UK: First Installation of the Adidas Footwear Wall
3 November 2011 18 h 16 min1 Comment
The Adidas Virtual Footwear Wall, which has been on display at several trade shows this year (ISE, Screenmedia Expo, NRF…), was deployed at the brand’s flagship store in Oxford Street, London, last weekend.
This is the first real installation of the concept, which, if successful, may be extended to other Adidas flagship stores throughout the world.
See the video below for details:
Categories : Digital Media, United Kingdom
Graphically it looks fantastic. Great use of AIM suit for suggesting male/female shoes.
But, from a retail functionality perspective, it makes the whole sales process far too difficult. Technology in retail needs to make the process easier and potentially quicker otherwise it will just be seen as a costly gimmick and if it’s cumbersome to use, consumers will end up avoiding it.
How many of these units will be installed in replacement of racks of shoes where people can see/feel the real item? A rack of shoes could accommodate dozens of customers at any given time, a touch screen can only accommodate one at a time. You’d need a few dozen touch screens to service the same number of customers the rack can service during peak periods. If the rack of shoes is still there, who’s going to bother looking at the touch-screen? You could walk up to the item and rotate it in your hand whilst feeling the quality, material, weight and checking out the arch and heel support.
Functionally, to me it seemed to present road block after road block in the process of just wanting to find and buy a pair of shoes. If these were to replace racks of shoes, I think sales could potentially go down.
At what point does the consumer receive customer service?
You still need to know what foot size they need and no-one goes into a store without first trying shoes on and then doing the whole walk around the shop to see if they’re even semi-comfortable. It seemed to focus on skipping those crucial sales steps and going straight for an online checkout style sale.
Too many steps to actually buy the shoes. Who wants to setup an account?!?! FFS just sell me the damn shoes already!
Couldn’t imagine the pain this could be if I was in any sort of rush.
Look forward to concept 2.0