Ralph Lauren Built An Interactive Handbag Customization Salon

What Happened
On Friday, fashion retailer Ralph Lauren unveiled a new flagship shop in L.A. that comes with an interactive handbag salon, allowing shoppers to personalize their handbag orders in colors, materials, and monograms. Each handbag in the store is tagged with an RFID chip that automatically carries over product specifications to a touchscreen when a customer brings a bag to the salon to start their customization.

What Retailers Should Do
By focusing on personalization and offering a seamless in-store experience, Ralph Lauren’s new store provides a great example of how retailers can modernize their retail experience and attract shoppers to visit. With more and more consumers choosing the convenience of online shopping over physical stores, brick-and-mortar retailers need to take the initiative in creating in-store experiences that provide added value for customers.

 


Source LA Times

How Disney’s Billion-Dollar MagicBand Is Working Its Magic

Read original story on: Wired

Introduced back in November of 2013, the Disney MagicBand is a waterproof plastic wristband that doubles as an RFID-enabled ticketing and payment device for Disneyland visitors, connecting them to a powerful system of sensors scattered throughout the park to offer a frictionless experience. The system, which reportedly cost Disney over $1 billion to develop, collects real-time data about where visitors are, what they’re doing, and what they want to purchase next.

Since its debut, MagicBand has received largely positive reviews and has been credited to the record-high park attendance and Disney resort occupancy in the last quarter. By all accounts, it looks like Disney’s billon-dollar gamble on wearables is paying off.

Header image taken from Disney Online Store

How A Finnish Mall Found Success With “Physical Cookies”

Read original story on: Mashable

Last fall, a mall in Helsinki, Finland reportedly started testing a new VIP loyalty program in which individually targeted deals are offered to shoppers who agreed to carry a plastic key fob embedded with an RFID chip with them. Since then, over 14,000 customers have tried out this “physical cookie” device, which can provide valuable insights on the shopper’s preferences.

The mall worked with local ad agency TBWA\Helsinki to create the RFID key chains, which don’t require registration or sharing any personal information. After a four-month trial, the mall reported some promising results, as customers with “Physical Cookies” spent 21.7% more time in stores than those who didn’t.

 

RFID Tracking Chip To Be Placed On Every NFL Player

You get a tracker. And you get a tracker. Everybody in the NFL games is getting a tracker! Oprah jokes aside, the trend towards big data has made its way to another stats-friendly domain: sports. The National Football League announced today that it is teaming up with Zebra Technology to deploy in-game player tracking chips in 17 stadiums for the 2014 season, effectively generating a myriad of proprietary new statistics in real time.

Two RFID chips will be place on each player’s shoulder pads and will provide various data, including positioning velocity, acceleration, distance run, and impact measurements, to Zebra’s real-time location system (RTLS). This move could transform the way teams and fans evaluate the personal performance of every NFL player, potentially changing the way America watches its favorite sport.

All Dogs In England To Be Microchipped By 2016

The British government is requiring that all dogs be microchipped by 2016 for identification purposes. The bold initiative will track dogs in an effort to reduce the number of abandoned animals. Utilizing RFID chips, there could be a wealth of interesting data produced in terms of the dogs behavior and movements if the government would ever expose it. Now just imagine if we could do the same with humans. It could be the next generation of Fuelband or Fitbit.