How Selfridges Brings Virtual Mode to Stores | BoF Professional, News & Analysis

Over the next two weeks, visitors to the designer floors at the flagship Selfridges London will discover a portal to the virtual city. It’s next to the escalator, for anyone to see.

This space is a pop-up collaboration with Charli Cohen, a London physical and digital streetwear designer, and Yahoo Ryot Lab, a Yahoo content studio. Pokémon also lent its character to the project to celebrate its 25th anniversary. It’s mostly there, though, to encourage customers to explore Electricity/City, an immersive virtual environment that shoppers can access in-store by scanning a QR code or visiting online at home via special website. This collaboration also includes various products for sale, both physical and virtual.

This project is the latest example of how fashion companies and retailers are trying to bridge the gap between the real and digital worlds. Many brands anticipate a future where they will meet more of their customers in video games and other virtual environments.

At the same time, fashion is still primarily in the business of selling actual clothing to customers with physical bodies, mostly through shops made of ancient bricks and mortar. One solution is to create an experience that blends the two.

Selfridges, which is passionate about creating engaging in-store experiences, is now also looking for virtual experiences.

The whole theme of the project is to combine the physical and digital worlds, and offer clients the choice of buying digital or physical clothing, said Jeannie Lee, womenswear purchasing manager at Selfridges who pushed to make the project a reality. That’s where the world goes now, where you have the choice of where you want to experience it.

Welcome to Electricity/City

When BoF visited the pop-up, there were several clothes rails, a large backdrop printed in a dark cityscape style, and a mirror with Pikachu emblazoned on it. A screen at the booth offered visitors their first glimpse of the virtual world, and at another nearby booth was a QR code scanner that shoppers scanned to go to the Electric/City website. As you enter the digital world, you have the point of view of a person walking up the stairs and appearing in a bustling, rainy city center, complete with neon advertisements and shoppers carrying Selfridges bags.

In-store space is sparse, and interactivity between digital and physical can feel limited without help from store staff guiding customers through the experience. Sebastian Manes, director of purchasing and merchandising at Selfridges, said physical portions are a way to promote the digital experience, which is at the heart of the project. Lee added that Selfridges was first dive into this physical and virtual fusion and would learn from it.

Where collaboration comes alive is in Electric/City. Cohen, who designed it with Ben Thompson, head of partnerships for the Charli Cohen brand, said the goal was to build it like a video game, giving visitors the feeling that they are traveling and interacting with it.

Walk around the virtual city. Yahoo.

However, to keep it user-friendly, moving through virtual spaces happens via video fly-throughs that take you directly to different areas, rather than letting you wander. The target audience for this project are all Selfridges customers, especially those who may be less familiar with the immersive digital world. Cohen and Thompson also made sure the environment was accessible on mobile phones and in normal browser windows, without the need to register or use a headset.

Shopping is central to the experience. In addition to the products sold at Selfridges, there is a place in Electric/City where visitors can buy clothes from Pokemon bundles to have them delivered to their homes. The clothes that appear on the models in Electric/City also have their own digital layers.

When someone puts on one of the outfits, they scan a QR code and via Snapchat they can activate this lens where a Pikachu appears next to them in AR, Cohen said, referring to augmented reality, which overlays computer-generated elements in the real world. .

A separate collection of digital Charli Cohen clothing is available for sale within Electric/City. They are enabled by ReadyPlayerMe, which allows users to create digital avatars from selfies for use in over 300 compatible games and virtual spaces, such as VRChat. They are also AR ready. A shopper at Selfridges who purchases a digital item and creates an avatar can project it on their phone onto the center of the shop floor.

Avatar wearing Charli Cohen’s digital outfit on the shop floor at Selfridges. BF.

Creating Wow Moments

The pop-up in Selfridges and its expansion in Electric/City are another step in fashion’s quest to bridge the virtual and the physical. When Balenciaga and Fortnite launched their latest collaboration, it included real and digital outfits, as well as 3D billboards that appeared in major cities and within Fortnite. It features the same assets in both, creating continuity from game to real life.

Others have experimented with different ways. Gucci in 2019 started allowing shoppers to try on sneakers virtually using AR and introduced virtual sneakers for sale this year.

Letting users layer digital elements on themselves creates extraordinary moments, according to Sergey Arkhangelskiy, chief executive of Wanna, the technology partner behind Guccis digital footwear. The digital assets involved have to look quite realistic, even if the imagery itself is out of reality, like a pair of sneakers constantly on fire.

Anything that breaks the perception of realism, this wow moment, it destroys the magic, Arkhangelskiy said.

Anything that breaks the perception of realism, this wow moment, it destroys the magic.

Matthew Drinkwater, head of the Fashion Innovation Agency at the London College of Fashion, says different immersive experiences can trigger reactions that make shoppers feel more connected to a product or brand. But he adds that in order to engage certain communities, such as those around games, they need to feel authentic to work.

Until then, there have been many examples of forgotten tie-in brands being tried. It may not be enough, for example, to stream runway shows in the digital space and expect the community there to respond. Important brands spend time understanding the community or working with the people who do it, says Drinkwater.

The FIA ​​played a minor role in the Selfridges collaboration. It wasn’t a partner but helped Cohen with the motion capture used for the dancing model scene in Electric/City.

Upcoming mashups

The emergence of e-commerce is gradually changing the role of physical space in retail. Stores are increasingly serving as a media channel, a place for shoppers to connect with brands as well as serving as a sales outlet.

Lee said during the pandemic lockdown, when many shoppers were unable to visit stores, Selfridges started thinking about ways to create immersive online experiences. But this pop-up is the first of what may be a recurring in-store feature.

“We’re talking to Charli about making this a sustainable thing,” Lee said. Nothing has been confirmed, but they have considered creating a permanent space that Cohen can use for various projects, such as a gaming cafe, an NFT art exhibition, and anything else he might create.

Additional reporting by Tamison OConnor.

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