Lately, it seems that the market is never short of headline news about Alibaba's expansion in the new retail market. At the "Awards Ceremony of the 2017 Innovative Application Competition" held at Alibaba Retail Operations on September 27, another important announcement was made: According to the newly established partnership with Alibaba, CVTE has been appointed the first hardware service provider of Alibaba's new retail operations to help build its smart store ecosystem.

What will the future smart stores look like?

When you come to such a store, you can try a live multi-player game through "facial recognition" on one of the smart interactive screens in the lobby to win some coupons, which you can use right away. Amid so many clothes, you might feel at a loss as to which one to choose. A "smart mirror" may help you pick and try the right ones, and recommend various mix-and-match options. You can also test your skin through a single touch of a smart "magic mirror" to order customized cosmetic products from leading brands. If a store is too small to showcase all goods, "cloud shelves" can present an unlimited number of products virtually. Customers can place orders by simply scanning barcodes.

These exciting hi-tech stores are not mere fancies. They were right there at the "Awards Ceremony of the 2017 Innovative Application Competition".Almost all the smart terminals of crowd guiding screens, shopping guide screens cloud shelf screens, and virtual mirrors in the stores...... are from CVTE.

Since its kickoff on July 21, the competition has attracted many service providers. Eight awards, the Interactive Crowd Guide Innovation Award, Smart Shopping Guide Innovation Award, Try-on Experience Innovation Award, AR Interaction Innovation Award, Unmanned Store Innovation Award, Home Decoration Application Innovation Award, Visitor Statistics Innovation Award and the Smart Terminal Innovation Award were presented to 15 service providers. Smart Terminal Innovation Award winner and first hardware service provider CVTE stunned visitors with its eye-opening innovative smart store technologies. The partnership of Alibaba and CVTE for the development of the smart hardware ecosystem of new retail proved to be extremely visionary, too.

How to make smart stores even smarter? How to enable new retail operations? CVTE's smart terminal solutions have provided inspiration and answers to these questions.

With caring design, CVTE’s Smart Terminal Solution enables smart interaction between screens of various sizes. With interactive, synchronized, safe platform-based terminals and effective connection of various applications, it helps smart physical stores create a smart interactive shopping experience. While providing consumers with an exciting, interactive shopping experience never seen before, it also brings new ideas into brand operation to help create additional value.

CVTE covers almost every smart screen in the new retail service ecosystem. Working with Alibaba, it has jointly defined the technical standards for smart big screens for new retail businesses. CVTE maintains a high-quality service system. Through its 1,049 service centers in 719 cities across China, it provides site service in all major cities within 48 hours of the request to support the new retail vision.

With CVTE’s interactive smart terminals, future smart stores will be able to create more convenient, diversified, appealing shopping experiences.For example, you can view the latest limited edition products of any foreign cosmetics brand on the screen wall in the store, request a virtual try through the facial recognition system, and purchase your favorite products with just one click on the self-service shopping system. Through the voice-controlled shopping guide screen, you can browse all goods available, including images, prices tags, discounts and even selfie pictures of other buyers. With a VR headset, you can stand in front of a large screen to experience nearly of 100% real home setting online, including the sitting room, bedrooms, furniture and appliances--all in the "what you see is what you get" scenario. Just move your fingertips through the "cloud shelves" to browse all the shoes, and click those you are interested in to get 3D images on the touch screen. Using the self-service printing system, you can even print these images yourself. The "crowd guide screen" in the lobby can even capture the movements, including eye movement tracks of consumers within a certain area, and thus identify the most appealing, and most ignored elements to enable accurate advertising--just like a mind reader. Of course, in order to provide interactive customer experiences, live, multi-screen interactive games should be available through smart tablets, so that customers, or players, can have more fun on the large screen. Such an incredible experience will become reality in the near future. Another surprise is CVTE's smart "magic mirror" which will be deployed in the smart stores to enable smart skin testing and shopping guide services.

Along with the rapid development of new retail, consumer experience-based, data-driven pan-retail business modes have been emerging. The key to harnessing consumer demand is the control over data. As the primary platform of new retail, smart stores are putting in place a new business landscape by digitizing customer flows and reshaping the connection between stores and consumers. "In 2017, Alibaba has been enabling brands and service providers with data to jointly establish offline smart hardware ecosystems and standards," said Mr. Ye Guohui, General Manager of Alibaba Cloud Retail Operations.

Today, driven by the convergence across all channels, new retail, traditional e-commerce, and old commerce are changing. They need to embrace each other to stimulate chemical reactions, continued innovation and new things. Through the new partnership, both Alibaba and CVTE wish to introduce new innovations to the multi-scenario consumer experience, anywhere, anytime--to trigger chemical reactions around people, goods and places (scenarios), to drive the development of new economic entities and the new retail infrastructure. They would be able to provide consumers with brand new experiences anywhere, anytime, and businesses with higher efficiency. In addition, they would also provide consumers with more convenient experiences and additional values.