Fashion and AR — Say goodbye to bad purchases with endless returns
According to Statista, returns in 2020 will be worth 550 billion dollars. This year’s figures are monstrous, especially due to the increase in online shopping recently boosted by the pandemic.
Is there any way to prevent this?
If only you could see what the clothes look like on you before you order them…
The solution here: Augmented Reality
We all are familiar with this scenario: you want to shop online conveniently, and you are faced with countless pieces you want to order. Once they arrive, you are disappointed as you discover that they don’t fit at all, look stupid on you, or that the color does not look the way you thought it would. They called it “taupe” online, but somehow it just looks brown. Leading to returns after returns.
You don’t really want to go through the tiresome hassle of trying clothes on in the store, getting undressed and dressed 15 times in a row is annoying at best. Or maybe you really don’t have the time for any of this — either way, the fashion industry has got you! It’s started discovering Augmented Reality.
Get yourself a fashion show in your living room
Asos has developed an AR feature called Virtual Catwalk, allowing a virtual model to demonstrate the clothes — on a virtual catwalk. This allows you to see what the product looks like, what it moves like, you can see every detail up close and check out all the pieces from all perspectives.
OTTO, the mail-order company, already offered a virtual try-on solution of some of the garments on Facebook, all the way back in 2011; via webcam, you could try them on live and immediately consult your Facebook friends in case you couldn’t make a decision.
Not a bad thing, as it has been proven that customers greatly prefer to try on clothing before they decide to buy them. Not just in the store, but also ideally when shopping online.
A whole new shopping experience
With all this online shopping, fashion houses and clothing stores really had to be creative and innovative if they wanted to assert themselves, be competitive, and stand out.
In recent years, consumers have demonstrably spent more on experiences than on goods — this is enough to know that the demand for experiences is steadily increasing.
What about combining goods and experience to create the ultimate shopping experience? Sounds abstract, but that is something that is already used by many companies.
For example, virtual AR changing rooms where you have no need to get undressed and dressed anymore. The Asian manufacturer FXGear developed the FXMirror, on whose “mirror image” you can select outfits via gestures and dress your mirror image virtually.
Alternatively, you can do cool in-store AR campaigns: in 2018, the Spanish fashion brand Zara offered the Zara Studio Collection with an AR feature in its stores. With the Zara AR app, all the user had to do was point the app’s camera at the store window or display, and the desired item of clothing would be projected via AR onto the models Léa Julian and Fran Summers. If the customer liked what they saw, they could purchase the garment by clicking on it in the app right away. This feature could be experienced for two weeks in five different German stores.
These shoes are on fire
Puma applied a very different AR Feature: in April 2019, they launched the first Augmented Reality shoe, the LQD Cell Origin Air. The sneakers are covered through and through with 2D-QE codes, which unlock different experiences by scanning them with the smartphone camera. For example, after one of the scans, the virtual shoe starts to burn!
Speaking of shoes — Wanna Kicks is a mobile AR app that lets you “try on” shoes. The app uses a smartphone camera to recognize your feet. Now, you can try on a list of sneakers and see what they would look like on your feet. The virtual shoe is on your foot in real-time, and it will stay on regardless of the movement. You can even walk around in the AR sneakers, and they will follow your steps. The technology brings many benefits to customers and retailers:
The better you can imagine what a pair of sneakers look like when you actually wear them, the more likely you are to make the right purchase, and the less likely you are to return an item. Win-win all around, for both parties.
French clothing brand Lacoste is also having its shoe collection appear on users’ feet via an Android app — this came out as early as 2014. Brands like Converse and Vans are following suit.
In the end, the only way to find out whether the shoes are comfortable, or whether the chosen pants really fit is to try them on. Augmented Reality can, however, contribute a great deal to the visualization of the products and thus simplify your decision-making process.
From Fast Fashion all the way to Luxury Brands
AR can do it all: whether it’s creating a special experience while shopping, or online shopping, allowing interaction, or turning your imagination into reality, either way, it can be used in many ways in this area. With the ongoing digitalization, we will certainly see a lot more of Augmented Reality in fashion. We are curious to see which creative AR campaigns and advertisers are yet to come to create extraordinary shopping experiences for us.
