We have talked about several different connected dressing room / digital mirror technologies in the past. It seems that the technology is starting to gain some traction. If you look at the numbers it is not surprising that retailers want to improve the dressing room experience. According to retail consultant Paco Underhill, 71% of shoppers who try on clothing in the fitting room make a purchase, but only 28% of shoppers enter the fitting room. Just 36% of visitors to a store exclusively browsing buy something. Driving more people to the fitting means more sales. If you have been to a clothing or department store recently, it is obvious it wouldn’t take much to improve the dressing room experience, so the concept of the connected dressing room is a huge leap forward. New technologies allow you to share photos of your try-on experience, record 360 degree views of you in the clothing, virtually try on different colors and styles, compare looks, and request different sizes.
Rebecca Minkoff has led the charge by adapting a feature rich version of eBay’s solution in its boutiques in New York and San Francisco. The small size of the boutique has allowed the outlet to deploy as many features as possible and gain meaningful analytics about its success. The boutiques allow you to use a touch screen mirror to request items for a dressing room and be alerted when your room is ready. The clothes are tagged with RFID so the dressing room can display what items you have brought in. Through the mirror in the room, you can browse “looks” for the clothing, request different sizes, store what you tried on to your account, and even purchase items you like. According to Minkoff, the two test stores have sold product 2.5 times faster than expected and customers making purchases are spending 30% more. The company is so pleased with the technology that CEO Uri Minkoff has announced the Chicago and Los Angeles stores will also adopt it when they open later this year. Head past the break to see what the Rebecca Minkoff shopping experience is like:
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