Amazon Go has a real rival in Japan

Bloomberg

Amazon.com Inc. is betting that stores of the future won’t have any clerks or registers. A company in Japan thinks it can get there first.
Signpost Corp., which has a staff of about 100, has already deployed its technology in a kiosk on the platform of a train station in Tokyo. It’s an ideal testing ground: a small space no bigger than a bedroom with dedicated entry and exit points, and commuters in
a hurry.
The shares of Signpost, which is planning to unveil a product deal with a major retail chain by the end of this year, climbed 9.3 percent to 5,460 yen at the close last week, a record since the company’s market debut a year ago.
Cameras and artificial-intelligence software track merchandise and purchases. Founder Yasushi Kambara calls it the “Super Wonder Register,” and says the system can be installed in any store. Investors are impressed. Shares of Signpost, which went public last year, have jumped more than 50 percent since it unveiled the store in early October.
The seamless shopping experience is almost identical to that at Amazon Go, the web retailer’s cashierless pilot store at its Seattle
headquarters. “There are already automated highway tolls and turnstiles at train stations,” Kambara said. “In the same way, we want to automate store registers. That’s my dream.”
At stake is a smart-store market that’s projected to process more than $78 billion in annual transactions by 2022, according to Juniper Research. Amazon Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos is also wagering that seamless shopping is the future of retail. The e-commerce company is said to be planning to open as many as 3,000 Amazon Go outlets in the next few years. A spokeswoman for Amazon declined to comment on Signpost’s new store.
Signpost will begin selling its product to Japanese and overseas convenience stores, supermarkets and train station kiosks next year. Kambara says it will cost a retailer about $880,000 to install the Super Wonder Register system in a supermarket of about 500 square metres. He predicts that Signpost will install 30,000 systems in Japan by February 2021, including the
Wonder Register, a simpler checkout terminal that
identifies products using cameras. Including sales overseas, “we will be higher than our target,” Kambara said.
From Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. to Tencent Holdings Ltd. and fledgling outfit BingoBox, Chinese companies are experimenting with their own smart stores. Tencent opened a 300 square metre “We Life” outlet this year, while Alibaba set up a cashierless cafe in its hometown of Hangzhou. In Japan, Signpost may see some early competition: San Francisco-based startup Standard Cognition is planning to roll out its camera-based automatic checkout technology with the goal of being in 3,000 retail locations by 2020.
The US startup has a deal with the Japanese suburban drugstore chain Yakuodo and plans on partnering with existing retail businesses in the country. Other large convenience store and supermarket operators have approached Standard Cognition.