WithMe is setting up modular pop-up stores that offer brand owners a new way to market their products. The stores are designed to enable customers to learn about garments as they pick them up and try them on, and then to make purchases. The system can also remind shoppers to purchase something if they try to take it out the door without paying for it. To accomplish these things, each store employs radio frequency identification technology provided by InMotion and Impinj.
WithMe provides brands with its interactive, portable, pre-fabricated stores that are intended to blend onsite and online shopping. Products stocked in the store are available for sale, while shoppers can also make purchases using the touchscreens and providing payment for goods that will then be shipped to them.
The stores are one solution to the challenge of blending the advantages of online shopping convenience and the physical experience of seeing, holding and trying on a product prior to making a purchase.
In November 2015, WithMe operated two pop-up ShopWithMe stores—one in Las Vegas for women’s clothing and accessories retailer Raven + Lily, and one in Chicago that sold merchandise provided by Toms Shoes and Raven + Lily. More recently, WithMe set up a store in Dallas that markets Dallas Cowboys merchandise, as well as a location in San Jose, Calif., featuring Harley Davidson apparel and other branded items.
“RFID brings ShopWithMe the ability and versatility to create a new shopping experience for customers visiting our smart stores,” says Jason Chen, WithMe’s retail evangelist. “We are combining the benefits of online shopping in a new type of connected physical retail environment. RFID is a key technology for us to trigger events and deliver product information.”
Each store is about 3,000 square feet in size, says Larry Arnstein, Impinj’s business development VP, with an approximately 2,000-square-foot sales floor fully equipped with RFID hardware. This includes five Impinj xArray readers installed on the ceiling to capture the locations of products wherever they are displayed within the store.
Each store comes with a Pixel Wall on which there are 940 seven-inch “pixels” (video screens), some mounted on the ends of motorized extendible shelves. Each motorized shelf can be flush against the wall, or extend out to provide shelf space for a product, such as a shoe or a pair of shoes. Attached to each product is an RFID tag made with an Impinj Monza R6 chip. Between 50 and 100 of the shelves are live, according to Frederick Bleckmann, InMotion’s founder and creative technologist, meaning they each have a reader designed by InMotion using an Impinj Indy RS500 reader chip, as well as its own antenna built into them for reading those tags. When a shopper lifts a product off one of the live shelves to take a closer look, its reader no longer captures the ID number transmitted by that item’s tag. This prompts the InMotion Origin software—which receives all reader data collected by Impinj’s ItemSense software, and processes and filters that information to provide a defined actionable response—to display data related to that product on that shelf’s pixel screen.
A customer can then take a product to what WithMe refers to as a Reactable fixture—such as a table with a top consisting of a 55-inch LED touchscreen with an integrated Impinj Speedway Revolution reader and a customized InMotion reader antenna. When the shopper places the item near the screen, the reader captures its tag ID number and the Origin software triggers the display of other items that might go well with that product. The touchscreen also offers to tell a shopper where within the store she can find a specific product, or to give her the option of making an online purchase of a product not stocked in-store.
The store also features four fitting rooms containing electrically controlled fabric curtains that descend to create an enclosed space for trying on garments, and a mirror with a 42-inch touchscreen. When a shopper brings a garment into the fitting room, a Speedway Revolution reader captures the ID number of that item’s RFID tag and the software then displays data about the product.
“Because there are no physical walls between the fitting rooms—just fabric—and due to the natural way RF signals travel, stray reads posed a serious challenge,” Bleckmann explains. “We expanded on the existing algorithms in our Origin software to filter out any strays and provide a tightly defined read zone for each fitting room.”
The store has a moveable closet that is motorized and can slide into the fitting room for the delivery of goods. If a shopper wants to try on a different size, or another product she sees displayed on the mirror screen, she can use the touchscreen function to request that item from a store associate. That employee then locates the garment and places it in the moveable closet, prompting the system to display an alert on the fitting room mirror that the product has arrived. The customer can then open the closet door and retrieve that item. Purchases of goods available only online can also be made using the fitting room’s touchscreen.
Additionally, says Brandon Maseda, WithMe’s retail innovation VP, the store includes what the company calls a Big Dipper checkout station, at which a shopper can place products on the fixture, and a customized InMotion reader with an Impinj Indy RS500 chip captures each tag’s ID. The Origin software displays the items being purchased on the screen and forwards that information to the integrated point-of-sale software. The shopper can then swipe a credit card and complete the transaction.
At both the front and back doors is another customized InMotion reader with an Indy RS500 chip and an InMotion antenna, to capture the ID numbers of all tagged goods leaving the store. If a tagged item is leaving the premises and the software determines that it has not been paid for, an alert is displayed on a screen at the door asking if the shopper would like to purchase that item through an Express Checkout app. A user interface displays any goods that have not yet been purchased. The customer can then use her mobile phone, with the app downloaded on it, to pay for them at the door.
The xArray readers on the ceiling are used for wayfinding. If an individual seeks a specific item, she can request it at the Reactable fixture and view its approximate location within the store.
As customers navigate the technology, Maseda says, sales associates are available to help with the selection and purchasing as needed. “Employees can quickly spot if a customer is engaged with one of our interactive fixtures, making it easy to approach to offer additional support.”
The technology is not yet being used for supply chain inventory tracking or automated replenishment, Bleckmann notes, in part because the initial focus is on customer-facing services, and the amount of inventory onsite is fairly limited. That, however, might change in the future. The store could use the RFID technology not only to manage replenishment and inventory tracking, but also for analytics to track shopper behavior, what products interest shoppers most and when in-store traffic is heaviest, as well as which parts of the store see the most activity.
The ShopWithMe deployment, Arnstein says, is part of a significant trend for blending online and physical shopping. “There is an absolute need for retailers to integrate digital and physical environments,” he states. “This is a great example of that.”
A single ShopWithMe store takes only a few days to deploy, Bleckmann says, but the mobile retail environment poses some challenges for the RFID technology. InMotion is working to improve the way in which the ShopWithMe modular store is broken down, shipped and fitted back together to make the deployment process more streamlined. “We’re redesigning how it all snaps back together,” he says.