The entire High street using DigiByte
Retail
Intro
How can retail shops fight back against the success of online shopping? Clothing store House of
Blue Jeans in Zoetermeer is packed with technological novelties – and payments can be made using digital currency.
Photo caption
House of Blue Jeans owner Michael Hauser (25) demonstrates the possibilities of the fitting mirror in his store.
Main article
Three wizzkids – one from Hongkong, one from the USA and one from England – temporarily moved into his store. For two entire weeks they worked, from 8 AM until 1 AM. The majority of the time they would be staring at their laptops intensely, while the entire store was covered in cables.
When looking at the House of Blue Jeans from the outside, nothing reveals what is going on inside. The at first glance somewhat basic clothing store for men has been elected as the European promo store for tech company Tofugear from Hongkong. The company loaded the store full of all kinds of technological functionalities, all meant to deliver the ultimate shopping experience to customers.
Retail 3.0, the new shopping, call it whatever you want – House of Blue Jeans is ready for it. Michael
Hauser’s (25) clothing store has now been open for five years and two months. Remarkable, seeing how he initially planned to join the army. More specifically, the mobile brigade. He passed all his tests, but then he had his wisdom teeth removed. During recovery from said operation, he received news from the Ministry of Defence: due to the economic crisis, they stopped taking on new recruits.
Retail shops have to offer customer experience and comfort
Many retail shops that have been hit by the crisis blame the internet. Ever increasing numbers of people do their shopping online.
Last year, online orders in the Netherlands equalled almost 14 billion euro’s. During the first quarter of 2015, the Dutch collectively spent 4,4 billion Euro’s online, a 19% increase compared to the first quarter of 2014, thus revealed data from branch organization Thuiswinkel.org
Retail stores are looking for ways to combat the popularity of online shopping. Why would a customer go to a bookstore when he can just as easily order a book from the comfort of his couch? Why would one go to the mall to shop for shoes, when he can have multiple pairs delivered at home and even return items for free?
The magical word for retailers is ‘omnichannel’, meaning the online and offline world become one. Offering suitable customer experience, service and comfort will be the way to increase revenue of retail shops.
When a premises in the High street became available. His father, who runs a greengrocers down the
road, asked Michael: why don’t you start a clothing store?
Hauser was not interested in selling women’s clothing – he knows nothing about that. Besides, the
High street already has plenty of women’s clothing stores. He decided to focus on sturdy yet affordable men’s clothing instead.
Friends of his father who also owned clothing stores taught him how to stock items. And now his store – outfitted with a motorcycle, a pinball machine and a jukebox – has been up and running for over five years. Of course, Michael felt the effects of the crisis, just like everybody in the High street. Yet, he always managed to turn a profit.
The entire High street using DigiByte
He doesn’t have a whole lot of competition. There is one store further up in the street selling more expensive brands of clothing, such as G-Star and Diesel. House of Blue Jeans sells quality jeans for about 45 euro’s and t-shirts for about 17,95 to 37,95.
At the end of each day, Hauser counts that day’s earnings. Every week he makes proper weekly reports.
He knows exactly just what comes in and what goes out.
His income is not made up of just euro’s, however. Hauser, who once studied at an ICT-school, accepts payments through DigiByte, a digital form of currency. He is currently trying to get the entire main street to participate and do the same. His neighbours from across the street - a restaurant and an outdoor store – have already joined him.
Hauser himself pays his suppliers using Digibyte. According to him, it’s about twenty times as fast and five times as safe as the bitcoin. Furthermore, it saves him a lot of money. Depending on conversion rates, he could lose a good 10 to 12 percent. Currently, his suppliers on the other side of the world receive payments within one second. Through an internet forum Hauser met the founder of DigiByte, Jared Tate, who then brought him into contact with Tofugear. Four months ago, Tate and the Tofugear squad suddenly showed up in his store. Just like in the digital world, the guys hit it off in real life. Before he even knew it, his store was elected as promo store, where Tofugear demonstrates all kinds of technological novelties to customers.
It took a while to set the entire operation up, but now everything is up and running.
Pants on the floor
When you put a piece of clothing on the wooden box next to the fitting mirror, the mirror will automatically show full 360 degrees photographs of the placed article. This is made possible by RFID technology; every piece of clothing is fitted with a RFID tag label that stores the articles details and automatically reads them when placed near the scanner. By moving your fingers over the photograph, you can twist and turn and look at the product from every possible angle. The fitting mirror also suggests clothing combinations. Buying these jeans? Try out this t-shirt with it.
The fitting room is equipped with comparable software. Thanks to iBeacons the system knows exactly who is in front of the mirror or inside the fitting room, provided the customer has previously downloaded the app to his or her smartphone. The fitting room is outfitted with a screen that shows photos of the items as soon as you hang these on the wall. That’s not all there is to the screen though. You can digitally request a different size be brought to the fitting room and you can pay using the screen – be it through iDeal or through DigiByte.
When a selection of clothing is put on the counter, the total amount shows up on the cash register in
less than two seconds. The shop manager no longer has to scan the items one by one.
“Tofugear was impressed: the Dutch scan their own products during a visit to the grocery store”
What did this all cost? Michael shrugs. No idea. The equipment is expensive, he knows that much. But why did the tech company from HongKong choose him? In the High street in Zoetermeer?
That is due to their contact on the forum, so says Hauser. Also, Tofugear was impressed by the
technological state of the Netherlands. The way we order dinner with our tablets and phones, the
amount of clothes we buy online and the way customers scan their own purchases in the grocery stores.
According to Hauser, his customers are very positive about the new shopping experience. Men find the technical gadgets behind the process very intriguing, even though he also has customers who don’t find the system easy to work with. Take for instance the man who is visiting the store with his elderly mother, who comments from her wheelchair. “Now, if you lose a little more of that belly and it would fit perfectly!”. The man removes the pants in the middle of the store before he realizes what he is doing. With his pants on the floor, he shuffles back towards the fitting room. Tofugear’s technical novelties were not meant for this particular customer.
