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An Interactive Tech Menswear Shop Opens in London

The Dandy Lab wants to augment and personalize your retail experience with NFC readers and machine learning algorithms.

The Dandy Lab. Image courtesy The Dandy Lab

Technology permeates practically every aspect of our lives—whether we like it or not—but one area it isn't overt yet is in the clothing department. Shopping for new threads hasn't changed much as an experience since the earliest shops opened in the late 1800s. A new pop-up store in near London's Spitalfields market, however, wants to change that, specifically when it comes to menswear.

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Known as The Dandy Lab, its co-founders, Peter Jeun Ho Tsang and Julija Bainiaksina, come from fashion and textile backgrounds, and want to augment retail therapy with interactive technology. Focusing on menswear from British designers and brands—including Smyth & GibsonAlfie Douglas and Private White VC—and celebrating British crasftmanship, in addition to being at the front lines of utilizing this kind of tech in retail, and being a place where startups, from both the tech and fashion industries, can trial their designs and products, it's an opportunity for smaller companies who may have previously only sold their wares online to bring their products into a physical space.

By being a small store, they're able to be experimental, testing various technologies and peeking into what the future of retail might be. They're already working with University College London to analyze shoppers' behaviors through facial recognition, and recording the data to find out whether people enjoy the enhanced experience or not. All data is to be open-sourced.

On the walls of the shop are Interactive Display Units with embedded NFC readers. Products in the store each have their own NFC tag, and customers can scan a product to reveal information on a screen. The screen gives a backstory to the product, along with colors available, sizes, stock quantities, and customer reviews—merging online and offline retail experiences in one. The idea is to "give a person a better understanding about what he / she is buying."

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There is also something called a Snap Styling Wall, a collaboration with Snap Fashion. It enables you to take a garment off the shelf, hold it in front of a camera and software will analyze the color and search through their stock to show you other garments that are matching, complementary, clashing, and bold. So, if you're stumped when it comes to what to pair your trousers with, this will aid you. They also have lots of ideas about how the store might evolve by utilizing holographic tech or VR, for example.

Part of augmenting the experience is noting customer preferences, not only for what they buy, but how they like to be treated while in-store. You might hate it, for instance, when the minute you walk in, a sales assistant asks if you need help, when all you want to do is browse for yourself. These kinds of things will be noted so that the next time you come in, you'll be left in peace.

"By analyzing customers in-store behavior and patterns (similarly how Amazon does online only in a physical world) we will be able to provide a personalized service to our customers," The Dandy Lab explains to The Creators Project. "This will be done via combination of the in-store sensors and machine learning algorithms. Our main objective is to provide a truly exclusive and personalized customer service to every single person who comes to our shop."

Although it may sound a bit like this scene from Minority Report, it actually comes across more like a real desire to make shopping an inclusive and enjoyable experience, a bit like when people go to their favorite record stores (or used to, anyway) and the person behind the counter knows exactly what songs to pull for you.

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The Dandy Lab is based at 73 Brushfield Street, Old Spitalfields Market, London, E1 6AA, and opens 14th August for seven months.

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