Connectivity has been the talk of the town for several years now. Within the retail industry, the Internet of Things has mainly been applied on the supply chain and back office. Now the time is ripe to explore how to implement online strategies in a physical setting. New technologies inspire to creative retail solutions with user-friendly interfaces.
Though no longer trading, The Dandy Lab, at first glance a men’s lifestyle shop, was actually a state of the art laboratory for retail technology, merging the digital and the physical shopping experience. At The Dandy Lab, the Internet of Things was used to create a smart shop that informed and interacted with its customers. To tech companies, this explorative shopping environment was also a constructive way to evaluate their innovative technologies IRL.
The Dandy Lab was created by designer Julia Bainiaksina and fashion product developer Peter Jeun Ho Tsang: the idea was to offer British luxury brands a new and effective way to sell their products and to communicate with their customers.
The Dandy Lab Concept took storytelling to a new level as it combines products and social media, offering the customers to discover, interact, shop and share. The shop was packed with new technology, for example an NFC-platform with a display. Placing whatever the item you were interested in on the platform, it would display the story of the product, the designer and other products from the brand sold in this store. A video conference system provided by Cisco even invited the customers to meet and talk to the designers in real time.
A virtual showroom allowed customers to easily explore what the store had to offer – to find new garments and to mix and match an outfit. For those who wanted to pick up some style advice from friends and share their shopping experience there was of course a social media café with connectivity on the menu.
The Internet of Things technology was effectively used to create a more personalized shopping experience, focusing on the customers’ individual needs.
Obviously this technology creates opportunities for increased customer satisfaction, sales and loyalty to the brands. It also allows collecting of big data that can be used to analyse customer behaviour. When visiting The Dandy Lab, customers generated information about how they were interacting with different products and brands, how much time they spent in the store and which route they chose. The data can help in creating an understanding of customers’ behaviours and to foresee upcoming trends. Not only valuable when creating personalized sale offers, the data can also be used strategically when purchasing and to control stock levels in a more effective way.
So, what if the shop was closed when passing by? No problem, The Internet of Things made sure the customers got the information they needed. The interactive mannequins in the window helped them out.
