Social Retailing, Nanette Lepore, 2007
Right: Text from friends Middle: Selecting one of the suggestions Left: Virtually try on
Winner of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2007 in the fashion category! My team at LBi invented and trademarked an innovative shopping approach called “Social Retailing” while working with fashion designer Nanette Lepore. The experience combines social networking with shopping in brick-and-mortar stores, enabling customers to connect in real time with their friends while they shop. The Social Retailing concept is exemplified by a “magic mirror” that allows shoppers to virtually try on garments and share their experience with friends located elsewhere.
The concept of Social Retailing evolved out of an exploration of how fashion designer Nanette Lepore could attract the youth consumer to her emerging brand. What’s unique about this group is they look for advice from peers, often shopping together or call each other while shopping. In 2007 they were at the center of the social computing craze, communicating through text messages and sites like MySpace and Facebook.
An investigation of Nanette Lepore’s boutique revealed an elegant space with large mirrors that seemed like a perfect interface on which to display content. With that inspiration, along with the research on our shoppers, we went off to explore ideas. We discovered a treated mirror glass that when put in front of a digital display, created the illusion that that images were on the mirror! That discovery led to the initial set of concepts.
Imagine. You step out of the dressing room in the outfit you are trying on, and stand in front of a mirror. The mirror on the wall gives you advice! You can log in to your social network to ask friends for their opinion. Your friends are able to see you and send suggestion to the mirror on what to wear. They can also shop wiht you and purchase what you are trying on.
Nanette’s boutique, initial drawing, initial rendering (by See-Ming Lee) and prototype of UI for remote participant
The experience explained and demoed using an initial implementation in our retail lab.
Launch at Bloomingdales flagship store in Manhattan. The result was a four-fold increase in sales over same time prior year. Social Retailing was covered in 82 trade magazines, got 12 million social media mentions, and put us on Time Magazine’s “Top 100 Inventions” that year.
Related Implementations
This concept led to the StyleMe mirrors developed by Cisco.
John Lewis, UK based high-end department store, executed a pilot to encourage cross-channel shopping by creating bridge between on-line and in-store.
StyleMe deployed at NBA All Star weekend. StyleMe rendered images of fans wearing official All-Star apparel and shared them on social media. A 20-percent merchandise discount was automatically sent to fans phones, driving higher merchandise sales.
Related Information
Time Magazine’s Best Inventions 2007
Blog post: Cisco helps make Brand Loyalty a Slam Dunk for the NBA