The store of tomorrow is ready for business today.

It’s prosaically called the Retail Center, and it’s at InterPublic Group’s Emerging Media Lab, a high-tech market research and demonstration showroom on the Miracle Mile. InterPublic, which owns ad agencies around the world, hosts presentations at the lab to show retailers and product marketers how they can use technology to boost sales.

The Retail Center, which was completed in the summer, resembles a mall store loaded with innovations. At a giant touch screen, for example, visitors can select clothes and then check out how those clothes look on a virtual mannequin. Shoppers can e-mail images to friends.

Beyond that, a kiosk features a large video screen where customers can talk to an expert via wireless video. In a pharmacy setting, for example, the customer might want advice from a heart medication specialist – who could be in a call center anywhere in the world.

“It’s routing the customer to an expert rather than a generalist in the store who doesn’t really know their stuff,” explained Scott Susskind, chief technology officer at the lab.

Other techno-wonders of the lab include what IPG calls “augmented reality.” For example, someone could place a model toy still in its box under a scanner and view a 3-D image of what it would look like when built.

Susskind said the lab has three requirements for technology: It must increase sales, help the retailer by lowering labor or inventory costs, and help a particular brand stand out from the competition inside the store.

If, for example, Ray-Ban wanted potential buyers to see themselves in a special mirror wearing virtual images of the brand’s sunglasses, Ray-Ban could buy the mirror from the tech company and place it in retail outlets. That would give the brand a boost if the nearby brands didn’t have such a mirror.

So how long until these gadgets show up at a nearby mall?

“The technology we showcase here is within the reach of a client today or within an 18-month window,” Susskind said.