At our charlotte marketing agency, we do a lot of visual merchandising for national retailers like Lowe's, Walmart, and Rite Aid – either directly for the retailer at the corporate level or for a consumer brand on behalf of their retail partners. As such, we're always looking for innovations at the store level, and the bg team really enjoyed last summer's digital store windows that popped up in Manhattan to launch Kate Spade’s Saturday line of casual clothing.

Technology has been fitting seamlessly into the retail spectrum for a number of years now, but from an in-store perspective, 2014 might be the year where the brick & mortar shopping experience takes that next step.

The Kate Spade 24/7 shoppable window is a great example of this convergence in action.

The screens measured about 9 feet across and 2 feet (0.6 meter) high and appeared on the front windows of closed stores in Soho and the Lower East Side. Passers by could simply touch the screens to order and have products delivered to them within an hour via courier. Since this was an e-bay powered engagement, payment was accepted by the couriers through PayPal.

In a thoughtful nod to her desire to tailor the shopping experience, shape and fit of the apparel items could be previewed on model photos.

Obviously, location is critical for a tactic like this to succeed, and the density of pedestrian traffic on the sidewalk jungle that is New York City makes it an optimal place to grab attention with an eye catching store window display like these walk-up, highly shoppable windows that suddenly took over formerly vacant retail stores.

Detroit, anyone?