General Pants launches interactive customer kiosks in-store

Clothing retailer, General Pants Co, is rolling out new in-store kiosks in a bid to bring together online and offline sales activity into one interactive experience.

The kiosks have taken six months to develop and will be rolled out to 300 devices and 47 stores nationwide. They utilise a centralised management systems and data analysis tools and include a range of music, fashion and social media features.

These include ‘insta-opinion’, which allows consumers to photograph themselves wearing or holding up an item from the store then submit that photo in real-time for feedback from other kiosk users for a thumbs up or down.

The ‘what’s playing’ function allows customers to choose what music track is broadcast across the store through Spotify. The company has partnered with The Naked and Famous to create the playlists.

‘Our picks’ showcases trends in clothing and accessories which customers can browse, purchase in-store, email to themselves or order from the Kiosk and shipped directly to their house. The ‘people’ feature include photos chosen by General Pants staff and customers of different looks, which have been shared across Twitter, Vine, Facebook and Instagram. Consumers will also be able to use the kiosks to purchase looks shown in the photographs.

Other features include ‘what’s new’, and ‘what’s happening’, which will curate content produced by the marketing, buyer and store teams both on the brand and clothing lines, as well as information about concert tickets, collaboration and celebrity spotting in-store. All kiosks will also have a help button to alert staff to customers needing further assistance.

The new kiosks are based on a marketing automation platform from Responsys, SAP’s Hybris ecommerce platform, and an Epicor ERP solution. Epicor is also providing tools to unify inventory across all sales channels. General Pants partnered with Digital Artists Network as its lead technical and creative partners on the kiosk project.

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General Pants CEO, Craig King, said the kiosks are about focusing on what customers are doing, rather than looking for an omni-channel approach. “We asked ourselves what we are doing for them, how we can better communicate our stories and how do we enrich their experience,” he said.

“We have taken key insights we have learnt in recent years and used these to develop the kiosks. We have made sure they encompass everything our consumer has been asking for including social integration, time poor options for shopping, peer-to-peer shopping, music, fashion, technology and entertainment all curated by the ‘global trend hunters’, the General Pants team.”

The kiosks are initially being installed in the retailer’s 10 NSW locations, with the remainder rolled out to all 47 stores nationally by February 2014.

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