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From smart cushions to self-watering planters, Amazon.co.uk’s new ‘Shop the Future’ store features innovative electricals and homeware, along with health & wellness, entertainment & leisure, children’s toys and food products.
Announced today (Thursday July 20) by the online retailer, the ‘Shop the Future’ store at www.amazon.co.uk/shopthefuture is billed as ‘the place to go for the latest lifestyle necessities… set to become mainstay must-haves of the future’.
Products listed in the ‘home’ category range from the RMDLO Stainless Steel Collapsible Colander Steamer (£25) and Click & Grow Indoor Smart Herb Garden Kit with 3 basil cartridges (£47.95), to the Bosch Smart Home Controller (£199.95) and the Neato Robotics Botvac Wi-Fi Enabled Robot Vacuum Cleaner (£619.97).
The merchandise was selected with the help of two futurists: Anne Lise Kjaer, founder of trend management agency Kjaer Global, and William Higham, founder of strategic consultancy Next Big Thing.
Amazon.co.uk director of electronics Jamie Heywood said: “At Amazon.co.uk, we already offer over 250 million products that our customers want now and which they might want in the future, from household goods and fashion to technology, the latest music and entertainment, and food and drink.
“The ‘Shop the Future’ store helps our customers stay on the cutting edge, using futurists’ predictions to continue to offer the best products and services to meet their evolving needs.”
Coinciding with the store launch, Amazon commissioned the ‘Shop the Future’ report, with predictions from the futurists on the consumer products ‘that could be set to redefine how we live, work and play in the future by making our lives easier and more efficient’.
Product predictions from the report include:
*The development of ‘pet translators’ that listen to your pet’s bark or miaow and tell you what they want, along with voice-led translators that will make communicating with people in different languages easier than ever.
*The emergence of ‘simplexity’ – a drive to remove complexity and have more meaningful services and products – with voice activation, subscription services and artificial intelligence becoming normal characteristics of the way we shop.
*Children’s education inextricably linked to entertainment through the use of apps that work in tandem with their toys.
*Virtual reality could make it even easier to share vivid experiences with our friends and family, with cameras creating 3D images that you can actually ‘walk around’.
*Virtual shelves that let us display our personality by showing off our collections of digital films, music and books on any wall in our home.
*When it comes to entertainment, people will be able to get their hands on an OLED screen that is so thin that it can be rolled up and taken with them on the move
*Monitoring health and wellbeing that is even easier, with trackers implanted into our bodies.
*Personalised diets based on our individual bodies and, in some cases, DNA, may become the norm. Insects could become an ordinary part of people’s diets, featuring in ready meals,
*The report also predicts a new breed of forward-thinking, independent consumers, who will devote more time to producing their own high-quality products from their homes with the help of the latest technologically advanced tools, such as 3D printers.
