DAYTON, Ohio, Jan. 14, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Bringing immersive design experiences to the retail market, STRATACACHE today announced it will debut virtual reality (VR) shopping, created by Scala Professional Services integrating the NVIDIA Holodeck™ immersive VR environment, at the National Retail Federation's (NRF) Big Show & EXPO. Demonstrations will take place in booth #3921 at NRF, which is being held at the Jacob Javits Center in New York, January 13-15.
NVIDIA Holodeck is a VR platform that brings people together to build and explore creations in a highly realistic, collaborative and physically simulated VR environment. STRATACACHE's shopping experience leverages NVIDIA Holodeck to enable retailers to bring hands-on design experiences to flagship stores, all in a hyper-realistic virtual environment. Using a combination of virtual reality hardware and digital signage, retailers can deliver a white-glove experience of a high-end purchase, allowing the shopper to work with the collective expertise of multiple designers, no matter their location. The experience itself, as well as its components, can be scaled for multiple brick-and-mortar locations, and the inclusion of large-format displays attract and engage additional shoppers in the store.
"We're reaching beyond the horizon of which technologies retailers can use to draw shoppers into, while adding relevancy and value to, the brick-and-mortar store. "A key element of bringing tech-driven innovation to retail is flexibility in the offering — tiered software/hardware solutions and scalability, ranging from entry-level to high-end features — and we're equipped to advise retailers on all aspects of the optimal solution to transform customer experience." Our technologists' combined innovations will help drive the retail experience for customers, as well as business strategy and profitability for retailers," said Chris Riegel, CEO of STRATACACHE.
"Whether for design or purchasing decisions, immersive VR is being successfully adopted by many industries," said David Weinstein, Director of Virtual Reality at NVIDIA. "By incorporating NVIDIA Holodeck's collaborative and photo-real environment into their solution, STRATACACHE will enable retailers to personalize the customer experience while improving operations."
At STRATACACHE's in-booth emerging technology theater at the NRF Big Show, Scala's Professional Services team will give live demonstrations of the features of NVIDIA Holodeck with multi-user, real-time, collaborative VR. The demonstrations, being run continually through the day, highlight use cases and tooling specific to digital signage involving retail, internal workflows for pre-visualization, sales engagement possibilities, concepts and ideas for flagship enterprise-level immersive interactive experiences. Each session will be followed by a round of Q&A.
STRATACACHE has identified four key elements this experience brings to retail:
Pre-visualization for digital retail engagements: An immersive walkthrough provides a nuanced experience to clients as we engage and build out retail solutions. The environment allows for an acutely enhanced grasp on design aspects before final physical installation, such as scale, positioning and impact. Design iterations and corrections can be implemented and tested more often and more deeply, aligning with agile workflows and best practices.
Sales engagement: The tool gives us the ability to provide prospective clients with tangible, extensive real-world examples of our retail digital expertise and solutions — this eliminates considerable travel time, cost and scheduling restrictions, while optimizing design conversations.
Scalable interactive experience: The experience is flexible to fit the design requirements of any store or brand, scalable from a single kiosk equipped with a single headset, all the way up to a state-of-the-art VR theater, headsets and digital signage experience. The high-end experience can include deeply immersive 3D environments and elements such as remote multi-user, voice, chat and customized controllers and motion tracking, with outward facing displays attracting the attention of other customers, allowing them to follow along and see the power of the design experience.
Enhanced data visualization: Data such as floorplans, shopper metrics and store overviews can be analyzed and then visualized in a more engaging, easier to digest 3D format, providing an impactful and realistic review process. For example, a traditional 2D heatmap of foot traffic flowing through a store, could be visualized more deeply in 3D through VR, by inserting it directly over a floor plan, right alongside a more tangible representation of the actual architecture and inventory layout for a given location. Adjustments and physical measurements can be made and tailored alongside the data to discuss, test and determine possible design changes or enhancements which may positive effect store flow.
The experience design and professional services lead is Robert Hall, Scala Director of Virtual Experiences. "As the capabilities and level of realism in VR continues to mature, it's incredibly exciting to envision all the possibilities for enhancing the speed, agility and precision in collaborative workflows across numerous verticals," said Hall.
About STRATACACHE
STRATACACHE provides scalable customer experiences, empowering retailers to learn deeply about their customers' shopping preferences and behaviors, allowing for personalized shopper interaction. Our solutions deliver consumer activation at the point-of-decision, generating new sales opportunities and enhanced retail profitability. With 2 million+ software activations globally, we power the biggest digital networks for the world's largest brands. Across the STRATACACHE family of complementary digital media/ad tech solution companies, we have the technology, expertise and track record to bring retail innovation that delivers results. Learn more about the STRATACACHE family at www.stratacache.com, on Twitter @STRATACACHE or on Facebook.
SOURCE STRATACACHE
