Fashionista AR Dressing Room from Zugara

Today RichRelevance and Zugara unveiled Fashionista, a social shopping experience using augmented reality on Tobi.  While they still have the dreaded marker (for setting spatial coordinates), the motion capture controls and usefulness of home shopping make up for its brief appearance. 

SAN FRANCISCO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–RichRelevance™ and Zugara today unveiled Fashionista™, a new social shopping application that marries the benefits of the fitting room with the convenience of online shopping and the power of the social web. Launching in time for the holidays and available today on fashion site Tobi.com, Fashionista brings together three hot technologies – augmented reality, motion capture, and real-time personalization – to create a more social and intuitive way to shop for clothes on the web. Through Fashionista, shoppers can now virtually try on clothing via webcam, instantly change into new pieces recommended just for them, share images of themselves on Facebook, and get instant feedback from friends on what works and what they should buy. By combining the best of online and offline shopping, Fashionista provides an engaging and differentiated experience that builds brand and drives word of mouth, while increasing customer engagement, average order value, and brand loyalty.

“My time leading R&D at Amazon confirmed the importance of continually innovating the customer experience,” said David Selinger, CEO of RichRelevance. “Apparel retailers are leading the charge when it comes to social media and online shopping, but they can’t afford to hold steady and stop investing in their shoppers. Fashionista is the next step in eCommerce: part ‘Webcam Social Shopper,’ part brand experience, part social tool, and totally integrated on RichRelevance’s personalized product recommendations platform to deliver measurable ROI.”

“As a company, Zugara’s philosophy on integrating emerging media and technologies has always been based on utility, both for the brand and the consumer,” said Zugara CEO Matthew Szymczyk. “But friends still play an important role in influencing consumers. Eighty-three percent of online shoppers said they are interested in sharing information about their purchases with people they know, while 74 percent are influenced by the opinions of others in their decision to buy the product in the first place. Zugara and RichRelevance are excited to give retailers a new way to connect shoppers with their peers, and make the online shopping experience more like the offline: social, personal and engaging.”

How It Works

Fashionista creates a totally individualized and engaging customer experience from three core components of emerging media, technology, and eCommerce:

• Augmented Reality combines real-world and computer-generated data where computer graphics or objects are blended into real-time footage. With Fashionista, images of clothing are merged with live video of the shopper.
• Motion Capturerecognizes and records an individual’s movements and integrates them into an on-screen model. With Fashionista, hand motions enable the user to virtually navigate backward or forward on screen to select clothing, indicate preference, and take a photo.
• Personalized Clothing Recommendationsdeliver a highly engaging and individualized shopping experience based on the current shopper’s session as well as “wisdom of the crowds.” With Fashionista, a stream of recommendations that leverages multiple recommendation types is displayed and updated based on immediate user feedback on preference.

With Fashionista, shoppers can “virtually” try on clothing and easily cycle through various styles with a flick of the wrist. Fashionista works with a webcam and uses a printable marker to overlay clothes on the shopper’s real-time image. Via the printed marker, the application automatically detects where the shopper is standing in a room and adjusts the clothes accordingly. The shopper can then change outfits by utilizing the motion capture technology to select a new piece of clothing from a personalized wardrobe – without returning to their keyboard and mouse.

Shoppers can also take a picture of themselves and their favorite looks by motioning over the camera icon within the Fashionista interface. The image can be saved and emailed to a friend for feedback, or easily uploaded directly to Facebook, where it is published to the shopper’s profile. A shopper’s friends will then see the image in their news and live feeds and be able to comment on it immediately.

Tobi.com is the first online retailer who will be integrating the product to its site. “As part of our brand promise of 1-to-1 shopping, we are always looking for innovative and engaging ways to provide our customers a more personalized shopping experience,” said Jeff Lee, Vice President of Products and Technology at Tobi. “We love the social shopping aspects behind Fashionista and feel it aligns perfectly with our personal online stylist service. It provides our customers another way to get more comfortable with their purchasing decision and we expect it to have a positive impact on a variety of metrics we track around customer satisfaction, product discovery, and customer engagement.”

“Fashionista gives retailers like Tobi.com a cool way to stand out in the crowd and get more out of Facebook – without spending a cent more on advertising or brand initiatives,” continued Selinger. “With Fashionista, Tobi.com is tapping a passionate group of shoppers who are super excited about what they wear, how they style their clothes and what looks fabulous.”

Fashionista is available on the RichRelevance enRICH Personalization Platform and utilizes existing product data feeds and images. The application is built in Flash to provide users a seamless experience with no additional plug-ins and allows retailers to track the tool’s performance using existing analytics.

About Tobi.com

Tobi is built on the belief that the enthusiastic care and honest service Tobi (our first customer!) received on her visit should extend to all customers on each and every visit. Tobi delivers an eclectic online shopping experience to a worldwide audience by merging a relevant selection with unmatched customer service, insightful content and 1-to-1 personal styling. For additional information visit www.tobi.com 

About Zugara

Zugara, a member of the Augmented Reality Industry guiding “AR Consortium”, is an interactive marketing company focused on emerging media and technology. Zugara’s main areas of expertise include interactive video, social media, mobile marketing and website / application development. In addition to the strategic marketing based services we provide for our clients, we are also dedicated to creating our own proprietary interactive marketing technologies and products that advance the interactive marketing industry. Founded in 2001, and based in Los Angeles, we’re currently in the process of expanding and opening our second office in New York. Current clients include Reebok, Sony Pictures, Toyota, Activision, THQ, and The U.S. Air Force.

About RichRelevance

RichRelevance is the leading provider of next-generation personalization and product recommendation tools for enterprise-class eCommerce sites, including Sears.com, BassPro.com and Walmart.com. The company’s suite of SaaS-based offerings, including RichRecs™, RichMail™, and MyRecs™, are easily integrated and drive a range of key performance indicators by enhancing the entire shopping lifecycle, from interception through engagement to re-interception. Built on the enRICH™ platform, RichRelevance products offer robust merchandiser control and employ over 40 different recommendation types with cross-placement optimization and a closed-feedback loop to display relevant, clearly-explained product recommendations. Founded and led by the former head of Amazon’s Personalization R&D team, RichRelevance is headquartered in San Francisco.