Gucci pioneers immersive retail experience initiative

21 Sep '11

5 min read

As part of its ongoing commitment to enhance its brand experiences across all of its consumer touch points, Gucci is pleased to announce the launch of a pioneering initiative - the Gucci Immersive Retail Experience - that will usher in a new era of consumer brand interaction in the retail environment.

Through groundbreaking in-store retail technologies exclusively developed for Gucci by OOOii, one of Hollywood's premiere technology design companies, that will be progressively introduced to Gucci's flagship stores around the world over the next two years, customers will have the opportunity to interact with the brand in new and highly engaging ways. The role of the Management Information Systems function will be fundamental in developing and implementing this strategic multi-channel approach, where Gucci's physical and online stores will be seamlessly integrated throughout the business.

Patrizio di Marco, Gucci's President and CEO, said: "This multi-year Immersive Retail Experience initiative underlines our belief in the growing importance of creating highly impactful and sharable brand experiences across all of Gucci's platforms and touch points by taking advantage of rapid advances in digital technology. The all round sensory experience that a customer will now feel when approaching and entering our Montenapoleone store will create an unprecedented level of engagement."

The Immersive Retail Experience initiative will go live for the first time in Gucci's newly-renovated Milan via Montenapoleone flagship store on Wednesday 21st September, 2011, the first day of Milan Fashion Week and the day when Gucci Creative Director Frida Giannini presents her Spring Summer 2012 Women's Collection.

The immersive display installation at the flagship includes almost fifty 45" and 50" Clarity Matrix LCD video wall displays from Planar Systems, tiled throughout the store. These ultra-thin, energy efficient, near-seamless LCD displays, together with OOOii's graphics engine create life-size interactive images - forming one of the most technologically-advanced retail environments in the world.

Commenting on the creative content opportunities presented by the Immersive Retail Experience Frida Giannini said, "As Creative Director this provides a wonderful new digital canvas upon which we can present incredibly rich and powerful content to inspire our customers."

The OOOii Real Time servers that have been developed to drive all of the displays have been designed to be massively scalable to allow for immersive experiences throughout the store. The technologies that are being installed not only allow ultra-high resolution 4k and 5k imagery to be displayed across the numerous high-resolution Planar displays, but in a second phase will also give a customer the ability to interact with the content in intuitive ways.

Pause, rewind and search for specific content by making simple hand gestures in front of thedisplays. Then, if a customer likes a certain product they will be able to receive an image on their mobile device allowing them to consult with friends and later send a notification to their usual sales assistant in order for an item to be reserved. The film Minority Report was the visualization of these natural interaction models. Gucci's Retail Immersive Experience initiative will represent the first actualization of some of these concepts.

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