““By developing the pick-up container into an automated, unmanned shop buying locally produced food becomes even easier. The customer can now choose, pay and pick up the products on the spot.”

-Esko Helansuo, Project Manager at Xamk

THE NORDIC ID S/MART UNMANNED SHOP CONCEPT ENABLES NEW SALES CHANNELS

In the village of Juva in Eastern Finland, local small producers have launched the Lähiapaja* shop, a fully automated, unmanned shop. The unmanned shop completes the initiative to develop alternative sales channels for local small producers.

Lähiapaja is an unmanned shop where roughly 20 producers are selling their locally produced organic food ranging from fish, vegetables and meat. Initially, Lähiapaja was a click and collect based webshop. After purchasing online, customers picked up their purchases from a container, which they could access with their Lähiapaja mobile application.

The Challenge

• Small producers’ ability to attract new customers
• Short shelf life of the groceries
• Small producers’ scarce resources for sales development
• Digitalisation and the ability to meet changed shopping behaviours of customers

The solution

Our unmanned shop concept brings real benefits to small producers’ business as it extends their sales channels but requires close to no additional resources for maintaining the service. The shop serves customers around the clock, generating additional sales and enabling a new channel for customer acquisition.

“For us local small producers this is a unique opportunity to reach new customers. We already sell our products online and the unmanned store is an exciting addition to our sales channels,” says Alexandra Lindqvist from the organic farm Sappion luomutila.

Customers can pick up products bought online or make their purchases on the spot. The technology ensures that Out-of-Stock situations are a thing of the past, as the producer receives automated item alerts when stock balance is low. He can then easily replenish items before they run out.

Learn more about the unmanned shop.

The benefits

• The flexible Nordic ID S/MART shop concept scales also to the needs of smaller businesses
• Smooth RFID-based self-checkout supporting mobile and card payments
• Thanks to real time inventory, amounts can be optimized so that products do not exceed expiry date or run out
• Automatic inventory alerts enable items to be replenished before the product runs out
• Enables sales growth through longer opening hours, extends the customer base and offers an additional sales channel
• Requires close to no resources from producer side for maintaining the shop
• Meets the needs of changed shopping behaviour caused by digitalisation
• Does not tie up personnel resources

*The Lähiapaja store is part of Xamk’s (South Eastern University of Applied Science) development project Fisu-postilla järvikalat liikkeelle (Lake fish by fish mail).