The Dandy Lab demonstrates the cutting edge of retail digital disruption.
Today’s retail leaders face the risk of becoming laggards, or even disappearing altogether in the next five years as the result of digital disruption. Traditional retailers need to adopt characteristics of start-ups such as innovation, agility, and experimentation in order to succeed in the digital era. One innovative concept store in London, The Dandy Lab, is creating a unique “Living Laboratory” for new retail technologies. A men’s fashion boutique located in the UK, The Dandy Lab employs concepts that encourage shoppers to interact with products and displays for a truly blended physical and digital experience.
As Samantha Binns asserts on the Cisco blog, “Today’s consumer is always connected; they’re ‘über digital’, everybody wants to be somebody. Look at the rise of Instagram, Pinterest and the newest on the block Villoid, to collaborate and use technology not only for yourself but to share with everyone you wish to share with. The retail stores therefore cannot stand alone and see the ‘online’ space as a competitor, it needs to evolve and integrate technology to offer an Omni-channel experience, where physical and digital experiences are consolidated.”
Working with Cisco, the Dandy Lab implemented a number of IoT technologies to heighten the customer shopping experience. At the Dandy Lab, customers replicate the experience of working with a personal shopper, with the ability to search and match clothing to create a complete luck. The innovative experience also allows retailers to optimize business processes through the use of real-time data.
“Physical retail stores are building new business models to increase brand preference and meet digital shoppers’ lifestyle preferences,” said Shaun Kirby, CTO, WARP Accelerated Rapid Prototyping at Cisco. “To remain successful in today’s increasingly digitized world, retail stores must bring together the physical and digital into one omni-channel experience that delivers a more personalized, interactive shopping journey for consumers.”
By connecting people, processes, data and things, the Internet of Everything (IoE) enables retailers to create that experience. At the same time, digitization increases efficiency across the board while optimizing back-end business processes. It also drives up conversion rates and loyalty through the use of customer and business data-driven decision making.
“When we created The Dandy Lab, we sought to design a completely new consumer shopping experience; one enhanced by technology and that allows customers to interact with the makers and designers to learn the story behind each product,” said Julija Bainiaksina, Co-Founder, The Dandy Lab. “At the same time, we wanted to create not just a platform for selling products, but a living laboratory that allows designers, makers and brands to test the latest retail technologies and use the data to improve their products, processes and the customer experience.”
The technologies include interactive mannequins that “talk” to customers; a digital visual search function that helps shoppers match items; CMX, Cisco’s location analytics and engagements platform, and Cisco Meraki Wi-Fi, that work with The Dandy Lab to enhance overall business planning and to better understand store traffic patterns; and cameras that help ensure customer profiling without privacy issues.
