Nordstrom and E-commerce Partner to Create Smart Fitting Room

Recently, the United States high-end department store Nordstrom is using a technology provided by the e-commerce company eBay, to create a smart fitting room for customers. The dressing room of the smart fitting room is not only a mirror but also an operable screen. It is clear that high technology has penetrated into another area of ​​shopping.

The person in charge of Nordstrom introduced that when consumers are trying on a dress in the fitting room of Nordstrom, they often want to find pairs of shoes to match this dress, or want to know about other customers' comments on this dress, or think Ask the salesperson to find other colors and sizes of the same clothes. In the past, people had to re-wear neatly and walk out of the fitting room to find a salesperson. With eBay's advanced technology, customers can avoid such annoyance. Nordstrom has already taken the lead in trying out this technology at two stores in Seattle and San Jose. By placing a high-tech full-length mirror in the fitting room, consumers only need to touch the mirror with their fingers, and it will become an interactive screen.

According to the survey, many customers have decided whether to buy clothes in the fitting room, but before this, high-tech has not stepped into this area. Now that the smart fitting room has begun to take shape, I believe that in the future will play a huge role in promoting product sales.

“The way customers buy clothes has changed,” said a person at the Nordstrom company. “Current consumers like to sit on the sofa at home and browse the site for clothing. We also make the fitting room a comfortable and convenient place. Is to allow customers to get out of their homes so that they can enjoy the dual shopping mode of entity + network."

In the era of e-commerce, retailers are eager to make full use of their physical stores, combine them with the virtual world, and provide customers with the best of both worlds. In technology, Nordstrom has always been a leader in physical retailers. The company plans to invest US$1.2 billion in high technology from this year to 2018, covering e-commerce, logistics centers, and in-store service remodeling (such as this kind of networked fitting room). In the last quarter, comparable sales at Nordstrom Stores were flat, making it more important for every shopper who came to a physical store to develop the department store.

The department store looking for the frontline of retail technology is not only the Nordstrom family. Messier's high-end brand store, Bloomingdale, is also testing the smart dressing room recently, but it uses a wall-mounted iPad instead of Nordstrom's interactive dressing mirror.

"Customers often look at content on their handheld devices," said Wendy Liebman, CEO of WSL Strategic Retail. "A lot of people are used to doing this, so this is an opportunity." The industry is looking forward to Nordstrom's test results as to whether retailers can widely adopt the smart fitting room.

Consumers choose their clothes in the Nordstrom store and enter the smart fitting room. They can scan the bar code of the clothes. Then, if they need other sizes or colors of clothes, they can check through the “dressing mirror” to see if there is inventory in the store. And inform the salesperson to take it to the fitting room.

For eBay, the technology is another innovation. Previously, it also provided an interactive storefront technology for Kate Spade’s four Manhattan stores, allowing customers to stand on the street to pick goods and place orders. One of the stores can also retain the trial record of the customer's previous visit.

eBay said that working with Nordstrom can enhance the reputation of its retail technology innovators in e-commerce and physical stores. At present, for apparel products, physical store sales still account for a greater proportion of total sales. eBay will also cooperate with more physical stores to create "interactive shopping malls."