Augmented reality tech from startup Obsess would let you conjure up a mini store on the go.
Ben Fox Rubin/CNET
Neha Singh points her iPhone 8 Plus at an empty section of the dark-wood floor by the entrance to the Techstars startup accelerator in Manhattan’s Flatiron District.
The smartphone’s screen at first simply shows the space in front of us, but then a small digital 3D pop-up store appears. There are three golden mannequins dressed in tank tops and high-waisted skirts, along with shiny cylindrical displays holding a military-green Gucci leather bag and a pair of black Louboutin heels. Singh then moves her phone closer to one mannequin to show me the detail and texture of a blue floral dress. the whole arrangement is basically Pokemon Go, but for fashion.
Singh is a former Google engineer and Vogue tech executive who last year founded Obsess, a startup that develops augmented reality and virtual realityconcepts for retailers, similar to the AR demo she shows me. Working out of the Techstars co-working office, she’s among a small but growing group of developers and retailers conjuring up a potentially more interactive future of online commerce using AR, which overlays digital images onto the real world, and VR, which provides immersive, fully digital experiences.
“The user interface for e-commerce hasn’t changed in 20 years,” Singh tells me, describing online sites’ typical grid of products arranged against a white background. “It’s great if you’re trying to buy toilet paper, it’s not if you’re trying to buy fashion.”
So far, both AR and VR have found an early audience in gaming, but they haven’t migrated much to new areas like retail, where online and traditional stores are still just testing out the technologies. That means AR and VR likely won’t change the way you shop this Black Friday or Cyber Monday. But as both technologies develop in the years to come and become more prominent in phones, they have the potential to alter our shopping habits and help retailers sell us more stuff online.
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A future of immersive shopping
AR and VR commerce may be in their infancy, but that hasn’t stopped retailers from running away with some pretty futuristic concepts for the technologies.
For example, Marc Lore, Walmart’s head of US e-commerce, at a conference last month offered a vision of VR shopping that involved getting transported to a campsite to shop for a tent. You’d even be able to walk around the tent and get inside it, and pose questions to a voice assistant like Apple’s Siri or Google Assistant as if it’s a store rep standing right by you.
“That is where shopping is headed,” he said, “and it’s not as far away as people think.”
Some simpler ideas involve being able to easily change the color of a room’s walls — at least on your phone’s screen — without having to paint them (perhaps the wrong color) first. Wayfair’s Costello said his company has considered a way for designers to scan an empty space, upload a digital copy and decorate it in VR.
As for getting a fit for clothing without having to try it on, Amazon may already be working on that, too. In October, it acquired the startup Body Labs, which makes 3D body-scanning technology and could someday help Amazon create a digital mannequin shaped just like you for virtual dress-up. Amazon, though, has been mum so far about its plans for the startup.
It’s unlikely every single one of these ideas will work or find an audience. But some of them might, and help change the face of e-commerce from that simple grid of products on a white background.
“They need to think about it as, what is the problem we’re trying to solve or what’s the experience we’re trying to enhance,” Milanesi said. “Tech for the sake of tech is not going to work.”
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Source: CNET