Over the weekend, I visited Hointer at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. I first heard about Hointer when a friend forwarded me a story by ABC News: Seattle High-Tech Clothing Store Runs Without People. Well, if I’m writing about retail’s edge, a physical retail store without people seemed like a good place to start.
If you’ve never heard of Hointer, you should check out this video by GeekWire’s Jonathan Sposato. Just watch the first minute and a half as Jonathan does a good job of painting a stark difference between how we normally shop for jeans and Hointer’s new model.
In my opinion, the Hointer experience is important in two ways. The company has 1) changed the face of the typical physical retail showroom and 2) used technology to develop a more efficient way to shop.
Changing the face of the physical retail showroom.
Whether you’re shopping for jeans in JCP or Banana Republic or at a trendy boutique in SOHO or main street USA, there’s a fairly homogeneous look and feel. Yes, there’s a noticeable difference between Old Navy and Scoop, but in both stores, there’s still a lot of product on the showroom floor which people can touch, feel, and sift through to find the right size, fit, and style. And the product is displayed in a similar fashion in most cases.
Hointer strips away that entire experience and offers a bare bones, clean, uncluttered feel. The best way to describe it is an empty space with a couple clothes lines holding jeans. Seriously, that’s just about it (you hardly notice the few accessories around the edges). There are no mannequins dressed to the max, teasing you with ways to pair a shirt with your new True Religion jeans, there are no displays picturing beautiful models with the perfectly matched socks and shoes, smiling back at you. Seriously, it’s just clothes lines holding jeans. As someone who has spent more time in retail stores the last couple months than probably any other man I know, Hointer echoes the clean feel of the Apple Store.
For Hointer, because it’s only displaying one of each style/brand on the clothes line, it’s able to fit a lot of styles from a lot of brands in a fairly small store (not sure of the exact sq footage). I’m going to have to think about what this does to the ever important sales per square foot. For some companies who go for the uncluttered look, the physical location is meant to be a showroom emphasizing branding and the ability to touch, feel, try. If consumers buy online later on, that’s fine with the store. Conversely, though, if Hointer’s back-end logistics are smarter, the company is able to eliminate shrinkage, and cut out (cell-phone) showrooming, then it doesn’t need the same level of sales per square foot as it’s running a much more efficient operation.
The dressing rooms are out in the open at the back of the store. I’m used to walking behind some type of partition to get to the dressing rooms. I’m not sure if this style is trying to be in line with the open look of the rest of the store or if it enables the unique delivery (see below) of the clothes. I have a feeling it’s all about making room for the delivery mechanism.
Using technology to develop a more efficient way to shop.
Obviously, you can look at jeans without the App, but to ‘use’ the store, you have to download Hointer’s App. I used it on my iPhone 4S. Hointer conveniently has wifi in its stores. Obviously this is required. I downloaded the App before going to the store, which will probably not be the norm. The employees told me I was the first to walk in since the store opened 2 weeks ago who had the App installed.
I wonder how much of a barrier it will be to get people to download an App when they just want to try on jeans this minute. In order for it not to be a novelty which you do once just to test it out, I think the store has to be warm and inviting and has to offer a great deal. Novelty wears off, but if the consumer is drawn into a great looking location and can get a great deal, then a minute or two to download an App is not a lot to ask.
And now we come to the crux of the consumer technology experience. All the jeans on the clothes lines have a tag with a QR code. You open the Hointer App and scan the code. You’re then prompted to choose from sizes. You can continue scanning additional QR codes. Once you’re set, you click ‘Try On’ and after a couple seconds you get a message to head to a designated dressing room. The first time, the jeans were already delivered before I arrived. The next time, I saw the jeans drop from a chute.
The experience is a pretty big change from the norm. I didn’t have to sift through a ton of jeans to find the right size. I just clicked a button. I didn’t have to pull out 3 pairs and bring them with me to the dressing room. I just clicked a button. I didn’t have to deal with any employees. I just clicked a button. It’s so simple, you almost take it for granted…which, I have a feeling is the point. There’s no hassle.
Now, the crux of the retailer technology experience is behind the scenes. How were the jeans delivered? The team wouldn’t tell me. I’ll find out more when I talk to the founder, Nadia Shouraboura, who previously spent 8 years at Amazon, in a couple weeks, but in the meantime, here’s what the Hointer website says:
Collaborating with a totally awesome German equipment manufacturer, the server team prototyped and built technology to create backroom/fitting-room magic that puts the control of the store behind a simple set of APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and is capable of retrieving requested items in seconds.
For all I know, there could be little elfs with amazingly accurate jeans throwing abilities behind the dressing rooms running about like mad men. OK, I doubt that’s the case, but regardless of elven magic or smart equipment, what I want to know is how extensible the experience is. Does the technology care whether it is moving jeans or dresses or shoes? Do the size and weight of the product matter? Do the number of color options matter?
So where is Hointer taking us? Considering that Hointer’s website has a section for retailers and hints at working with others “using our technology to re-invent their stores,” Hointer seems to be using its own stores as lab/showroom for its technology.
