Snap is releasing AR devices for fashion retailers in its latest business push.

Snap, Snapchat’s parent company, has invested in AR for the better part of a decade, launching features like Lenses for Snapchat and more. Lens studio, the latter allowing artists and developers to build AR experiences. More than 250 million people engage with AR on Snapchat every day, the company says. More recently, however, Snap has expanded its AR approach to business. Instagram And Amazon They leaned in.

Over the past few years, Snap has allowed brands to build profiles on Snapchat, rolled out AR filters tied to brands’ products, and developed ways for users to shop within the app. It is found. Competency analysis (Company with approximate size technology) and Vertebral bone (a 3D product rendering company) and has built a creative studio that is a global brand. Arcadia. Now, Snap is offering retailers access to their own AR and AI tools on their own websites to help them boost sales and retain customers.

The goal is to be able to help retailers transform their consumer and consumer experience to solve some of the biggest challenges we hear from many of our enterprise retail customers, said Carolina Arguelles, AR Enterprises head of product strategy and brand marketing, told Modern Retail. “So, due to increased competition, challenges like cart abandonment…challenges like conversion…but most importantly, reducing returns, which continues to be a big challenge for retail. And finally, even continuing to help retailers become more loyal by enabling a variety of experiences for their consumers.

Snap is building its tools to appeal to smaller DTC companies as well as larger players. “We’re excited because we think it has incredible applications for different types of customers in the retail space,” said Arguelles.

How the Shopping Suite works

The “Shopping Suite”, ARES’ first offering, consists of several rooms that all customers can access for a standard start-up fee and additional fees. The first is “AR Try-On”, which allows consumers to “try on” items such as sunglasses and shirts by directly interacting with the filter or by uploading a photo of themselves. The second is the “3D Viewer”, which allows consumers to move the screen to view a product, such as shoes, from multiple angles. The third, “Fit & Sizing,” uses AI and returns data to suggest which clothing or shoe size would be best for a customer.

At the heart of all this is “Enterprise Manager,” a personalized backend that allows retailers to plug in their entire product catalog, product descriptions, size charts, and product images. Snap’s AR tools take those data points and use them to inform three other functions. For example, after a retailer uploads product information and photos of a particular bag, Snap can generate a 3D image of that bag and feed it into a “3D Viewer.” For “AR Try-On”, Snap can transfer photos of clothes to people of many body types, which avoids long photo shoots with many models.

Snap hopes that customers will be more likely to go through with a purchase if they can “try on” the item in different colors and styles, get a better idea of ​​what the product looks like in real life, and use personalized sizing recommendations. In this way, he hopes his “Shopping Suite” will help solve some major headaches for businesses.

AR has come a long way in the past few years. However, some tasks like AR testing can still be challenging. For clothing companies in particular, it can be difficult to make someone look like they’re wearing clothes rather than posing on a model.

Business-to-business approach

Several retailers, including American Eagle and Prada, have used Snap’s AR tools to allow customers to “try on” and purchase items such as sunglasses and sneakers. However, most of that process has, until now, been done within the Snapchat app. With ARES, retailers can build those tools into their own websites and product pages, giving them a little more control over the shopping experience and user insights.

While Snap is choosing to announce ARES and the Shopping Suite now, it has been working with multiple retailers over the past three to six months to test features, Argeles said. These include clothing company Princess Polly, eyewear retailer Goodr and cashmere brand Gobi Cashmere.

So far, Gooder has tested the “AR Try-On” tool and seen a 67% jump in mobile device users, according to Snap. At Princess Polly, shoppers who bought the recommended size from “Fit & Sizing” had a 24% lower return rate than those who didn’t use the technology.

Snap recognizes that AI and AR tools can be expensive, so it wants to make the technology more accessible to retailers, Arguelles said. Our focus is not just on what the technology can do and how we can do it in terms of the most quality in terms of looking the most realistic – but how is it the most effective thing for the retailer to incorporate? She explained.

The role of AR in shopping

Today, many retailers are starting to integrate AR into their websites, apps, and even their physical stores. Apple and Ikea have used AR to learn how their products will look in shoppers’ homes, and companies including Ray-Ban and Nike have turned to virtual testing to drive sales. Virtual fitting rooms have become more common in the last couple of years.

Jason Goldberg, Publius Group’s chief business strategy officer for Modern Retail, said he’s “bullish” on the use cases for AR, especially compared to the current use of VR and changing scenarios. “There are many practical use cases in AR for making shopping experiences better,” he said. “So I think it’s smart for Snap to lean toward practical things and sell to people who need it.”

At the same time, Goldberg said when it comes to competing with the likes of TikTok and Instagram, “it’s not clear how much this offering will help a traditional social platform.” “In the same way that people use Amazon Web Services to host their own websites, they don’t make more purchases on Amazon.”

On a macro level, though, Snap’s ARES program fits a larger trend of “providers white-labeling some of their capabilities and services to sell to other retailers,” Goldberg said. For example, Amazon offers AWS and Pay With Amazon, and Walmart has its own business technologies.

Kelly Pederson, America’s retail leader at PwC, told Modern Retail that retailers are interested in investing in AR, but many of them do not have the devices on hand. Instead, “they’re looking for other companies, maybe ones that have more technology in the technology field.”

Snap is confident that the ARES program will help retailers address major challenges while providing a better customer experience. Although Snap is launching “Shopping Suite” with apparel, footwear and eyewear verticals, it plans to expand into other areas such as jewelry, automobiles and home appliances. Outside of retail, Snap is eager to develop a suite of devices for sectors such as education, entertainment or travel, according to Argyles.