WeChat, one of the world’s most popular mobile apps and social networks, brought home iF Gold Award for its smart retail innovation, Scan & Go. It is the first ever Chinese product to win4 gold in the iF Service Design category.

Established in 1953, the German-based iF Design Award has always been known for its “Independent, Rigorous(细致的) and Reliable” standards.

Scan & Go enables shoppers at retail stores to turn their mobile phone into a virtual checkout counter. When shopping, customers use their mobile phones to scan product barcodes(条形码), view product information, get discounts, complete self-checkout, and pay directly within the app via WeChat Pay. There is no queuing up at the cash register.

According to statistics, sales during peak hours in traditional supermarkets account for 60% of total turnover, and on average customers spend three to five minutes on queueing and payment during peak hours. With Scan & Go, customers no longer have to queue, and the payment time is shortened to one minute.

In order to realize queue-less purchasing, the WeChat team greatly optimizes retailers’ in-store customer handling efficiency during peak hours, and enables overall management of the consumer traffic flow. By introducing dedicated lanes for Scan & Go, supermarkets have achieved over a five-fold increase in converting(转变) digital members within two months.

In addition to improving retailers’ checkout efficiency and providing customers with a better shopping experience, Scan & Go also combines promotion and marketing modes through Mini Programs, to help increase sales. It helps retailers(零售商) to link the online and offline aspects of their business, and has become the standard tool in China for merchants to realize digital transformation. Scan & Go is now widely used by retailers in China.

A Shanghai shopping mall recently opened a “husband nursery” where men who are pulled around the shops by their wives or girlfriends can relax and rest from shopping. Do most men hate shopping with women? Forum（论坛）readers share their opinions.

Hey, that is an absolutely nice idea. I like it. It also makes it easier for women who have lots of bags to be able to drop them off at the nursery for boyfriends to watch over while they return to shop for more! Set it up with wifi too and you have a perfect hang out spot. And most importantly, don’t have to wait for complaints from the woman when I stop to look at computers or tools!

Most women like shopping while most men don’t. Men generally don’t spend hours deciding color, comparison shopping of finding the sale prices. They know what they want, get in, buy them and get out. 10-15 minutes and they’re done. This is quite different from how a woman shops. Going from store to store, trying to find the best ones. The tying will spend hours.

Many women view shopping as an entertaining way to get down from high stress levels. My wife is one of those. Stress comes too naturally to her; driving a car, doing her job, dealing with workmates all lead to some rising of her stress level. So shopping ideally happens every day. For me, that amount of shopping is stressful.

Some men take hours comparing products, trying things out, finding sales prices. They don’t always know what they want but enjoy just looking. Men can shop the same as women for things they are interested in and spend hours doing it. Equally not all women like shopping and go in, 10-15 minutes and they are done. People are not black and white, and don’t fit into boxes.

There you are in your favorite clothing store. You don’t really need to buy anything, but everything is so cheap and stylish! Before you know it, you leave the store with bags and bags of new clothes.

On the surface, this doesn’t seem so bad. However, there are a lot of hidden costs behind the cheap price tags (标牌). To put it plainly, the fashion industry is terrible for the planet. Not only does it use up a lot of resources, but it also heavily pollutes the environment with chemicals, microplastics and unwanted waste.

Fashion is one of the least sustainable industries on the planet, commented Michael Stanley-Jones. “We’ve all become our own waste managers, hoarding fashion waste in our houses,” he noted.

It doesn’t just take up space in our cupboards, though. It also ends up in landfills (垃圾场), too. But, thankfully, the fashion trend tides are changing. People are increasingly examining their own consumption and what changes they can make to become sustainable, Jane Fellner, founder and CEO of sustainable fashion seller Loopster, told the Guardian.

In particular, with its typically lower prices and rare fashion finds, shopping secondhand   has become an increasingly popular and eco-friendly option. According to online reseller ThredUp, the secondhand market is predicted to reach $80 billion by 2029. And, although fast fashion will continue to grow 20 percent over the next 10 years, secondhand fashion is expected to grow an unbelievable 185 percent in that same amount of time. Fellner continued: “Secondhand has become more socially acceptable. Thrifting (节约) is now massive on TikTok.”

The only true sustainable way to shop is to not shop at all, unless you’re buying clothes that already exist.