Buying clothes in person can be an unpleasant experience. You go into the fitting room, try on clothes, and discover you chose the wrong size. Then you have to get dressed, go back to the store, get the item in the right size, and go through the whole process again in the fitting room.
Finally, you find the right item in the right size — but now you have to wait in long lines to make your purchase. What you thought would be a quick and easy procedure has become a bit tricky.
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But, what if there was a direct retailer that did the entire clothing buying process — from trying on clothes, to purchasing and even securing more fashionable items in the future — a much more seamless experience?
That’s the goal of high street fashion retailer River Island, whose CIO Adam Warne has deployed a range of digital solutions — combining radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, sensors , video displays and data analytics — to help clothing buyers overcome the challenges they encounter.
“If you’ve ever been in the fitting room and something didn’t fit, it can be frustrating,” he says. “The whole initiative starts with, ‘How are we going to improve the lives of our customers?'”
River Island — has 250 stores in the UK and a range of franchises, partners and franchises in locations around the globe, including North America, Europe and the Middle East — uses RFID tags to give each product a unique reference number that can be recognized in smart fitting rooms, including screens to assist customers as they shop.
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“Because we’re RFID tagged, you can bring four or five pieces into the fitting room, you hang them on a hook, and a pop-up screen tells you exactly what you brought into the fitting room. ,” said warning.
“And then, if you want a different size, you can tap the screen and someone will bring you a different size. So it’s really a customer-enhancing experience that eases it down.” some trouble.”
Tagged items are automatically scanned in the digital fitting room. river island
When items are scanned, customers have access to the same product information they get online, such as size, color, and material information.
The data-driven initiative, powered by Snowflake’s Retail Data Cloud, allows retailers like River Island to combine multiple data sources into a single repository, supporting efforts enterprise-wide efforts to turn information into insights.
Along with easing some of the hassle of shopping in person, River Island also collects key performance insights from RFID tagging, such as whether a customer has to change an item. to get a different size or if a product has been tried but not purchased .
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The result, Warne said, is e-commerce-like conversion rates in brick-and-mortar stores, which is the kind of information few retailers have available.
“That gives the product team quicker insights into what people are trying and not buying, or for people who are trying something and are in a different size — maybe we had a problem something with the fit?” he says.
“Maybe we need to re-label the product to say it’s a different size from the actual size because we chose the wrong size. Or maybe people are trying it on and no one is buying it, so maybe it’s okay. we need to replace it with something else in the store.”
Interestingly, Warne says creating this detailed sales and style data is an “afterthought”.
But while the initiative was founded to enhance the customer experience, the combination of RFID tagging and Snowflake’s cloud-based platform is now supporting data-driven action across the enterprise. .
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“The value that we get from having that data is really powerful,” he said. “And what it’s doing gradually is it makes us think about how we can leverage the data in different ways at the time we come up with the idea.”
Warne: “When you look at the benefits that tagging gives us in terms of visibility, that’s amazing.” river island
Warne says an e-commerce-style analysis of in-store sales is helping to influence product investment decisions and even store layout design.
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He estimates about 99.8% of products at River Island are now RFID-tagged, with the only major exception being liquids in the company’s beauty line (he says the tag doesn’t work well with chemicals). liquid).
Smart fitting rooms are being used in about 20 stores, and Warne describes the results as “extraordinary so far”.
“The cost of RFID tags on those items is very small,” he said. “But when you look at the benefits that tagging gives us in terms of visibility, it’s incredible. Checking in a store now takes hours, not days. You just need to walk around with the scanner and it will tell you everything there.”
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RFID tags are also used to support self-checkout, so customers can get in and out of the store much faster.
When they’re ready to buy, shoppers drop their items in a “smart trash can,” which automatically scans the RFID tags and generates an invoice.
The computers in the store are smart, too. river island
“You just put everything in the bin, the items appear on the screen, you pay and walk out,” says Warne. “No need to untag and it’s not complicated. It’s very simple.”
River Island’s commitment to technology is not unusual. Gartner says global IT spending in retail will 6.6% growth in 2023 reached 193.4 billion USD. The analyst expects spending to grow 7.3% year-on-year to reach $240.7 billion by 2026.
Other big-name brands have also explored the potential to use RFID tags and other emerging technologies to deliver smarter consumer experiences, including Walmart And Nike.
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Warne said River Island’s approach is unusual in terms of its commitment to emerging technology and its desire to create an interconnected approach to digital transformation that creates benefits for customers and profits. company profits.
“Every few months, I wander London’s Oxford Street because that’s where a lot of people have their flagship stores. In fact, when I tour those retail stores, I really don’t see a lot of difference on the high street,” he said.
“I think there’s been a lot of talk about changing the retail experience and not a lot of action. Some of the things we’re doing at River Island is offering something different.”
Warne says these data-driven efforts will continue to use all sorts of technologies — from RFID tagging to analytics and artificial intelligence — to make the in-store shopping experience less frustrating and much more enjoyable.
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“We have always been a business that makes fashion affordable for a wide range of customers,” he said. “Trends change very quickly and we need to make sure we’re still creating the right fashion and the best experience for our customers.”
