FARFETCH in 2017’s OS conference at London’s new design museum unveiled its tech-powered retail experience to extend platform for physical stores.
The augmented retail solution helps in delivering an enhanced retail experience with personalisation.
Hopping on the train to evolution, the store has given the fashion industry crossroads for luxury and technology.
According to Farfetch’s CEO Jose Neves, ‘today an estimate of 90% transactions take place in-stores, which however is predicted to change to 80% by 2025.’
She believes that even though online is growing faster than offline retail and digitalisation is influencing consumer behaviour, offline is still and will remain to be where a vast majority of transactions will take place.
The brand launched it’s first ‘Store of the future’ in March 2018 in Thom Browne’s New York flagship store.
According to Vikran Alexie Kasara’s first impression of the store, it provided the best fusion of elegance and customer experience.
Being the final piece of augmented retail vision, the brand provides a unique platform for every customer to experience retail like never before by delivering personalisation and empowering its staff too.
The store of the future will be working through the phone’s radio frequency which detects when a person is closest to a product and if that piece has been moved.
If the customer removes it from the rail, it’ll be automatically added to that customer’s ‘wish list’. The trial room provides the possibilities of trying on the same product with different sizes and colour options within 5 minutes.
This is due to the interactive mirror inside that takes out the requested items by the consumer according to their fitting choices.
The payment is completely done via mobile app in the store, therefore the need to wait in ques for checkout will not be necessary.
Though the store is completely AI equipped with machine learning capabilities, there are personal shop assistants available to assist customers whenever needed.
Therefore, the store of the future can be considered as the company’s strongest move yet and sets high bars for all brands.
It’s no secret that experience economy has taken its toll on the consumer mindset when it comes to shopping in-store and online, consumers are likely to choose shopping with a simple click on checkout.
However, with development on stores like Farfetch’s store of the future (SoF), the retail apocalypse is likely to bow down by again bringing customers into the brick and mortar stores.
Website: https://www.farfetch.com/uk/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/farfetch/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/farfetch
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Farfetch/
Words by Sanya Mahajan
