Shanghai – Powered by artificial intelligence, the Wheelys shop offers a new version of the convenience store.
Now in Beta testing in Shanghai, consumers can use a smartphone app to order a Moby Mart store to their neighbourhood. Powered by solar panels, the moving grocery store will provide new shopping opportunities to isolated rural areas.
The brand’s co-founder Tomas Mazetti believes the stores will be bought by local communities or as family businesses to counteract the all-encompassing influence of e-commerce mega-systems such as Amazon. Designed with an integrated air purifier, the stores will actively clean the external environment as they move to create a sustainable retail eco-system.
‘In the coming decades, retail as we know it will disappear. Stores will become powered by apps, they will become accessible 24/7 and they will become mobile,’ says Per Cromwell, co-founder of Wheelys.