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Is interactive the next act for jewelers?

By Catherine Dayrit

October 27, 2009

At Thomas Michaels Designers in Camden, Maine, customers can use an iPod Touch connected to a flat-screen display to call up pieces for viewing.

Paris--Shoppers strolling along the Rue Saint-Honore in Paris encounter no shortage of distractions, with the bags of Longchamp, the runway-ready shoes of Giuseppe Zanotti and the chic threads of Gucci and Missoni just a few of the offerings on the boutique-centric boulevard.

And while each is tempting in its own way, a new display at the street's Chronopassion boutique might have shoppers actually stopping in their tracks.

Earlier this month, the watch store debuted a new window display dubbed the "Carousel," which features watches set into recessed spaces. By simply pressing a button labeled "touch to move," someone standing outside the store can spin the display to reveal, with each touch, a previously hidden array of watches within the display. While consumers don't even have to enter the store to view the watches, the show of wizardry might just tempt window shoppers anyway.

Designed by Switzerland-based design and development firm Dietlin, the display is also installed at the l'Heure Asch boutique in Geneva. It began as just one of many research and development projects at Dietlin.

Others include vitrines featuring liquid crystals that appear and disappear on the surface of the glass cases to display signage, as well as glassless displays that allow a customer to view a watch more closely. If one's fingers get too close to the merchandise, however, a motion detector kicks in and the timepiece swoops down into a compartment below.

Technologies such as these remain in the research and development phase, but they are all a sign of what is to come for the retail jewelry experience, experts say.

"It really is a whole different way of showing jewelry," says Artco Group's Mickey Minagorri, describing the interactive jewelry displays he has helped to implement at independent retail stores and watch brand doors alike.

Letting customers customize

As director of business development for Artco Group, the Miami-based store planning and design business, Minagorri has worked on a range of projects, including displays positioned for greater client interaction.

Artco Group recently finished a boutique for watch brand Philip Stein featuring touch screen computers that allow customers to select a watch model and style, manipulating the colors and materials used to produce a customized timepiece.

"Visually, it's a lot easier for the customer to see what they're buying," Minagorri says.

Even if the watch is already there in the store's inventory, using the touch screen is still a fun way for the customer to participate. Similar tactics are finding appeal and gaining momentum among other retailers.

"It means more options for the customer--and more sales," Minagorri says. "A lot of brands are using touch screens, so you can take watches and change the color of the face, the color of the band, so you can build your own watch, and you're not married to one style. And we're seeing the more cutting-edge, more progressive jewelers create an environment where they can work with a laptop and show the customer different options in wedding bands or with different custom jewelry features."

Beyond the showcases

The cost for such systems, especially at a time when remodeling isn't the highest priority for most retailers, might be daunting, but the latest wave of displays also serve as an opportunity to bring excitement into the retail environment. On a practical level, they are also a way to offer up a virtual inventory to free up space in showcases, as seen through Stuller's Virtual Showcase and Paragon Lake's custom programs, which help put customers behind the wheel in terms of design.

Being able to show customers more than what's in store has been something of a mission at Thomas Michaels Designers in its Camden, Maine, store. Thomas Michaels, the store's owner and namesake, is a third-generation jeweler, specializing in jewelry design. His grandfather, Herman Ross, designed for Georg Jensen, and his mother, Eunice Michaels, was an accomplished artist and designer herself.

Not content to let that rich history go unnoticed, Michaels began working last year to catapult his business smack dab into the digital age. He and his team designed everything in the store--from the showcases to the lighting down to the door handles. In the process, they also wired in 6,000 feet of cat5 Ethernet wire and 6,000 feet of cat6 for digital video signals.

What all that wiring has helped to run is a high-resolution graphics display screen, devised by Michaels' son, Roth Michaels, a digital music composer in the graduate program at Dartmouth. Customers can control what appears on the screen by using an iPod touch to scroll through and view various copyrighted designs that the retailer has created over the years.

"It's an informational kiosk, and we're also able to show photographs of pieces that are in progress because we do a lot of hand fabrication," Michaels says. "We're able to show more than what we have in the store because we have records of special-order pieces."

In addition to offering up images to peruse, the kiosk also displays text and serves as a resource for general information about gemstones and diamonds. Though only one station is currently installed, the store is wired for five.

The timing for the store redesign wasn't exactly ideal for the retailer, but the circumstances that made it so couldn't be foreseen.

"We started and committed right before Lehman Brothers fell over [in September 2008], and we continued our project through the horrific winter, but we've poised ourselves to be in a great position as things recover," says Michaels.

The traffic has already been well worth it, with Michaels saying the store has pulled in four-fold more customers since its reopening.

"What's interesting is that I wanted to impact the sidewalk and the street, which we're doing," he says.

The virtual try-on

Holition, a London-based company, is taking the idea of virtual inventory one step further, offering up an augmented reality tool that allows users to select a piece of jewelry online and then "try it on" in front of their own computer.

The way it works is that the software places a virtual 3D object onto a marker item, which the user is told to print out and cut into a given shape--that of a ring, for example. The user then puts the paper ring around his or her finger and points it at the computer's Web cam. The user will see her own hand on the screen and can select ring images that will show up right on her finger, in place of the paper ring.

Ace Jewelers Group, a family of three retail stores in Amsterdam, uses the Holition tool on its Web site, AceJewelers.com, where visitors can select one of three pave rings to try on virtually. If they like what they see, users can purchase the same pieces online or visit one of the retailer's brick-and-mortar stores.

In addition to online programs, Holition offers in-store kiosks that allow customers to do their own thing and try on various items alone before checking in with a sales associate for help. The company says the benefits include generating excitement and keeping the client's attention for a longer period of time, as well as reducing the costs of insurance, shipping and returns.

For images, jump to our 10X blog.

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