Wearable technology is already fusing fashion and functionality.

Similarly, in fashion the next wave of pioneers might come from the sphere of technology, rather than the world that gave us the likes of Coco Chanel and Miuccia Prada. Meanwhile, other disrupters are overlapping with retail, such as ride-hailing company Uber, which is moving into grocery deliveries in the US. Some retailers, including Burberry, have begun to sell through Twitter, but retail analysts say shopping via Instagram, the photo-sharing site, may be the holy grail in the blending of shopping and social media. Shopping activity on Facebook may have fallen short of the excited predictions of those who dubbed it вЂњF-commerceвЂќ, but Pinterest, a digital pinboard that fuses interests and things, offers greater potential. Social media are increasingly influential in retail. Indeed, AppleвЂ™s retail business is led by Angela Ahrendts, former chief executive of Burberry, which pioneered fashionвЂ™s links with technology and social media. Neil Saunders, managing director of Conlumino, the retail research group, says developments in online retail were driven by pioneers from outside the industry such as Bezos and Steve Jobs, founder of Apple, which is now a significant retailer of consumer electronic products and music. The next wave of innovation involved not stores, but shopping online, led by Jeff Bezos, who created Amazon, which started as a bookstore in 1994 before moving into hundreds of other categories. вЂњWhy did Tesco get that enormous advantage over the early years of the 21st century? It was because their information was better,вЂќ says Andrew Seth, author of The Grocers and Supermarket Wars. There were other innovations along the way, such as TescoвЂ™s Clubcard loyalty card, launched in 1995, which gave the chain vast quantities of data about its customers. A year earlier, Sam Walton had opened the first Walmart store in Rogers, Arkansas, followed a quarter of a century later by the first Walmart Supercenter, combining general merchandise and groceries in one shop. The first one opened in 1963, near Paris. Meanwhile, in France, Carrefour was pioneering the concept of the hypermarket - a giant one-stop shop that combined food and non-food goods. It is no coincidence the fast-food craze, exemplified by McDonaldвЂ™s burger bars, was gathering pace at the same time. The idea spread around the world Sainsbury opened one of the UKвЂ™s first self-service stores in Croydon in 1950. According to Piggly WigglyвЂ™s official history, Saunders, вЂњa dynamic and innovative manвЂќ, noticed the method of clerks gathering goods for customers wasted time, so he had shoppers serve themselves.

One of the most significant innovations in retail was in 1916, when Clarence Saunders opened Piggly Wiggly, which is regarded as the worldвЂ™s first self-service supermarket, in Memphis, Tennessee.

Meanwhile, Sir Ken Morrison built his familyвЂ™s three egg-and-butter stalls in postwar Bradford into the Wm Morrison supermarket chain. It was the same for the Sainsbury family, which transformed its small dairy shop in LondonвЂ™s Drury Lane into one of the UKвЂ™s biggest grocers. But it was a decade later, when he opened his first shop in Edgware, and began buying up stores in expanding London suburbs, that the growth of Tesco really took off. Jack Cohen, founder of Tesco, the supermarket chain, started with a market stall in LondonвЂ™s East End in 1919. For the first mass-market retail pioneers, it was all about the shop.

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