I have a million retail start up ideas rolling around in my head. As opposed to keeping them locked up, I’ll share an idea every Friday. I might also throw in some coverage of starts-ups I uncover conducting research.
Today’s idea is the Social Dressing Room Mirror.
There are a number of companies working on redefining the dressing room experience and more specifically, the dressing/fitting room mirror. You’ve probably seen reports about virtual reality dressing rooms or magic mirrors. If not, this is a good primer and check out this Kinnect Fitting Room from Topshop. When I see these mirrors in action, I think that a couple people with no retail experience watched a really bad scifi movie and figured they could build the future. While I have no doubt that virtual reality and Kinnect-esq technology will play a role in the dressing room, nothing I’ve seen has convinced me that these products are ready for prime time and can increase traffic, sales, conversion rate, up-sell rate, etc. Although the Topshop example from AR Door (see Kinnect Fitting Room video above) seems to come with Champagne and a DJ, so that’s something.
Back in 2008, Xerox parc released two papers on responsive/intelligent fitting rooms (here and here), but as opposed to concentrating on something critical like sizing, the technology seemed to be about tracking what consumers tried on so they could remember what they liked. I have not seen any studies which cited remembering what a consumer liked or didn’t like as a major problem. Even Uniqlo’s magic mirror, if you can get it to work, seems like just a ‘cool’ feature and not a driver of any important metrics.
So here’s my idea: The Social Dressing Room Mirror. You walk into a dressing room and log onto your social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Vine, Instagram, G+, etc.) through a tablet attached to the dressing room mirror, a tactile interface on the mirror, or maybe just by scanning a barcode from your phone. You stand in front of the mirror and it scans you just as the Microsoft Kinnect does as it starts up. You then try on an article of clothing and turn on the camera in the mirror. You then have a couple options for taking photos or videos. There could be a voice control to tell the camera when to shoot/record or this could be done by a virtual swipe. All those pictures/videos can be emailed to you by pressing the Send button.
You could also click the Share button and share any of those pictures/videos with any of the social networks you have selected. And reactions to your photos/videos come back to the mirror. You can read Twitter or Instagram comments and see Facebook Likes at the bottom of the mirror and reply to the comments through a virtual keyboard or the aforementioned tablet. At any time, you can also click Live Share, which will start a Google Hangout or Skype Video Chat and invite your friends to discuss real time the product’s fit, color, style, etc.
Finally, you can click Get Expert Advice and be connected live with the store’s in-house panel of stylists (located on or off-site) or a curated panel of fashionistas. You can communicate with the stylists through video if you’re comfortable with the live interaction or just get them to write their comments, which will be displayed at the bottom of the mirror. The in-house stylists can also recommend different articles of clothing or just different colors to try on by pushing them to your mirror. If you like any of the suggestions, you can add it to the mirror’s virtual cart and a salesperson will deliver the product to your dressing room (or if Hointer has its way, the garment will be delivered through technology to a chute in the wall).
That’s the basic idea.
What I like:
-The technology has the potential to increase conversion rate and up-sell rate, while lowering return rate (you’re much more confident in your purchase).
-This brings (relevant) technology into the old-school retail store.
-I would define this as social commerce/shopping that matters. While adding share/like/pin buttons to product pages or creating a personalized ensembles/lookbooks seems to have become the standard for ‘social commerce,’ the data on these tools/services has not convinced me that they can widely impact the purchase process. There are success stories, but they seem to be outliers or very targeted cases, not the norm.
-The social dressing room mirror actually impacts shoppers at the critical point of purchase as opposed to when people are passively browsing online (at an ecommerce site, FB, Polyvore, etc.).
-The technology is basically here today.
-The dressing/fitting room experience hasn’t changed in 50 years.
What I don’t like:
-This will not show up in the United States first as we’re way too concerned about privacy. The press would call it a voyeurs dream come true and parenting groups would raise too much of a fuss.
-The technology is basically here today. Not sure how defensible…have to employ a great sales team to get deals locked up.
I haven’t researched the market size/potential, but this almost seems like a no-brainer that will become standard in the near future.
