With the introduction of new technologies over the past few decades, the fast-paced retail sector has improved in leaps and bounds. But tech experts, including a number of talented Australians, have generated some new technologies which will change the face of retail in the coming months and years.

After the Online Retailer Conference & Expo at Sydney on Wednesday, we rounded up a number of the exciting new creations presented and looked at how they are going to enhance your shopping experience through network security and performance management in Melbourne and Sydney. According to Alice Kuepper, the organiser of the expo, the future of shopping really is just around the corner, with a few of those technologies hitting the market in only a mere couple of months.

The Makeover Mirror

For those who love to get their makeup done professionally, this is a complete game changer. Rather than trying to recreate your favorite look in your home, these mirrors record your make up artist’s every movement. These Makeover Mirrors, or ‘virtual mirrors‘, quite literally record you with your makeup applied in-store before sending you a weblink video of the recording to use in your home that is also stored on a cloud management platform for later use.

A luxury light system will also simulate natural sunlight to ensure your video is colour-corrected, while a flexible light temperature will recreate distinct light environments, so you look perfect on a sunny day, at the office or on a night out. You’ll also be delivered a database of all the goods you tried on. A brand new product for Australia, global merchant Neiman Marcus now hosts sixty virtual mirrors in its stores.

Online Fitting

There is nothing worse than ordering a number of clothing on the internet, only to find that they do not come close to even matching. The smart people at Style Atlas understand this issue all too well, and have been working hard and consistently testing managed services to establish a new tech solution for this problem. They’re the first in the world to design a solution which permits you to make a ‘bod-e-map’ – your own personal set of match related body dimensions – requiring just one full length picture along with your height and weight.

Working with partner retailers, Style Atlas then requires the garment measurements from each single special style offered, before telling you that size will fit, according to your ‘bod-e-map’ and how the garment was created to fit. This creative invention is anticipated to fully start by the end of the year.

The Inspiration Corridor

The tech-heads from Intelliscape will be launching their ‘Inspiration Corridor’ at the Online Retailer Conference & Expo this month. This amazing invention sees shoppers input a ‘corridor’ lined with big displays and fitted with a camera. The camera then builds a profile for you using your age, height and gender before displaying content that’s specially tailored to you. You can then select garments you prefer and the magic displays will show you the finished outfits – the ideal technology for the lazy shopper, mobile data capture technology is integrated into the Inspiration Corridor so you can ‘try on’ things you see out and about.

Holograms

While holograms are associated with high-tech displays and Sci-Fi movies, they will shortly be in a store near you. Recently, digital signage and displays will be installed in and around stores to show customers an almost-3D digital picture of products and advertising. Essentially, the holographic displays will show clients different products and advertisements from several angles, allowing us to observe the front, sides and back.

The group at Intelliscape have taken Holograms one step further and designed a holographic screen with a camera inside. This camera will capture your age and demographic before compiling the content to show you products applicable to you for the greatest personal shopping experience.

Blended Experience Shopping

Brauz, an Australian startup, is currently working to make the world’s first ‘mixed experience’ market, bringing physical, electronic and digital shopping together. The Brauz Program, which is available soon, permits you to browse products presented to you according to your interests, likes, behaviors and phases of life – all enabled by an agile test management software.

Then, when you walk past a shop you will be given a notification to inform you that this shop actually stocks among the products that you have saved on your program. Or, even more impressively, if you’ve enjoyed a branded pair of black boots, you will get an alert if you walk past a shop stocking similar black boots.

Virtual Reality

This technology allows you to store anywhere in the world and customise your designs in real time. Because of marketing and innovation agency Rh7thm and Augmented Reality/Virtual Truth pros MultiDimensionCorp, it will not be long until you are experiencing virtual reality shopping both in-store and at home.

Partnering with Disrupt Sports in the 2017 Online Retailer Conference and Expo and various IT consultants in Melbourne and Sydney’s shopping districts, they’ve created a technology that lets you pop augmented reality glasses and make your own personalised surfboard design, all of the while experiencing it in VR prior to making the purchase.