Can fitting rooms become an important O2O scene in the clothing industry?

Regarding the Uniqlo nude photo scandal, as the founder and senior consultant of Bailian Consulting, since the purpose of establishing this company is to focus on providing professional business planning and IT planning for enterprises' O2O transformation and innovative business, I have no intention of analyzing the incident from a marketing or gossip perspective. However, this incident started in the " fitting room ", and for me who has been practicing O2O in the retail industry, it gave me some inspiration for the O2O scenario in the clothing industry, which may not be mature enough. If you think my analysis makes sense, you can follow WeChat (appganhuo) for exchanges and discussions.

Uniqlo has been practicing O2O in the clothing industry for many years, but apart from connecting with the online sales system and realizing data connection of some offline services in multiple cities and multiple stores, thereby realizing synchronous sales and services in multiple cities and multiple stores, there is no other innovation. For example, you can return or exchange the pants you bought at Uniqlo in Sanlitun through the Tmall store or the official website, and vice versa; then you can take the pants to the Uniqlo store in Shanghai to have the legs altered... I guess many consumers will think that this is how it should be, and it is indeed the case. However, for traditional chain brand stores like Uniqlo, it takes several years of hard work to achieve this, including:

1. An ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning System, in layman's terms, a purchasing, sales and inventory management system) that can be connected to the API (universal data interface) of online platforms such as Taobao, Tmall, and JD. Such a system must also be connected to the WMS (warehouse management system) as well as the in-store management system and department store POS system to achieve the return and exchange of the first step just now. I have led the planning for Walmart, Oriental Home, Wangfujing Department Store, and JuRan Home. I discussed the business processes clearly, established the profit distribution mechanism, and then sorted out the system development requirements. For a retail company with hundreds or thousands of stores, this is real internal work that cannot be avoided.

2. Optimization and adjustment of business processes. This part will also involve adjustments to interest relations and organizational structures. If they are all directly-operated stores, it will be fine, but it will be more complicated if franchise stores are involved.

3. Coordination between brands and offline and online retailers. We know that most offline department stores have unified checkout. So how can we provide return and exchange services for pants paid online at Tmall and JD.com and then brought to brand physical stores in department stores? In addition to the system planning mentioned in the first point, it is also necessary to coordinate the relationship between online and offline retailers, and achieve synchronization and unification in operations . Otherwise, it will be difficult to achieve consistency in user experience , after all, there are coupons, discounts, cash back, discounts on purchases over a certain amount, and other content involved in promotional activities. These parts belong to the operation planning and profit planning parts when Bailian Consulting ( WeChat public account : bailianO2O) provides consulting to customers.

First of all, it is not a false proposition for traditional enterprises to realize O2O. There is no need to discuss whether to do O2O or not. The key is how to work hard to do it well. After all, as an entrepreneur, you are also a consumer. Of course, you hope that the clothes you bought in Sanlitun store can be returned or altered in Jing'an Temple in Shanghai. You also hope that the clothes you bought on Tmall can be picked up directly from the store closest to your home or they can deliver it to you in ten minutes...

O2O is to maximize the advantages of physical stores and e-commerce, to maximize the improvement of user experience, and to allow users to feel tremendous convenience. For a company that implements O2O better, users will definitely feel "happy"! Due to limited space and this topic, I will not elaborate on the first three efforts. If you want to discuss further, you can follow my WeChat (izhuangshuai) to see what other efforts the clothing industry has made in O2O!

Back to the topic of fitting rooms, as early as 2009 I led the virtual fitting room projects of Zouxiu.com, Taobao and Paipai. Now you can see that Taobao and Paipai no longer mention virtual fitting rooms. Why? In fact, this is a question of consumer psychology. Online shopping transforms real experience into visual experience, so many people who buy clothes online are often influenced by models. Those online models plus carefully processed pictures are experiences that have never been experienced offline. This experience allows people to add personal imagination and thus generate purchases. To put it simply, reading Jin Yong's books is more enjoyable than watching his TV dramas, because books can fill everyone's imagination. As the saying goes: There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes. The e-commerce purchasing method based on visual experience is a reflection of this consumer psychology. However, Taobao and Paipai fitting rooms destroyed this "beauty". When you input your real size... OH My God, how come the model looks so good in it, but I look so ugly in it virtually! Actually, it will be just as ugly when you buy it and wear it, but since you bought it, you will only blame yourself for not having a good figure like the model, not the clothes! The technology that tells people not to buy something at the time of purchase decision is so deceptive. The conversion rate we have achieved is less than one thousandth!

I guess after reading this, everyone will have another question: offline fittings are more realistic, so why is the conversion rate so high? The feedback I got from observation and research is this: whether it is pictures or so-called 3D fitting online, they are actually two-dimensional, static, and cannot change instantly in people's vision. They are not the real self with changing body language and expressions at any time, so shopping decisions will be affected. Trying on clothes offline is different. First, you can be completely and authentically yourself. Second, you can change various postures and movements instantly. Third, there are shopping guides, family members, friends, etc. who can influence your dressing. Fourth, the offline shopping and trying on clothes process requires huge physical effort! Combining these four aspects, the conversion rate of offline fitting will naturally be much higher. If you want to further discuss consumer psychology research and analysis, please follow WeChat (izhuangshuai) for communication.

Next, we will further analyze how fitting rooms can become a cool scene in the clothing industry O2O based on new technologies. Let's first look at a series of fitting room O2O practice news released by Uniqlo in September 2014. From these reports, we can see that Uniqlo's integration of O2O in the shopping experience through AR technology has been launched in a new store opened in San Diego, USA 9 months ago (October 15, 2014). It consists of multiple displays, and you can directly see the different colors of the same clothes on the body in the mirror; this virtual fitting system consists of a 60-inch large display, a tablet terminal and a camera. News at the time indicated that Uniqlo's virtual fitting system was still in the testing phase and there were no plans to introduce it into the country.

According to Bailian Consulting's methodology in O2O practical consulting planning, after serving many companies, it has a deeper understanding of the O2O model in terms of operation, marketing, profit system, organizational structure, process, etc., so it helps more and more companies to take fewer or no detours in O2O transformation or innovation, and enjoy the higher efficiency improvement and continuously extreme user experience brought by O2O. Judging from the Uniqlo fitting room incident, the O2O fitting rooms practiced in the United States should have achieved the expected results and are ready to be introduced to China!

Many people only say that O2O is a combination of online and offline, but they may not think much about why and how to combine them. According to our practical experience, it is actually to continuously give play to the advantages of online and offline, and use their respective advantages to make up for the disadvantages of each other. Through the new online and offline fitting rooms rebuilt with AR technology, the advantages of unlimited network shelves, data storage and instant sharing are brought into play, while making up for the shortcomings of offline ones. The four major advantages of offline fitting are also brought into play to make up for the shortcomings of online fitting. At the same time, users can try on more clothes without spending too much energy. Through this technology and the Chinese government's most sensitive topic of "pornography", Uniqlo can soon start to reduce the number of fitting rooms in all physical stores. Yes, you read that right. Reduce the number of fitting rooms in physical stores and increase the number of mirrors with AR (virtual reality technology)...

Many people may object after seeing this, but let me tell you the most core and fundamental logic in business, which is - reduce costs! For many clothing stores, fitting rooms account for a very high proportion of the cost, and the user experience is not good. If business is good, it will be too costly to have too many fitting rooms, and if there are too few, the queues will be very long...A fitting room based on AR technology is actually a modified mirror. The cost accounting is usually cheaper than a fitting room that pays for rent and it takes up very little space. Many fitting rooms can be installed on one wall. Besides, in addition to the cost, physical effort and long queues, traditional fitting rooms also involve uncontrollable theft, pornography and the inability to obtain user fitting data. Although you still have to queue up for the AR fitting rooms, there are more of them, and most importantly, there are more clothes and fitting data to improve conversion rates and guide product development.

The conclusion is that fitting rooms based on AR technology will subvert the shackles of the traditional clothing industry in the fitting process. Whether in terms of operating costs or big data acquisition, as well as user experience and more user-based R&D improvements, they will be fully O2O and become an important scenario for O2O in the clothing industry!

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