SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
...
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.
...
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 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).