Sportswear brand PUMA is bringing its new New York City flagship store to life with interactive digital product experiences, giving customers visiting the store access to dynamic experiences – by simply scanning the unique QR code on each PUMA product using their smartphones.
PUMA’s new physical retail experience is made possible through the digitization of its products at scale in work done with EVRYTHNG, an IOT platform that activates every consumer product to make it intelligent, interactive and trackable, and Avery Dennison Corporation, an intelligent label solutions provider that bridges the physical and digital worlds.
“Our newest flagship store is truly alive with innovation,” says Russ Kahn, SVP of Retail, PUMA North America. “Upon entering our store, customers receive richer, dynamic engagement with both our PUMA brand and our individual products.”
Kahn says that PUMA has partnered with EVRYTHNG and Avery Dennison to capitalise on three major industry trends:dynamic consumer experience in the retail space;authenticity and story-telling in branding; and mass scale product digitization to activate product items for digital services at point of manufacture.
“PUMA is on the cutting edge, leading the way in retail innovation with dynamic, digital in-store consumer experiences,” says Niall Murphy, CEO and Co-founder, EVRYTHNG. “By digitizing every product in the NYC flagship store, PUMA is enriching the direct-to-consumer relationship and delighting its customers. At the same time, PUMA now has a scalable platform to gather real-time data intelligence to inform business strategies.”
Diving deeper into the technology
The innovation found in PUMA’s new flagship store demonstrates the direction the industry is going to compete in a world where consumers expect personalized experiences and transparency into the products they purchase, wear and consume.
PUMA is delivering on this expectation by adding a digitally serialized label – provided by Avery Dennison’s Janela solution – to every PUMA product item in the store and then connecting each product with a unique EVRYTHNG Active Digital Identity (ADI) in the cloud to manage the data from and about that item while driving digital applications and data intelligence. PUMA products are quite literally being ‘born digital.’ Consumers simply point their phone at the intelligent label and access digital experiences and services, including augmented reality.
Aside from the contextualized consumer experiences, RFID technology is integrated into each product label, enabling PUMA to optimize stock efficiencies and cut down on wastage, while also providing a pathway towards a checkout-less, grab-and-go automation.
Unlike traditional track and trace technologies, RFID has the power to help PUMA increase the store’s inventory accuracy to around 99%, while also providing last-minute inventory replenishment and reducing excess inventory and out-of-stocks. The technology also provides an identifier to help highlight counterfeit returns.
“This is a groundbreaking store from PUMA and we’re incredibly proud to be a part of it,” adds Francisco Melo, VP and GM Global RFID at Avery Dennison. “By incorporating RFID technology and Janela™ throughout the store and across all products, PUMA can collect a vast amount of data to enable more effective business decisions. The technology also puts the company on a pathway to integrate future functionality, such as automated payments, as it learns more from consumer experiences throughout the store.”
PUMA’s Call to Action
Digital ecosystem partners, Avery Dennison and EVRYTHNG, along with creative partners Alternative Genius and Zappar, worked together to create a ‘call to action’ for customers visiting PUMA’s new flagship store. Each store visitor begins their journey at the store entrance – scanning a QR code on a display sign with their smartphone.
The QR code triggers an Augmented Reality (AR) experience featuring the PUMA mascot, allowing customers to take a selfie with the mascot. Visitors are then led through the store, scanning QR code displays for fun and interactive experiences that ultimately lead customers to the 2nd floor basketball section. Upstairs in the basketball section, different styles of PUMA basketball shoes are displayed and tagged with unique QR codes. Customers scan the codes to experience unique AR scenarios — with each shoe style sharing its own individual story.
Beyond the fun in the basketball section, every PUMA product item in the new flagship store is now digitized with an EVRYTHNG Active Digital Identity to connect them to the web. Consumers simply scan a product’s unique QR code with their smartphone to access the item’s product detail page on the PUMA eCommerce site and take a deep dive into the product item’s story and/or purchase online.
Within PUMA’s new store, customers can view products in alternate colors and styles through interactive displays. The displays utilize Avery Dennison’s RFID technology to bring up alternative product selections based on the item the consumer tries on. In addition, consumers can press a button to notify an associate they need help at the display, sign up for in-store events and even use it as a Point of Sale in the future.
