Suitable technologies opens store staffed only by robots

by TEKLA PERRY

http://youtu.be/5J8rbD7KihQ

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But this week, for the first time, I went into a store in which the members of the sales staff weren’t only identified by their hometowns, they were actually working from their hometowns, via telepresence robots. Their names and locations appeared on their screens, and on the day I visited there were employees based in at least three different states.

Other than that, my visit to the Beam store at 425 University Avenue in downtown Palo Alto seemed like a completely ordinary retail experience. It was Monday—a generally slow day in this area—and there were few customers, so two of the staff members, Ben Day from in Brooklyn and Alexa Inga in Clayton, Calif.—or actually their robots—were standing just outside the front of the store, idly chatting.

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