Redefining Try-On With the Power of RFID, Dynamic Customer Support, & Ai Recommendations.
Retail 2.0 is here, but in-store try-on is so 1.0
Japanese fashion brand Uniqlo took the world by storm, rising to be the second largest retailer in the world just a few years after breaking into the Western markets. New stores, new customers, and massive scale all present opportunities and crisis alike, which the Japenese have a word for: Wéijī. In this Wéijī situation Uniqlo USA found themselves, they tapped the founding members of Polyform to help with a new vision for a connected store that combined the analytic & marketing power of an e-commerce site, with the in-store experience that had made Uniqlo famous.
privacy paired with Ai recommendations & service
Collaborating with the Uniqlo USA team in New York City the team toured the flagship stores in search of opportunities for improvement. Though Uniqlo is a progressive company overall, the try-on experience was standard, that is to say: stuck in the past. Through our Discovery Process we realized that the sizing differences between the Japanese made garments and the American waistline was resulting in an usual amount of user pain and returns. With this in mind we aimed to optimize the try-on experience in a tech enabled but non-intrusive customer-driven experience where privacy was the utmost concern.
BETTER FIT + BETTER PAIR = BETTER CART SIZE
The Design Phase identified 3 keys to power our optimization: to know what the customer had brought in the room to try on, to recommend new sizes or styles in relation to those items, and to interface with the customer service people on the floor to provide these recommended garments. Addressing these keys we leveraged RFID & UPC scanning to determine what garments had entered the room, displayed those garments on a display embedded in the mirror, presented the user intelligent recommendations and sizing options (powered by the Uniqlo Connect system we had implemented around the store), and then empowered them to order these garments right to the room via the screen.
BIG IMPACT ON STORE & Brand
The Uniqlo Connect system, composed of our smart try-on mirror, endless aisle kiosk, targeting marketing easel, and in-store visual sensor system for heat-mapping and customer analytic gathering integrates inventory management systems online and in-store with rich & live visitor data for a hyper-targeted shopping and information gathering CX.
The system proved SIGNIFICANT cart-size improvement throughout pilot stores, leading to a shift in strategy that’s impacted the entirety of North American Uniqlo locations.
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