Everyday on my way to work I pass the soho hugo boss with it’s interesting items in a minimal arrangement in the window. There is usually some mention of GQ and ther style associated with it. While this shop is not too expensive for my budget, it is enough so that I have to consider a purchase for sometime before making it. With this in mind I often find myself looking, but not entering the store.
The main thing I would need to consider the purchase of a hugo boss suit is more information. Since this place is a bit haughty, and I am usually in a hurry I never stop in to gather that information, which might be just what I need to buy that suit – or better yet, given the right experience, to become a boss customer for life.
That’s when this thought ran into my head: what if there was a touch sensitive display associated with the window? What if I could ‘click’ the suit jacket by simply touching the window where the jacket was. This of course would bring up a display of pricing sizing and description. And would be so fucking neet that many others would gather behind me to oooh and aaaah at the awesomeness of this window display. This would also be costly to develop, cumbersome to setup, a bitch to keep running and produce a hell of a lot of fingerprints on said window.
Shortly after having this thought I struggled to find a much simpler solution. One that combines elegant futuristic design, but also one that combines the ability for the outside customer to gather their own information and is also easy enough for employees to replace/install easily. This comes as a tall order burt I have recently stumbled upon qr codes.
These are simple and printable little matricies of dots that when decoded by a mobile device with a qr code reader, can provide links to urls, actions for the device to take or simply text for the user to read.
combine these with some window cling-on’s in an elegant design and your window design becomes interactive with the user’s mobile device.
A custom branded application (or one that is ‘theme-able’ and changes based on your location, what store you are in front of/in) to allow the customer to quickly scan and decode the qr code and you have a sophisticated way to deliver data to your patrons. Not to mention a business model.
Pricing, additional details, special deals, others bought, others looked at, refer to a friend, save for later,find the best price, share on facebook, twitter it, whatever. You have all of that functionality in the palm of the users hand, making your window shopper a fan, follower or patron in their own time.
