What's the brablem?

In an ever-digitising world, focussing on offline sales channels only is risky. E-commerce has become the new normal even for products that thrive in offline showrooms. But how can you replace the act of fitting or trying the product through a digital equivalent?

For the fashion industry, this translates in a lot of product returns that have to be processed by the warehouse. With customers deliberately ordering multiple sizes, about half of the womenswear is being sent back.

'Shoppers are using their homes as dressing rooms.'

Sucharita Kodali (Forrester)

So what if we can bring this in-store fitting room experience to the home of the customer without having to send the actual physical product? Enter the AR fitting room.

Results‍

An AR fitting room

Instead of having an anonymous relationship with an e-commerce site, we wanted to turn this into a loyalty-building experience. With Van de Velde having fit select fitting room mirrors with scanners and smart technology, we created an AR app that allowed women to get an up close and personal 3D view of the lingerie sets on their unique body avatar.

In this way, we made remote selling available for a tailored product in a way that mimics the in-store experience. Not to replace the offline experience, but to enhance it and make it omni-channel.

‍Product features:

• Chat interface for easy onboarding.
  Smooth onboarding is essential to any app’s success.

• 3 distinct avatars that can be dropped in any physical space.
  These are currently standard but could easily become customisable, allowing users to adjust anything from size to hair colour.

• Product info and advice for each piece of lingerie.
  This is a great way to offer advice while allowing users to inspect the product from every angle.

• Tool for Van de Velde to upload new 3D product models into the app.
  This tool puts Van de Velde in the driver’s seat and allows them to upload new content without having to depend on In The Pocket’s availability.

‍

Our approach

AR is a booming technology but it is relatively new and still evolving every day. To show companies how to leverage AR to reach their business goals, we’ve created tailor-made the Roadmap to AR. In a matter of weeks, we designed a working prototype and offered Van de Velde a tangible solution to their challenges.

Digital Business Strategy

During a 2 day workshop, Van de Velde and In The Pocket team members joined forces to map the full customer experience, to identify customer pains and to tackle the requirements of success.

Digital Product Design

We developed a working prototype of the app with ARKit, Apple's framework for augmented reality apps. Regular demos and feedback moments gave us the agility to improve as we went on.

Software Engineering

We partnered with the mict research group at Ghent University (and part of the digital research institute imec), to organise a test panel for our functional prototype. Our test audience had the chance to create their own avatars and to discover the various 3D lingerie pieces in AR.