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A Mall Hopes You'll Try Products in Person but Buy Them Online A new shopping complex in Ohio will try to combine the convenience of online stores with the hands-on experience of browsing at a mall. Sometime near the end of 2006, the complex, called Epicenter, is scheduled to open in Columbus at the Polaris Fashion Place. The nucleus of Epicenter will consist of two parts - the Buypod, a hand-held electronic device, and electronic kiosks located throughout the mall. Under the concept, customers will enter the mall and register their credit card information, which will then be put into their Buypods. As customers browse merchandise, they can use their Buypod - which, as the name suggests, looks something like an Apple iPod - to scan the labels of items they want to buy. Although a small number of items will available to take home, most orders will be sent directly to the warehouse, where they will be filled and shipped. The electronic kiosks will print receipts and can be used to cancel orders, if needed. According to Anthony Lee, Epicenter's chief executive, Internet and catalogue retailers can use Epicenter to establish a place where their customers can feel, and in some cases try on, merchandise. The Epicenter design also offers the low overhead and reduced need for sales staff that online and catalogue retailers are accustomed to. Mr. Lee would not reveal the names of the "small" number of retailers who had signed up for Epicenter, but he said that "interest runs very high." Sheldon Gordon, chairman of Gordon Group Holdings, which developed the mall, said that he saw Epicenter as "a merger of Internet capabilities with traditional retailing." "I started to realize that department stores were going out of business and merging, and a lot of space is becoming available," he said when asked about the origins of the new concept.
http://www.nytimes.com
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