If you were to ask yourself what you picture the future of fashion and beauty industries to look like, what are a few descriptors you would use? For me, technology and sustainability are two words that quickly come to mind. The future of fashion and beauty is constantly evolving and adapting to new trends to help make their products and services more attractive and helpful to their customers. Through technological advances and innovations, the online and in-store shopping experience has evolved over the years. Online retailer perks, innovative app features, AR (augmented reality), and social commerce are a few examples of how the fashion and beauty community has introduced many technological innovations. These changes can be seen as for better or worse depending on the individual shopper but overall they are meant to aid and advance the overall experience for shoppers.
According to a July 23, 2019 article by Digital Commerce 360’s April Berthene, e-commerce accounts for more than a third of all apparel sales. Several years ago this might not have been the case. Online retailers have taken over the fashion and beauty industries by introducing innovative and useful ways to research, browse, and purchase products and services. The popular shoe retailer Converse joined the AR community recently by introducing the “Converse Sampler App”. This app allows customers to shop for their preferred shoe or design their own and sample them on their feet by positioning their cameras on their feet. They then have the ability to see how the shoe would look versus going in-store to try them on.
Sephora, an example of a popular beauty retailer, has introduced features online and in-app that enables customers to colour match foundations and concealers, along with sampling lipstick and eyeshadow colours. The idea is for the customer to take a clear head shot of themselves and upload it to their account and find what works for them from there. This allows consumers to shop and browse on the go rather than visit the store to have a beauty expert aid them in these discoveries. Along with providing makeup finding aids, Sephora has online and in-app bonus features to ordering products online. Multiple freebie and sample promo codes are provided to customers when ordering online which increases online and in-app purchases versus in-store.
Online retailers have increased over the past few years, leaving in-store retailers needing to advance and expand their offerings to keep shoppers interested at in-store level. Uniqlo and TopShop are two examples of apparel retailers that have both online and physical locations for their customers to shop. To enhance in-store shopping appeal for consumers, both retailers provided similar innovations that have become increasingly popular for in-store retailers. AR features have been becoming an interesting used feature in-store to help persuade customers to continue shopping in-store versus online or through an app. TopShop introduced the popular in-store trend of AR mirrors that allow customers to try on articles of clothing and accessories without actually having to try them on in change rooms. Similarly, Uniqlo brought in mirrors that allow customers who try on items to view different colours of the items through the AR features. These AR features help solve the issue of customers not wanting to try on clothes for sizing, fit, and colours while in-store.
Social commerce is feature added to social media over the past few years that has become an increasingly popular way for consumers to shop and purchase products. Instagram is one of the top social media platforms for social commerce. Over the last few years it has brought in the feature where you can add links for each individual article of clothing, accessories, or beauty product. These links take you straight to the product online or even just provide the price right there to eliminate the consumer having to go search for it themselves. In your story, if you are a big enough influencer, you can add the “swipe up” option where it will take you directly to the site and the exact link for the product or service. Facebook, Twitter, and the popular social media platforms are offering the same sort of concepts through advertisements posted on their sites. These advertisements are, most of the time, linked to stuff you have previously research or looked at before.
Technology will continue to advance and expand with the fashion and beauty industry. At the end of the day, people have their personal preferences of how they shop which will sway their decision regardless of technological advances or not. My personal opinion is that most of the technological innovations in the fashion and beauty industry only enhance and benefit the shopping processes and outcomes for consumers. Along with easing the process of shopping, the technological aspects help the environmental concerns consumers have.
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