The retail industry is doubling down on digital to keep its unexpectedly strong holiday performance from becoming a fluke.
The floor of the National Retail Federation’s annual trade show in New York this week was crowded with alert systems primed to recognise heavy-spending customers, so-called smart shelves fitted with real-time inventory trackers and robots for every step of the supply chain.
It was a conference about shopping that looked more like an expo for tech, as if the electronics trade show CES had decamped from Las Vegas and moved to the Javits Center in Manhattan.
The retail federation said last