Setting the stage, connecting brands to customers

Traditional brick and mortar retail is changing. In response to the rapidly evolving environment of online shopping, storefronts are looking at custom digital products to meet the increasing demands of their customers. The hope is that implementing an omnichannel strategy will engage and delight their customers across channels, with multiple points of interaction for an integrated shopping experience whether online or offline. This translation of online to offline experience has become a personal obsession of mine.

Immersive digital solutions need a physical parallel

While other industries certainly benefit from the same technologies, we believe traditional retail has an imperative to embrace it. In June of 2015, Gap Inc. approached us to build a set of custom applications for Old Navy’s Mission Bay Lab Store as a test-and-learn type experience. Their focus was to give customers the opportunity to engage with a new type of store — a new digital-first experience. I envisioned it as Old Navy exploring opportunities to steer away from a “warehouse of SKUs” to a boutique store with a curated selection of products focused on deeper personalization, higher engagement, and increased shopping efficiency.

The project started small, but continued over about a year and a half, during which time we created a comprehensive ecosystem of applications for the Lab Store in Mission Bay. We designed and developed three unique digital experiences that tested hypotheses around core in-store use cases (customer, store associate, and store manager). We architected a smart inventory management system that combined various APIs along with automated scraping and packaged that into a single content management system. We built a set of APIs that connected store associates with their customers, addressing everything from cart checkout to fitting room requests, all while allowing store managers to control in-store inventory. While this initiative was a stark departure from the standard Old Navy store, we stayed true to brand identity throughout the process.