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from the just-wait-until-the-cameras-get-hacked dept.
As online giant Amazon.com Inc. charges into the $300 billion U.S. apparel market, Macy's Inc. is running for the dressing room.
Even Macy's acknowledges there's little it can do to keep customers from shopping online for basic clothing -- like T-shirts, men's jeans and tighty whities. Yet the department store chain is clinging to the idea that many consumers will want to try on other kinds of apparel, such as bikinis, bras and high-fashion items, before making a purchase.
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As part of its effort, Macy's recently revamped its fitting rooms in the women's swimsuit and athletic department at its Manhattan Beach, California, store. Macy's is using technology - - smartphones and company-provided tablets -- to make it easier for customers to try on items without having to leave the dressing room or ask a sales clerk for more help.
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Shoppers browse swimsuits and yoga pants displayed on mannequins. When a style looks interesting, they use a Macy's app on their smartphones or the tablets to select their sizes. The items are delivered to a fitting room through a chute. Once in the fitting room, customers can request more sizes and other items using the app.The result is that shoppers spend more time browsing and less time undressing, redressing and rummaging through racks, increasing the likelihood they'll find something to buy.
The article does not explain how selected items find their way from the rack to the delivery chute--whether by sales employees manually finding the items or some automated process.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Thursday August 20 2015, @06:56PM
Sure, it's nice to have a quick overview of what a store has to offer, and what's for sale and such. Especially if it's a big store. But they'll still want to go to other stores, or when not up for walking around all day, stay home and browse online shops.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 20 2015, @08:18PM
The *only* reason I shop for cloths at a store is because every brand has a different idea what 'size' is.
So yes I *DO* have to try on your pants before I buy them. Because you say it is 34x32 it is actually 34x30. I did not suddenly gain 2 inches. I may in the other direction though :) Try the next pair from the stack on and it is the right size...
Shirts are 'large' but not really. So I grab the XL from you and M from the other guy.
If sizes were actually standardized like they should be then yes I would be all over online buying of cloths.
Or hmm this is cut wrong and I can not move my arms without the back of the shirt digging in.
That is why I still go to the store to buy cloths.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by vux984 on Thursday August 20 2015, @10:05PM
The *only* reason I shop for cloths at a store is because every brand has a different idea what 'size' is.
Sizing is just one factor. Fit makes a big difference. a 34" waist might actually be 34" but how is it around your calves? or thighs? Just having a 34" waiste and 30" legs is hardly enough to go on to know if you'll like how it fits. And judging from my wifes clothing shopping its even worse for women. She'll try S/M/L and then walk away declaring that NONE of them fit right. Even the closest fit is still too tight here and too lose there.
Lack of standardized sizing is just part of the 'fit' problem. Its not surprising that all the dimensions of people and clothing can't be adequate summarized by XS/S/M/L/XL. People simply aren't all the same shape multiplied by a scaling factor.
Then there is quality of materials and workmanship... I've often put back a T-shirt that was too thin; or a jacket that was not heavy enough or too heavy for what i wanted... or had a poor quality zipper, or the buttons were already barely hanging on... or shoes that fit, but weren't comfortable. Or the leather was low quality, or a zillion other items that made it undesirable or at least undesirable for the price.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 21 2015, @01:41AM
Exactly my point. On top of that even from the same brand you can have 2 shirts that look identical. Same 'sizes' but one fits and the other doesnt. Why because someone didnt make the shirt correctly. There is a staggering amount of badly made clothing out there.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jimshatt on Friday August 21 2015, @07:12AM
Macy's wants to use the tablets to make home shoppers more comfortable, but I don't think this will help to get the home shoppers (who apparently don't care about material (or just order a lot and send 90% back)) back in the stores.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Friday August 21 2015, @05:48PM
Sooo, would the dressing-room-tablets be an advantage for you?
Not really. I think retail clothing needs to compete with amazon by leveraging their brick and mortor presence as a showroom where I can try stuff on, see the material etc. Their challenge however is going to be to convert that to a sale to prevent shoppers from then going back home and ordering it on line.
Three things need to happen:
1) The price needs to at least be close. If I'm saving 50%-75% on an item and possibly dodging some taxes on top of that by ordering it from Amazon online it's hard to rationalize buying it in store. I'm willing to pay a small premium to get it here and now, this exact one I tried on... but not a 150% premium.
2) Ideally they should get out of stocking product that Amazon can get as much as they can. Be exclusive.
3) Their own online store and direct shipping needs to be solid. If the size/color combo I want isn't in stock, they should be able to have it to my door within two days.
As for the tablet to reduce people interaction... I dunno... I personally don't find most sales people in retail clothing to be overly pushy; and a genuinely good sales person when I run into one generally improves the shopping experience.
(Score: 2) by Non Sequor on Thursday August 20 2015, @11:17PM
The advantage of shopping online is that there is less shopping involved. If you compare prices, there's less involved in that, but if you don't, there' still less.
Yes, this kind of shopping does bring some of the online advantages to the offline. I'd much rather have this for clothes shopping.
Write your congressman. Tell him he sucks.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday August 21 2015, @12:56AM
This idea sounds like a disaster.
On the surface, it sounds reasonable: you're in the dressing room trying on some yoga pants (from TFS), and they don't fit, so you tap a few times on the tablet in there to request a different size, and some faceless employee grabs them off the rack and drops them in a chute for you to try on. What could possibly go wrong?
Simple: there's no employee immediately available, so you're twiddling your thumbs with no pants on for 5-10 minutes waiting for an employee to see your request. Then it takes them a while to get to the rack and look through every single pair of yoga pants on it to see if there's one pair in the request size, and then slowly walk back over to your room to drop them in the chute.
You were just at that rack, so you know just where it is; you could have thrown on your pants, run over to the rack, grabbed another pair, and gone and tried them on in a couple of minutes.
Maybe if they had a surplus of employees standing around waiting for this, this could work. But the problem is that, just like every retailer these days, there's a shortage of employees on the floor for the number of customers. Maybe if you go at 10AM on a weekday this will work great (because you'll be the only customer in the department), but during normal shopping times it won't.
(Score: 2) by jimshatt on Friday August 21 2015, @07:02AM
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday August 21 2015, @09:18PM
Won't work. The sales floor of a department store is not remotely orderly enough for robots to do that job well.
Yes, if you had everything pre-packaged in storage bins, you could do it, but there's two problems with that: 1) what do you do with all the clothes that are tried-on and rejected? Now you have to throw them away, or hope they sell off the sales floor, because you're never going to be able to repack them good enough to be put back in the automated bins (and if you can, now you need to hire a bunch of humans to do this), and 2) this means you now have to buy several times as much inventory as before. Department stores are usually short on inventory anyway (which you find every time you want some article of clothing, and look through the piles only to find they have every size *except* yours).