Home furnishings retailers use iPads to sell online and on sales floor

This is Part 3 in a three-part series about the iPad and how tablet computing is changing the way the home accents industry does business. In Parts 1 and 2, which ran in the June and July issues of Home Accents Today, several manufacturers, sales reps and software developers discussed the catalog and presentation apps they’re using, and have developed, to enhance the wholesale sales, presentation and organization processes.

WHILE THE IPAD certainly has the potential to revolutionize the wholesale sales process, many analysts think it will be an even bigger game-changer for retailers.

N.Y.-based consulting firm Deloitte predicted in January that retailers will purchase and deploy more electronic tablets than any other industry this year, and that iPads and tablets will change how retailers transact business and interact with customers.

In May, a study conducted by Forrester Research for Shop.org revealed a growing number of retailers are experimenting with mobile and social initiatives – some that are paying immediate dividends and some that are still in the speculative phase.

"After spending the last few years learning how to capitalize on social media and new mobile technologies, one of retailers’ main focuses right now seems to be leveraging the tremendous popularity of tablet devices, such as the iPad," said Shop.org Head of Research Fiona Swerdlow.

"As sales channels continue to blur in retail, companies are creating mobile apps that make their brands seem current, entertaining or fun, while at the same time creating a unique opportunity to connect with more shoppers than ever before."

Similarly, presenters at the National Retail Federation’s retail innovation and marketing conference in March said the question is "not if you should act with regard to the iPad and other tablets, but how you should execute your tablet and mobile consumer experiences for maximum effectiveness."

Online: Encouraging more browsing
In a conference session called "The Skinny On Tablet Shopping: What Works for Retail Innovators," executives Chris Maliwat, VP of product management at Gilt Groupe, and Munjal Shah, director of product shopping at Google, discussed Gilt Groupe’s early arrival on the iPad landscape:

The Gilt Groupe team has created a fantastic and unique user experience for their iPad users, even moving away from their current website experience. With beautiful pages that feel more like an editorial magazine than category or product pages, the iPad experience is focused on optimization for touch with a smooth transition, as well as on the product images themselves.

Maliwat said Gilt Groupe’s order values are 30% higher on the iPad than its website or iPhone application, primarily driven by higher units per transaction. In addition to the obvious advantages – shoppers can zoom in to see product details, flip through virtual pages with the convenience offered by a portable tablet, and drag items to their shopping carts without leaving the page – Maliwat said Gilt Groupe’s members are also visiting the site for the editorial content and look-book "experience" it offers.

Because Gilt Groupe is a flash sales site (meaning it hosts sales for a limited amount of merchandise during a pre-defined window of time) the "experience" serves as an entertainment source during downtime, when the member isn’t shopping a sale. It has also become a competitive draw as the flash site sales arena heats up more each day with announcements of new startups and investor financing.

Gilt takes its editorial component so seriously, in fact, that in July the company tapped former Domino Editor at Large Tom Delavan to serve as editorial director for its growing Gilt Home category, which is offering about 30 sales a week from more than 400 home furnishings brands.

In a May New York Times article, "Tablet Apps With That Catalog Feel," writers Stephanie Clifford and Claire Cain Miller made the point that this new way of online shopping, for both flash sale sites and traditional online retailers, is more about "browsing" instead of search-engine price comparisons:

In the new apps, retailers edit their merchandise, focusing on just a few top items to appeal to shoppers who might be overwhelmed by the pages of search results they see on a computer. Because it is about presentation and selection rather than price, it gets the stores out of the low-price game that many are forced to play online, and back into being fashion arbiters.

San Francisco-based Padopolis has created Catalog Spree, an app that brings the digital catalogs of multiple retailers into one single downloadable application. Once they’ve downloaded the free app from the iTunes store, shoppers can make purchases from multiple retailers, save favorites, subscribe to new catalog releases and, perhaps most importantly, use a single keyword to visually highlight what they are looking for across multiple catalogs.

Catalog Spree uses a spotlighting display that highlights tagged pictures and matching text and a visual search function that allows shoppers to jump from one relevant page to the next through fast-swipe browsing. The company also touts its "instant" catalog loading capability and "seamless accelerated integration" with retailer websites and Facebook.

Catalog Spree launched in mid-April 2011 with retail catalogs from Dwellstudio, Serena & Lily, Tea Collection, Napastyle, Filson and Artful Home. Two months later, Catalog Spree had amassed 100,000 users and added catalogs from Sundance, Gump’s, Woolrich, Made in Washington Stores, Hammacher Schlemmer, Uno Alla Volta, Cooking Enthusiast and Wine Enthusiast, to name a few others.

Padopolis CEO Joaquin Ruiz said Catalog Spree receives more than a million page views a week and is currently among the 100 most downloaded apps (out of 90,000) from the iTunes store.

In the store: Creative connections, new tools

Chicago Tribune reporter Sandra Jones, in February, wrote about several retailers who were testing the "unique connecting opportunity" enabled by iPads and tablet computers, inside their stores, as mobile catalogs for browsing and purchasing inventory not available on store shelves; tools for shoppers to design, customize or personalize their own products; and video sources for customers to view retailers’ runway shows.

Earlier this year, Shopkeep.com announced the beta-release of the iPad Register, an iPad point-of-sale system, designed for retail shops. "Designed by a retailer for retailers," iPad Register prints receipts and pops a cash drawer like a standard register while allowing secure web access to all the store’s activity from anywhere. Sales are transmitted to the web-based back office where managers can watch sales in real time, manage inventory, run reports and export to Quickbooks – from anywhere.

FOR INTERIOR DESIGNERS, one of the most innovative apps may be a new virtual technology developed by four students at the University of Queensland in Australia.

The technology enables the user to project life-size outlines of furniture onto a floor plan, then view the arrangement in 3-D using an iPad. Moving the furniture around simply requires a wave of the hand.

Multimedia design student Stephanie Zylstra said the process involves using an iPod Touch, an iPad 2 and an infrared glove. "Once the user is finished arranging products in the space," Zylstra explained, "they are able to tap the ‘view in 3-D’ link on the iPod, thus replacing the images of furniture by specially generated augmented reality codes. The iPad is then employed, as users can point the camera of the iPad at the AR codes and, through a library called ARToolkit, see models of the relevant pieces of furniture."

The demo video can be viewed at: http://vimeo.com/25059985.

Parts 1 and 2 in this series may be read HERE.