Amazon announced yesterday the opening of Amazon Salon, the Seattle company's first hairdressing shop.
It will be a place where Amazon aims to test new technologies for the general public in a real and “evidence” scenario.
Amazon Salon, Bezos is a hairdresser
The hair salon will occupy over 1.500 square feet on Brushfield Street in London's Spitalfields, where Amazon says it will initially trial the use of augmented reality (AR) and technology."point-and-learn“. It is a system that allows customers to point to products on a shelf and acquire more information through videos and other content that appears on displays.
To order the products, customers will scan the QR code on the shelf, which will take them to the Amazon purchase page for the item, which they can add to their cart and then check out.
La AR technology salon, meanwhile, will be used to allow clients to experiment with virtually trying on different hair colors before dyeing them a new shade.
Amazon hairdresser, the last category of a long series
Amazon has already entered the market of convenience stores, grocery stores and other brick and mortar stores, where it is innovating with new technologies. In his Amazon Go offers cashless payment, smart shopping carts and biometric systems.
It's unclear whether Amazon actually has ambitions to be in the hair salon business. From the rumors it seems that the show will largely serve as a testing ground for new technologies that Amazon wants to sell to other retail customers in the future, or perhaps implement in stores in other product categories.
In the case of augmented reality, Amazon may want to collect data on customer experiences to leverage on their shop.
An experiential place
Amazon makes it clear that its goals do not concern the hairdressing business. Bezos' company describes the salon as an "experiential place where new products and technologies are showcased" and notes that it has no plans to open additional salons at this time.
Amazon has not detailed what kind of data it will collect from customers who use the salon. Of course, the fact that it's capturing customer images for virtual hair color try-ons raises questions about what it plans to do with the data it collects. Will the "hairdresser" database be used only to test technologies or also for something else?
As many recall, Amazon has a complicated history with its use of technologies like facial recognition and biometrics, having sold biometric facial recognition services to law enforcement agencies in the United States. Its facial recognition technology has instead been the subject of a data privacy lawsuit. And his Ring camera company continues to work in collaboration with the police. Customers should be informed if they are participating in an Amazon research project, and not just enjoying new technology products.
