Do Brands Need High Tech Showrooms?
Back in 2014, Samsung and The Barbarian Group crafted one of the first purely digital installations in the retail space. At the time, Samsung was facing a huge problem…’How do we sell more washers and dryers?’ Trailing behind other companies such as Kenmore, GE, Maytag, and Whirlpool, they opted to build one of the first digital showrooms in the country. Fully outfitted with shiny, high-def graphics and almost every single interactive touchpoint you could want.
It took The Barbarian Group (NYC) 8 months and a dedicated team of 25 people (not to mention a killer client willing to do all this stuff) to bring to life a fully interactive showroom that had the ease of use of an ATM, but also attracted everyone from all ages. From age 8-108, there was a way for everyone to interact with this new permanent, digital showroom.
With Samsung installing a six-by-eleven foot wall with nine screens, displays of 27 different Samsung products in their actual size. Shoppers could experiment with the appliances using the touch screen technology and can also zoom in on features, open up a refrigerators and microwaves, tweak their colors, and even plop them down in a fabricated kitchen.
The end experience? A fully immersive ways for new parents, homeowners and interested customers to interact with washers, dryers and every other appliance in the store, other than from simply looking at the unplugged version of it in a box. The difference? Well, besides all the killer tech Samsung implemented into their strategy, they focused on the customer experience.
So, what does it mean to be a consumer these days? The retail experience now is a jungle of a mess. Customers have a very tough time navigating the 14 foot walls that line most retail outlets. They feel buried in a sea of products they don’t need, only to spend three times as much time trying to find the one product they do need. And with such a clunk of an experience, this has led to the monolithic rise of companies like Amazon.com and Jet.com.
The end result is an industry of, ‘I want that product now, but I don’t want to go to the store for it, so I’ll wait a day or two.’ Leaving our shopping malls to be a relic of industries past…customers know they can get an item cheaper, and shipped directly to their house in the next 48 hours, all at the press of a button, so why go to the store and buy?
Brands, retailers and other companies are facing huge challenges….’How can we get more people into our store?’ What sort of experience can we create here, that consumers can’t have at home?
The end result is a digital experience, like Samsung and The Barbarian Group crafted. Companies across the country need to fashion an ‘experience journey’ that no mobile phone can compete with. And if you build it, they will come.
Big companies cannot simply launch a slew of products onto the shelves of their stores and expect their consumers to be happy about a, ‘Find and go seek’ type experience if you will. Customers want to feel engaged. They want to learn, they want to experience an item. A brand. A product.
The reason I bring all of this up now, today, on a Monday morning is that Inphantry has been tapped for a number of potential projects as of late, that fall into the permanent installation category.
And we’re pretty stoked about it. You see, we focus all of our efforts in the digital space into what it means to be a consumer these days. And we’ve gotten quite a bit of recognition about it, but are looking to bring our team of passionate, experienced developers and creatives into cultivating more digital experiences for big brands and their showrooms.
We most recently helped A.W. Hastings launch their new digital showroom at 7 Tide in Boston’s Seaport. Email us for more info on what exactly we did to fashion a 21st century experience for an iconic New England windows and door brand.
So, if you’re an interested client and looking to improve your customers experience through a permanent digital installation, or are simply looking to craft a more simple, elegant digital integration into your space, we’d love to chat.
Just drop us a line at: base@inphantry.com – or email our new business guy to speak directly: cam@inphantry.com
