Last updated : April 18, 2018 11:52 am
Slated to add 30 more stores in the next 18 months, furniture retailer Urban Ladder’s CEO and Co-founder Ashish Goel talks to Retail4growth on using in-store tech cleverly and bringing out omni-channel character of the brands through visual merchandising.
Even after entering the online marketplace for furniture, one of the USPs for our success was to identify the true power of online and offline. For example, we gave ample importance to visual merchandising even as an online brand. Subsequently when we entered the offline space, we replicated the same VM in our stores as we wanted our customers to achive the trial at the most homely environment as well as we wanted to give them the confidence that what looks fabulous online, looks equally promising when you see it in real.
The most interactive tech touchpoints in a physical store are still at a “vision” stage for most of the leading retailers while you did coin them at your first store itself. Can you tell us about the ROI you achieved.
We introduced our virtual technology concept in our first store in Bangalore, which was large in size. Now what happens with such large format and heavy footfall is that customers don’t get that opportunity to experience it. We waited for the technology to earn traction till three months since rollout but it wasn’t really encouraging. On the other hand, for smaller stores, where footfall is lower but every walk-in has a bigger ticket value, people actually have the time and willingness to invest that time as they come with the intent of buying. We have about 60%-65% conversion rate in small format stores and VR started contributing to the conversion even further.
What would you briefly suggest to those who are trying to bring change in experiential retail?
AR, VR or similar experiences often end up looking gimmicky. As for us, essentially a furniture brand merging online and offline, it was a part of give our customers an opportunity of trail. However, your category that you are retailing, may not require you to try something like that. My suggestion would be to move away from being “gimmicky” and to think profoundly on what could turn out to be actually “value addition” for your brand.