Ebay’s “Shoppable Windows”

If you are in the New York City area on June 8th thru July 7th, then go by one of these four locations to view Ebay’s interactive windows:

• 175 Orchard Street
• 154 Spring Street
• 7 w. 18th Street
• 30 Gansevoort Street

Ebay will be covering up empty storefront windows with “shoppable windows”.  The interactive windows will allow shoppers to purchase items from Kate Spade’s Saturday collection.  You will order the items on the big screen and have them delivered to you within the hour. The customer pays the delivery person with a Pay-pal credit card reader.

This is one way to connect your brick and mortar store with the digital world!  I’ve always told students that you should treat your windows as another sales tools.  Ebay now proves it!

Read the full story here.

 

 

Printed Graphics in display

Visual Merchandisers will spend a significant amount of time hanging banners, signs, and all kinds of graphic materials.  They create backdrops for mannequin + prop displays, designate a focal point in the display, and most of all give away information in the form of text or a photo.

Graphics are easy to use and help the retailer cut down on display costs.  It is easier to hang a huge banner for a campaign than to hire a team to create the same drama with a complicated display.  Some retailers have come to rely quite heavily on them: Banana Republic and the Gap.  No surprise since they are both owned by the same company; and usually the graphics in the windows are reinforcing the ad campaign you see in the magazines.

Case in point is this display in the Kate Spade stores, they basically took the ad, blew it up, and hung it their windows. It’s colorful, eye-catching, and already familiar to the shopper:

Another retailer that used graphics in their windows as a quick and easy display is Club Monaco.  This idea allowed the retailer the chance to show many different looks at the same time:

( I do wish the visual person, would’ve pulled the cloth on the floor tight, the wrinkles look really messy)

 

There is the fear, that with more and more use of graphics in windows and throughout the store there will be little need for the visual team.  Not so!  They won’t replace use, if anything they have become another tool in our toolkit, besides who’s going to climb the 10′ ladder in order to hang that banner – we are!