Pricerite has opened its third new New Retail concept store, at MegaBox in Kowloon Bay.
The 36,000sqft Pricerite at MegaBox has been designed to seamlessly merge the furniture retailer’s physical store offer with its omnichannel approach.
And it claims to be the first retail chain store in Hong Kong to accept cryptocurrencies. All Pricerite stores are now accepting Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC) as payment method. The store’s cash registers will instantly convert the cryptocurrencies into Hong Kong dollars according to the real-time exchange rate. Customers with a Lightning Network-supported cryptocurrency wallet can finish the BTC transaction in several seconds.
“Following the immense success brought by the opening of Pricerite’s first-of-its-kind New Retail concept store last year, we are making another big leap forward,” said CEO James Leung. “Continuing with our commitment to the integration of advanced technologies with human talent, we … adopted a wide range of state-of-the-art retail technologies, providing customers with an all-rounded shopping experience.”
One of the technologies the company has employed is a Virtual Store online, which simulates the actual environment of the Pricerite at MegaBox store. Customers can browse the aisles and click on a product on the shelf to read its details and price, before adding it to their cart should they wish to buy it.
Leung says the online shopping experience runs 24 hours a day and offers an almost totally true-to-real-life experience.
Another technical highlight is a smart kiosk in the new store which provides information such as inventory levels in the store and the availability of products in nearby stores if they are out of stock at MegaBox.
Pricerite’s Pepper the robot, has been updated, offering far more information than the loyalty program advice the first generation Pepper in Nathan Road was known for. Pricerite says the new-generation Pepper is the first retail robot in Hong Kong developed to provide and search the information of more than 10,000 products.
And the company’s 3D mobile app has been upgraded to provide a more fluid customer experience when customers are measuring if a furniture item will fit inside their home. The app merges the simulated apartment with the actual environment captured via the phone camera before it shows a 1:1 display of all furniture pieces in the real home environment. Users can ‘browse’ the apartment at his or her own pace in a first-person view. This app then offers typical apartment templates and a wide range of furniture options.
The Pricerite at MegaBox offers delivery services in as little as four hours.
During launch phase, the service will be available only for Kowloon customers who buy products with the ‘Pricerite Speed Delivery’ tag online or at the MegaBox outlet.