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After releasing some of the flashiest retail tech around—self scanning carts! Palm payments!—Amazon’s scaling back to address a simpler pain point for retailers: Counting.
The details: Amazon quietly released “Dash Smart Shelf,” a wi-fi enabled shelving system that tells users when they’re due for a TP restock.
- When the shelf senses inventory’s low, it sends users a notification to hit “reorder” or auto-replenish.
- Dash Smart Shelf is geared toward small and medium businesses, but anyone with a pantry can buy the system.
The tool puts Amazon in competition with Staples and Office Depot, where businesses can buy subscriptions for items that disappear the same day they’re ordered (paper towels, K-Cups, more paper towels). Those subscriptions are purely B2B—and they don’t come with their own tech.
Looking ahead...I wouldn’t be surprised if Amazon expanded its suite of Dash tools for retailers to include in-store and warehouse shelves, so all those grocers stockpiling supplies can count for themselves.