Hot Topic: See Now, Buy Now

As 2016 Paris fashion week draws to a close this weekend, we have been discussing a hot topic of interest here at Smartzer. This is the ‘Shop Now, Buy Now’ concept that some of the world’s biggest fashion giants adopted for their runway shows this season.

Business of Fashion and Fashionista are a few of the online articles providing commentary around the subject. Last week, they began reporting on the initial responses and results to the practice of ‘See Now, Buy Now’ on the runway. Considered an “experiment” for the fashion industry, the idea behind ‘See Now, Buy Now’ enables consumers to purchase the product that was shown on the runway as soon as the show is over. This could be from the brands ecommerce site or their physical stores. It was quite a surprise both within the industry, and for fashion followers, to hear that these iconic fashion houses were doing away with the traditional six-month lead time for their fashion shows. Especially when it has been such a staple of every fashion week across the globe.

At NYFW, Tommy Hilfiger and Ralph Lauren were the first of the S/S 2017 season to implement this experimentation on their highly anticipated shows. During LFW, Burberry also enabled their customers to purchase their product straight after the show.

Also considered as the ‘runway to retail’ model, everybody within the industry has seemingly had an opinion on the matter. It is an exciting prospect to see classic brands like Hilfiger and Burberry making their shows more accessible by adopting this shoppable video business model. The slow release of products 4-6 months after the show is losing its appeal for customers and creative directors. The shake up is a fresh and encouraging step towards innovation and change.

The age of waiting for product, is slowly dying out. For the most part, consumers want product as soon as they see it. So much content is consumed and given to internet users whenever and wherever they want it. There is an air of excitement around purchasing product you want as soon as you can, which is what fashion week designers are trying to cash in on.

For example, Business of Fashion reported that Tom Ford saw his biggest day of the year so far after his NYFW show. They believe this may be due the audience’s response to viewing the whole collection and feeling that the opportunity was too good to miss. Similarly, Burberry saw an instant uplift in sales on the day of their runway show. Delivering the product to the consumer straight away produces a sense of immediacy for the customer. Brands are successfully capitalising on this sensation.

Making it easier and quicker to supply products to consumers is the future of e-commerce and something we support with our interactive content marketing technology. As the fashion landscape transforms, many key brands are seen to be revolutionising the way they sell there products. Soon, all retailers big and small will be able to make their content immediately shoppable through interaction video.

There is still a long way to go before all brands are making all content clickable, but the ‘See Now, Buy Now’ movement is definitely a step in the right direction.

You can view the runway video that we made shoppable for Burberry on the My Theresa website HERE.

We are really interested in hearing your thoughts on the topic, so feel free to email us or get in touch on Twitter @smartzer.

My Theresa x Burberry shoppable runway show

This week we went live with an extremely exciting project that we have had to keep under wraps for a while. Monday night saw the start of the S/S 2017 Burberry runway show at the beautiful Maker's House building in Soho. Smartzer partnered with womenswear e-commerce site My Theresa to make the Burberry runway show video entirely shoppable on the iconic British brands own page of the luxury Womenswear website.

We applied our video technology to add an interactive functionality, which enables customers to shop directly from the Burberry runway. A hover effect appears on each look that the viewer can click to show a pop-up displaying each product within the look with the option to purchase. Clicking on ‘Shop Now’ will take the customer to the relevant product page on My Theresa where they can continue the transaction.

Burberry is a key brand seeking to bridge the gap between fashion and technology and stay on top of digital innovations. We are pleased to have had the opportunity to apply our interactive video platform to their latest digital runway show. There was a significant amount of press surrounding the fashion brand before LFW had even begun, due to their “see now, buy now” decision regarding their products. This is a move that other designers are making and heralds a new, exciting change for fashion week.

"See now, Buy now" means that all of the modelled runway looks were available for immediate purchase after the show. As a result, customers no longer need to wait for the looks to reach the stores or sites. The shoppable, interactive video element creates more engaging content, encouraging exploration of the SS 2017 collection. The luxury brand is currently one of the most anticipated shows of every LFW. We are sure that this collaboration between runway and streaming commerce will excite fashion fans.

The interactive experience can be found and explored on the My Theresa website. We are extremely proud and pleased with the outcome of this project, so do please leave any feedback or tweet us @smartzer.

Joshua Kane A/W Campaign

It’s been a very exciting week here at Smartzer as we went live on our second collaboration with menswear designer Joshua Kane. After working together on his A/W 2016 runway show, we have now applied our technology to the A/W 2016 campaign video, in which Joshua Kane is showcasing his latest menswear collection as well as debuting womenswear for the first time.

The interactive video itself is a slow motion piece so the tech works really well with the content. The cursor gives users the opportunity to ‘explore’ the product on screen and then presents a pop up with the relevant info, images, and of course the option to shop. The interactive video platform offers a combination of single product pop ups, as well as group ones which feature numerous products so that the user can be shown all of the merchandise on the screen.