Changing the Way People Shop, and Enriching the In-Store CX with the Masters of Athleisure.
Goal: ENHANCE THE BEST CX in the business with new tech, but make it invisible.
After years of serving Lululemon as an R&D partner with Cognizant Softvision, the founders of Polyform took on one last challenge with the apparel giant: to transform their in-store “Community Boards” from quaint chalkboards to intelligent service hubs. But for a company who built its reputation on calm quality, the idea of adding a bunch of kiosks and screens to their award winning store design was out of the question. We needed to think outside the box.
all the digital information IN AN INVISIBLE PACKAGE.
If you visited any Lululemon store before 2019 you could have seen a large chalkboard near the entrance labeled “Community Board” hosting info about yoga classes, local run & cycle routes, profiles of local “ambassadors” in the sport & fitness community surrounding the store location. You would also find an increasing number of technical garments, the details of which the in-store service people had memorized in an effort to provide the best customer experience on the planet.
Through our Discovery Process we explored enhancing these education efforts with tech, without it being “in your face”. Our goal became to imbue store infrastructure with the power to serve as a personal shopper; recommending garment pairings and inventory, an interactive concierge service; that connects shoppers with places to see, eat, or sweat in the surrounding area, and more. The 4X6 wall mounted mirrors seemed like a logical choice. The only problem.... no existing hardware vendor made them to the spec & quality Lululemon demanded.
APP & HARDWARE BUILT TO AAA SPECIFICATIONS.
We partnered with Silicon Valley hardware fabricator Virtual Visions to bring the mirrors to life, piece by AAA rated piece. Through an extensive Design Phase we created the e-commerce & social media powered mirror app, the content and hardware management system to manage hundreds of units from a single dashboard, and the hardware itself. The result was a 65 inch touch capacitive screen embedded invisibly in a 4ft by 6ft 3 inch thick, Android powered, wall mounted mirror and hub for all things Lululemon.
Big IMPACT ON STORE & BRAND.
What started as a pilot program for 2 flagship Lululemon stores (New York, and Vancouver), quickly evolved into +200 mirrors populating 120 Lululemon retail locations, racking up more than 250K monthly interactions. Following this project Lululemon acquired Mirror (now Lululemon Studio) for $500M. But that’s probably just a coincidence.
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