BEFORE YOU GET too carried away with the summer of sport or the hot weather fries your brain, I’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that here at ERT we’re gearing up for the competitive event of the year – the ERT Awards.

We’re just finalising the details for the 2012 awards but keep an eye out, as we’ll be launching the campaign on June 15 – both in print and online.

Incredibly, this will be the fifth ERT Awards. Where does the time go? Since it began, we’ve increased the profile of the event – it’s now become one of the most prestigious dates in the electrical retailing calendar and each year, we aim to improve on the last. Who knows, my jokes might even get better this time around.

Last year, we received a record number of entries and since then, several of the winners have told us how an ERT Award made a positive impact on their business and gave them even more credibility.

In the last issue of ERT (Analysis, page 14), we looked at the future of retail and how interactive technology could change our industry as we know it. After the advent of online and mobile shopping, analysts are predicting a third technological revolution, driven by interactive TV.

In the future, could we be using virtual reality to try on new clothes? It may sound like scary stuff from sci-fi movie Minority Report, but it could be closer than we think.

This interactive revolution may also have an effect on in-store presentation and display. Retail outlets could have electronic shelf labelling for updating prices and promotions, or 3D visualisations, so customers can see what appliances could look like in their own home.

Most consumers are already using smart phones and iPads on a daily basis. Could we soon be using them in-store to pay for goods electronically, instead of queuing at tills? It seems a dead cert that we’ll be shopping through our interactive TVs from the comfort of our own home.

Multichannel retailing is the future and in the technology sector, we should be embracing it, however, isn’t there a terrible irony that smart TV – hailed as the saviour of the CE retail industry – could be the one thing that finally kills off traditional in-store retailing as we know it?