This week Robinsons announce they are closing their last two stores in Singapore. Robinsons is over 160 years and survived many traumatic, historical events in Singapore until now. The common view is this unprecedented year of a global pandemic did them in. In reality, I think it hastened their demise but did not cause it.
Like many in Singapore my family shopped at Robinsons over the years. The bedsheets are good and the sales people are all old timers who know their stuff, my mom always said. For me, their recent years of moving slightly upmarket at Hereen brought interesting selection of brands that meant I will try to swing by for a quick look see beyond buying bedsheets if I am at that part of Orchard Road. The closure will provide a very visible sign of the troubles in the retail sector, especially in the Raffles city location.
The social distancing measures imposed this year accelerated the shift to online. Consumers were already shopping online before the pandemic. Now paired with work from home, people have to overcome inertia to get out of the house, change out of their “Zoom clothes” into proper, decent going out clothes to go out to eat and shop. Apparel retail especially needs to offer to the online shopper something they cannot otherwise get just shopping from their laptop in the comfort of home.
For me the answer is a level of experiential and social shopping that differs from the essentially lonely nature of regular ecommerce shopping (here I am not looking at the social commerce a la pinduoduo or facebook live ecommerce as I think of them as mass but still impersonal)
If I have a chance to design the retail experience that will get me to get out of the house, into a retail store and rediscover the joy of shopping, it will look somehting like this.
Personal Shopping Rooms
The retail store is a place where I can book to turn up with my girlfriends for an afternoon of shopping. I can try on an almost infinite number of clothes because the bulk of the trying is augmented reality shopping. Our shopping room is full of augmented mirrors that reads my image and takes in some of my preferences and allows me to scroll through and pull up clothes to see how I would look in the mirror. In the past, I need to walk through the store to flip through racks of clothes to pick out the ones I want to try. I needed to keep the number of items within the maximum numbers allowed in the Fitting Room since the number of cubicles are limited and the store needed to allow as many people to try on the clothes as possible. Trying them on, seeing how they fit was a very important part of the purchase process for many.
With this new augmented store, there are no such constraints. I can be in my personal shopping room going through endless collection of clothes and shoes and putting together various looks just scrolling, swiping, liking the clothes presented to me on the screen-slash-mirror.
Shopping with Friends
Where shopping is a social experience, this personal shopping room need to support that. Shopping room can come in multiple sizes and you book the right one to fit your shopping trip. This is no different from how you can go from a karaoke booth of one to booking a room for a group of friends to sing your heart out. In a shopping room for a friends shopping trip, your friends can be comfortably seated and help you select which clothes to try on (virtually) and provide the feedback on which ones are definite mustbuys you should check into your shopping bag. And you can similarly play this supportive role when it is your friends’ turn to be the star in the mirror and look for clothes to buy. We kind of already shop like this in the past. Our friends will wait for us to come out of our fitting rooms or we stick our head out and strain our necks to look for them so we can beckon them to come into the fitting room area and give us feedback on our clothes as we twirl in front of the narrow mirror. And if I am shopping alone, I will try to take a good image of myself in the mirror and send it to my friend and wait to hear back as I stand around in the tiny fitting room cubicle. Should I buy this? Do I look good? Maybe I should try a different colour? Do I change back to my own clothes to go out there to get another size or do you think the retail assistant will be willing to do it for me?
Now do all of that, in a personal shopping room where you trying on clothes and discussing with your friends which ones you should buy is not an inconvenience to the store as they chuck you to fitting rooms that are always at one end of the store but your shopping experience become the central part of the store because you trying out many clothes and getting the opinion of anyone who’s opinion you cared about is how you have always shopped and you have been shopping in physical retail stores in spite of the experience in the past.
Your stint in the personal shopping room is likely to be a long one and most likely you will be also ordering refreshments and snacks as this is a full blown outing with friends and not a duck in and out experience.
Shop the World
There may be clothes you will want to try for real but by and large the personal shopping room is an augmented phygital shopping experience on steroids where you get a selection of clothings that are far beyond the typical number you may come across as you stroll trough the store to see what catches your eye. Your shopping room learns to deliver what you like as it learns in real time the items you swipe on to try and swipe away to remove. It aims to provide you an almost endless stream of irresistable choices. It understands when you are lingering and can push out offers on the fly to persuade you to drop it in the bag.
In the comfort of your own personalized shopping experience, you may also call up the latest collection from the brands that you like, watching with your friends as the fashion models from the recent (virtual) runway shows parade towards you in the mirror. Swipe left, swipe right, as you check off the latest fashion triends and signature pieces you would want to try. What you are able to shop for and browse and try is no longer confined to what a physical store can hold nor confined to what a local buyer has decided to bring in from a designer or brand’s entire collection. You can have access to potentially anything that is available in your size. If you are in a mood to discover new brands, the hottest designer or refresh your wardrobe but keep to your usual style, the store or rather those augmented mirrors will oblige. You should also be able to understand the origin of your clothes or choose from collections made from sustainable materials or is fussfree to take care of.
Weightless Shoppping
Before long you would have built up quite a big shopping bag but you do not need to worry. Anything you purchased will be delivered to your home as this augmented shopping room is also a weightless shopping experience. You do not need to carry out large bags of clothing where it becomes cumbersome to go to your next appointment. In fact, the clothes will be collected and packed from fulfillment centres that are far away from your personal shopping room but ready to pack and ship out to you immediately after you complete your order. If you wish you can also turn your purchase into a stream of delivery like a subsscription for the joy of receive a regular package of lovely clothing you like.
If you had decided to take out some items from the final shopping bag, you can still easily access them when you are back home and access the online but not augmented ecommerce experience of the store.
Augmented shopping experience is one of the ways retail can really evolve to answer the challenge of changing consumer preferences and their desire for the convenience and value of embedding digital technology into the fun of shopping. We have seen augmented shopping experiences in other countries from such augmented fitting rooms to VR makeup counters. Its a puzzle for me why we havent seen more attempts at AR shopping by our retailers here. I cant wait for some forward thinking retailer to try to do something really different because the world has changed and all of us have to change with it.
Digital Optimist 