American Eagle tries on interactive fitting rooms at flagship stores

Brief:

American Eagle Outfitters is testing a screen-powered service that helps in-store shoppers find additional clothing styles and sizes without leaving the fitting room. The interactive dressing rooms are available at its flagship stores in several cities including Boston, Las Vegas and San Francisco, per an announcement shared with Mobile Marketer.
The fitting rooms are equipped with an iOS-based device that shoppers use to scan items to receive product recommendations and view running cart totals. When a shopper requests an additional size or item, store employees receive a notification and personally deliver them to the fitting room. The kiosks also let shoppers email product information to themselves or to potential gift givers.
American Eagle partnered with Aila Technologies to develop the interactive fitting rooms, which the companies plan to demonstrate at NRF 2019 Retail's Big Show & Expo in New York next week. The retailer said it plans to roll out the interactive fitting room tech to more stores this year.

Insight:

American Eagle's interactive fitting rooms demonstrate one tech-powered way that retailers can improve a key pain point in shopping: finding the right styles and sizes without combing through endless racks and marching back and forth through a store. By integrating the screens into fitting rooms, store associates can more quickly assist shoppers for a better, more streamlined in-store experience. American Eagle also can use the kiosks to gather valuable data about consumer shopping habits to inform its customer service, inventory management and product development strategies.

The investment in technologies like interactive fitting rooms likely will appeal to the retailer's younger, tech-savvy shoppers who are more accustomed than older generations to combining digital tech with in-store experiences. American Eagle is teens' second favorite apparel brand behind Nike, according to a Piper Jaffray survey of 8,600 U.S. teens.

In June, top retailer H&M installed similar "Voice Interactive Mirrors" at its New York City flagship store in Times Square that "wake up" through facial recognition when someone looks at it long enough. The mirror also offers selfies, style advice and discounts for shoppers via QR codes. H&M's and American Eagle's tech-infused mirrors point to the emerging demand for digital in-store shopping assistants that can help with purchase decisions based on a user's selected style choice and price.

Meanwhile, American Eagle won't report its quarterly sales that includes the holiday shopping season until March. It had provided soft guidance for the holiday quarter when reporting Q3 2018 results that showed a 5% gain in sales to $1 billion, missing estimates by $20 million. Comparable-store sales climbed 8%, missing the consensus forecast for 8.4% growth, The Street reported.