In the forthcoming years, there would not even be a single industry left in the market, not impacted by Augmented Reality. The fashion industry is the topmost in this list to get digitally transformed by AR. Moreover, it is beginning to render customer-first services that will modify the shopping practices.
In fact, the pandemic in 2020 has supercharged all the online, virtual, moving industries like fashion retail well into the future. As per the U.S. Retail Index report 2020 by IBM, Covid-19 has speeded up the move to online shopping by approximately five years.
Certainly, augmented reality is redefining fashion as well as it is one of those rare technologies that have gained popularity in a shorter time span. Let us discuss the main trends of AR in the fashion industry.
MAJOR TRENDS OF AR IN FASHION MARKET
AR in the fashion industry is solely about making people feel good about themselves. There are mainly three major trends in the fashion market, as follow:
1.BOOSTING AN IN-STORE EXPERIENCE:
The growing eCommerce market has challenged retail in many ways. Also, today’s youth comparatively finds physical visits to shops less attractive, costly as well as time-consuming. This trend helps users to locate the brick and mortar shop and motivates them to visit it. This trend is collaborated with AR to encourage visits to physical shops and to remind them that such offline markets still exist.
Brands now are innovative beyond our imagination. To illustrate, ZARA used AR to showcase their latest collection in stores. Moreover, TIMBERLAND company has also used AR to attract customers to the storefront. It offers a virtual fitting room, where you can check the fitting of clothes even without wearing them.
Also, the smart mirror provided by many retail stores allows to try products in a store, even can select different sizes, different colors, etc.
2.TRY-BEFORE-YOU-BUY:
As the name suggests, customers can try on the products on themselves with the help of AR technology. This makes the shopping process less cumbersome. Normally, people buy a lot more during online shopping as compared to traditional store shopping, and further, the tendency of returning the products bought online is also more.
Usually, customers return the products that don’t suit or fit them, whether it is due to color, cut, size, etc. Thereby, with the ‘Try-before-you-buy’ trend retailers are reducing the gap between online and offline shopping by letting users try on the products themselves before buying online.
Some illustrations of AR oriented apps are;
– YouCam Makeup’ offers cosmetics virtually. Here, the app is designed in a way that allows users to try different brands of cosmetics, choose colors, and select the one they like.
– Brands like ‘Lacoste’ and ‘Converse’ enable the clients to virtually try their shoes by just pointing the phone’s camera on their foot and getting apparent reference of it.
3. ENGAGEMENT IN SOCIAL LIFE:
Here, brands can build impeccable brand awareness and include some particular edge-cases of their own identity. Augmented Reality could be seen at its current finest at Nike & S23s show during The Next Web.
Nike reformed the way of engaging clients in the eCommerce. Nike could turn out any place into an online pop-up store. Here, the company was able to collect all the interesting information about their most impassioned customers, and this was used to dedicatedly design or engaging experiences that boost brand identity.
With Nike’s strategy of direct-to-consumers, there was tremendous growth in the sales as well.
Apart from Nike, fashion giants H&M collaborated with Moschino, to build mesmerizing fashion experience. In fact, in Iran, a fully-virtual catwalk has been designed to showcase clothes on real models.
OTHER BENEFITS OF AR IN THE FASHION INDUSTRY
– The clients in geographically isolated regions can also be targeted by carrying out marketing campaigns. The so-called ‘markers’ can be used to empower offline marketing campaigns there and expand the targeted group also.
– Millions of dollars of clothing are being returned by clients after buying online. As per an article by BBC, among 1000 online shoppers, it was discovered that women’s clothing has been returned by 63%. With the emergence of ‘try-on experience’ by AR, this figure has significantly reduced.
– Building an AR campaign at the Champs-Elysees in Paris or 5th Avenue in NYC would be much cheaper than renting a store in that particular area. Hence, AR also supports your budget.
– While collaborating with music festivals or events like Open’er or Coachella you can build special buy-only-here-and-now marketing campaigns and products that could only be bought from the devices within the range of your ‘spot’.
CONCLUSION
Without any doubt, AR has brought a digital transformation in fashion retail. The spectacular usages of AR in redefining the retail fashion business could be seen in examples like; Gap’s dressing room, Tenth street hat’s virtual try-on, Wannaby’s wanna kicks, Sephora’s virtual artist, and many more. AR enhances the customer’s shopping experience as well as builds brand affinity.
Read Here More – How AR Can Change The Fashion Industry
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