Zara owner opens robot-staffed budget chain Lefties in UK to fight Shein
nordicinst · x · 2026-08-27
Zara's parent Inditex has launched its cut-price chain Lefties in Britain, opening its first store in Liverpool to take on Primark, Shein and supermarkets, backed by an army of robots, the Guardian reports. The store uses robotics to cut staffing costs: self-checkouts scan a whole basket at once, and shoppers drop hangers into a slot that carries them via hidden conveyor to two robots behind a screen who sort them by size into boxes. Fitting rooms have hatches sending unwanted items to robotic sorting behind the scenes. Two more UK stores open this year, with more expected next year.
More from Companies & People
- Jensen Huang's pep talk message to the UK's AI sector goes viral — threepointone · 2026-10-15
- CyberiadLabs partners with Hyver to offer free AI courses to 7,830 students across 6 African countries — jbarbier · 2026-10-15
- Anthropic slowdown could trigger a domino effect across the AI startup ecosystem — AccBalanced · 2026-10-15
- A 6-person team shipped healthcare prior-auth AI agents in 3 months — here's the playbook — alex_verem · 2026-10-15
- Scale AI exec: data companies profit because frontier labs don't own the product surface — sarahookr · 2026-10-15
- Energy company laid off programmers after adopting Claude agents, dad reports — Ok_Boat_3855 · 2026-10-15