite side - Davis Crescent.

We look forward to seeing you there!