Inverted Edge and Qlik Technologies create new digital shopping experience

• Promises interactive and personalised digital experience for customers
• In-store solution taps visualisation and storytelling features, and standard APIs

THE blurring between bricks and clicks in retail fashion went up a notch with Qlik Technologies announcing a collaboration with Singapore-based online retailer Inverted Edge, as well as with design and development agency Deloitte Digital, to launch what it said was the city-state’s first “in-store digital shopping experience.”
 
In a statement, the Swedish-founded but Radnor, Pennsylvania-headquartered Qlik said the new retail space provides customers with a personalised interactive digital shopping experience.
 
Apart from housing contemporary luxury apparel, the in-store solution includes a continually changing showcase of photos and stories from customers, shared on social media, about the clothes they wear and their related stories.
 
As a wearer adds a new garment or story, it will appear on the visual display, inspiring others and adding to the excitement of discovering and sharing new looks, bridging fashion and everyday life from posts shared across social media platforms, Qlik said in its statement.
 
The merging between the fashion online and offline worlds is not the first. Fashion e-commerce site Zalora has opened what it calls “interactive pop-up stores” in two locations in Singapore.
 
Meanwhile, Qlik said Inverted Edge wanted to create a meaningful experience across multiple channels, particularly in-store, to change the way people shop.
 
“At Inverted Edge we are proponents of ‘fashion that matters,’ or sometimes we call it ‘Slow Fashion’,” said Inverted Edge chief executive officer Debra Langley (pic).
 
“We believe that when you buy something you love, you should wear it and wear it in multiple places and in different ways and across multiple seasons. It’s not disposable, it doesn’t get thrown out after two months; it becomes something that has meaning.
 
“As a garment is worn as part of a lifestyle, it takes on a life and emotional quotient all of its own, developing a story between the wearer and the items purchased.
 
“We want to develop something that captures these relationships, and from a business standpoint, understand what fuels our shoppers’ purchasing decisions,” she added.
 
Built on Qlik Sense and HTML5 mashups, Inverted Edge’s in-store digital solution taps visualisation and storytelling features as well as simple, web standard APIs (application programming interfaces) to deliver an interactive and personalised digital experience for customers, Qlik said.
 
With a responsive design, it scales simply and naturally from large in-store touchscreen displays, to personal devices such as phones and tablets.
 
The framework allows Inverted Edge to easily manage and study purchasing data to identify key factors that drive customers’ purchase decisions. This enables the company to discover what its customers are looking out for and hence tailor its services.
 
“Truly innovative experiences emerge not only from new technologies, but from a radically new understanding of business. Inverted Edge is planning something quite unique in its use of digital technology,” said Donald Farmer, Qlik’s US-based vice president of innovation and design.
 
“By transforming dry material such as purchasing data and customer analytics into engaging, informative digital stories and conversations, Qlik is providing Inverted Edge with the ability to tackle real and significant problems that fashion retailers face in brand new ways.
 
“In particular, we are enabling them to design fresh means of engaging with the stories we tell about ourselves, and the clothes we wear and aspire to own,” he added.
 
The digital experience will later be replicated at Manifesto, Inverted Edge e-commerce partner’s new concept store carrying international contemporary brands in Singapore’s Capitol Piazza.
 
Focusing on integrating both online and offline initiatives, the two retailers intend to create a new and different retail shopper experience over the next six months, Qlik said.
 
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