John Lewis, a London department store, has created its very own little slice of Epcot’s World of Tomorrow exhibit. The store has just opened a 1,000-square-foot space in its Oxford Street location that is dedicated to showing off smart home products, CNN Money reports.
Smart products like the Nespresso Prodigio coffee maker, AEG ProCombi Plus Smart oven, Nest thermostats, alarms and cameras, and automatic lights are all on display and ready to be operated with nothing more than the customer's smart phone.
The largest and most expensive item on display is the Samsung Family Hub fridge that is set to go on sale in June. The fridge will cost $6,650 and comes with enough technology packed into it to make a teenaged gamer excited. Plastered on the front of the door is a 21.5-inch HD screen that can be used to browse the web, write notes and lists, play music, watch TV, and shop. Think of it as a large iPad built into the front of your fridge. That’s not all; the fridge also comes with cameras on the inside that allow you to view food inside the fridge from your phone.
Before you scoff and shake your head, this feature does have its uses. Say you are at the store and can’t remember if you are out of eggs or milk. Instead of buying those things only to get home and realize you already had them, thus wasting the new food, you can just pull out your phone and check.
That is the main idea behind John Lewis’s decision to create this space dedicated to smart home products. Customers now have a place to come and test things out and either be wowed by them and intrigued by the possibilities, or shake their heads and think Why would I ever need cameras in my fridge?
So far, it seems as though more people have been wowed. The company created the interactive area after sales for smart home products grew by 81 percent in 2015. Since launching in early April, the store has seen a 4 percent increase in smart products compared to one year ago. The space has been so successful that the company is planning to open another area in a second store later in the year.
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