Latest from Amazon is that they are launching a physical store to sell their fashion product in physical space. The new store joins their previous ventures into physical stores for food and books.
Beloved of influencers, the Amazon fashion offering is proving so successful that in March 2021, after reaching $41 billion in 2020, Amazon became the top clothing retailer in the U.S., beating out Target, Walmart and Gap!
So why are they choosing to create a physical store experience if digital is going so well?
My view? 3 reasons:-
- One of the largest costs for online fashion retail is returns. According to Yocuda, product returns cost £60bn for UK retailers alone and can count for up to 10% of business. You can easily minimize this by having clothes – surprise surprise – tried on in the shop.
- Not only that but people are becoming wise to the fact often returns will end up in landfill, not in someone else’s wardrobe. As a sustainability play physical premises make good sense – less to landfill.
- A chance to test out new technology – and collect new data. We all know that Amazon is as much a data company as a goods company, right? Echo, Ring, Amazon Web Services – they aren’t flogging you things, they’re flogging your things, your data, the information collected about you that helps goods producers to create products you will love.
Magic mirrors and ordering in store will provide more information about customer splits, prefences and behavious that can be analysed through innovative creative tech. More data, more money. - Finally, there is something about simply being physically present in store that puts people in touch with the brand in a new way. The enviroment, experiences, materials, lighting and staff, even the music all contribute to create a stronger brand relationship.
Amazon clearly views physical spaces as a way for its brand to reach more people in new, innovative ways that cement its position at the top of the market. With this new physical store it’s making a statement about where it wants to go with fashion, once again demonstrating to the world the power of experiential.
The VR Cinema was booked out. I had to wait 2 hours to have one of the experiences! – 11:11 by the SyFy Channel. It was an interesting example of how storytelling is becoming more gamified, with 7 linear, interlocking stories delivered inside a coherent universe and a challenge to find the last ship off a dying world.
Helen Papagiannis is an expert in AR and brought together these threads in her talk Augmented Humanity. She is exploring multiple AR delivery mechanisms not simply through sight but also taste, touch (haptics) and sound. And she saw it enhancing the capabilities of human beings much in the same way that Kasparov did the use of AI.
launched their AR glasses – not Augmented Reality but Audio Reality. The idea is that you can now experience truly immersive sound through headphones that respond to where your ears actually are. This isn’t Dolby Surround Sound, it’s sound delivery that changes just as it would if you were outside, heard a dog bark and turned to look for it.
AI has made it’s way into our lives without us really noticing.
Trend 2 – AI/Robot takeover
It’s the cool new kid on the block and last year it was a strong emerging strand. But this year there was a whole room dedicated to VR experiences.Someone described it to me as VR finding it’s level, beginning to move from fad to function.
How much do you notice your environment? As a strategist at an experiential agency visiting a conference like SXSW is a 
Last year there was a strong trend for natural textures combined with high tech elements that were very often silvery or metallic. This year the naturals are still there but there was more colour everywhere. From post-it notes to displays, from lampshades to billiard tables brands were activating spaces with more attention to diverse colour palettes.
If I asked you to predict future trends for next year how long would it take to answer? How much space would you need? What if I asked you how a brand experience made you feel? Most people find it easier to share short form emotional responses than dig deep into information and opinion. Trend 2 centred around finding creative ways to engage users directly, using analogue mediums. Post-it notes, flower markers in sand pits, writing directly onto walls and so on appeared in spaces as diverse as IBM, Dell and Fast Company.
Less attractive but no less personally meaningful is this digital give aways from Great British House. A dress-up booth and some props combined with some fools produced the masterpiece you see here. A digital memento that I treasure…
I am off to 
Our brains are hard-wired for stories. Bowker reports that over one million (1,052,803) books were published in the U.S. in 2009, which is more than triple the number of books published four years earlier 
Well, the title says it all. We are very pleased to have won with Social Square for Ford. It represents a different approach to social that Imagination explored in Europe with Ford but were fully able to implement at the Detroit autoshow 2106 and in subsequent autoshows. While most social media at events focuses on a short burst of high profile activity from some very high profiles influencers to drive reach and attention we take a different tack.
i noted 
