Kitchen & Bath Business - January 2017 - 20

Dealer Dish

Augmented and
Virtual Technology
-the New Realities
Increasing numbers of retailers are
taking a hard look at how to benefit
from both platforms
RETAILERS FIND IT HARD TO KNOW where
to successfully commit valuable marketing dollars, how to discern distractions from revenuegenerating objectives or which mavericks to follow who are succeeding at either. It's a bit like the
Wild West - where chaos is exacerbated by the
sheer volume of sophisticated startups entering
the market, the spend required in the mad dash by
incumbents to catch up and the disillusionment
that follows about where to focus resources. This
is all happening as two emerging technologies
are beginning to gain a lot of much-deserved attention in the retail space: augmented and virtual
reality (AR/VR).
Goldman Sachs' recent prediction that AR/
VR will be an $80-billion industry by 2025
(http://bit.ly/1U4yLRy), roughly the size of
the desktop market today, and TechCo's predictions at double that dollar figure in less time
(http://bit.ly/1P15i4P), are staggering.With VR's
360-degree surgical training capabilities, as well
as AR's facial recognition applications to dressing
room mirrors, AR/VR may touch every area of our
lives faster than the smart phone.
So what does that mean for kitchen and bath
retailers? We've spoken with Tom Connard, CEO
of 3D Source, to help us understand the power behind AR/VR and what kitchen and bath retailers
should be thinking about when it comes to their
potential returns for the future.

BY KATY A. GARRETT,
co-founder of Garrett Leclair
Consulting Group and the CEO
of Design Tech Summit and CMO
Connexionsoft.

GARRETT: What can you tell us about the potential of AR/VR in the kitchen
and bath space? How can showrooms use those to empower kitchen and bath
shoppers and shorten the sales cycle? What are some of the key considerations
kitchen and bath companies should factor into their final decision before deciding
to jump into AR/VR?
CONNARD: Once matured, I think AR/VR will have a huge impact on retail.
Being able to visualize a kitchen or bathroom and its function and use of space will
help answer questions clients have that are tough to solve and can end up in disappointment. For example, how big can I make my kitchen island without it feeling too
narrow to walk around? Smaller kitchens and bathrooms will be easier to visualize,
especially when VR hardware allows for a larger field of view. When the hardware
supports more photorealistic materials, there will be huge benefit in being able to
visualize more than just the layout and functionality but also the quality of the materials in the context of a client's unique layout.
With that said, I think it will be a few years before kitchen and bath brands see real
return from launching an AR/VR app. Having a VR "station" in a store also means
some real estate that is not showing your physical product. Given the time to fit and
orient to the hardware with some coaching, it can consume a good amount of time
that you could be selling. Those constraints also limit the total number of customers
who can use the technology in a given day. But even with that, AR/VR are becoming powerful tools with multiple uses, and investing early could lead to even greater
returns for brands once the market heats up.

It is true that consumers always gravitate toward convenience weighed
against trust, time and quality. With that in mind, AR/VR can help close
those trust gaps - making adoption and purchasing decisions barrier free and
the sales cycles short. Knowing consumers can make a spend with the option
to no longer enter a physical location and still have a great experience is the
core driver here when it comes to both realities. Everything a kitchen and
bath retailer thinks and does demands an understanding that their customers'
physical shopping experience and their digital one are the same. With the
Internet being considered in more places as a public right and utility, thinking
any other way would be unwise.
Kitchen/bath and home design, architecture, healthcare, manufacturing
and a host of other industries and channels are finding that they have an
expanding amount of influence over consumers when AR/VR are included
as an integral part of their customers' experience. Creative brands investing
in augmented and visual technologies today are closing trust gaps to speed
sales, bringing a new level of confidence back to purchasing. As a brand's
interaction with the world becomes more sophisticated and companies
understand the potential of engaging audiences with increased stickiness,
investments in AR/VR show a clear eye on the future for companies whose
hopes of substantial returns are the best proof of reality.


Kitchen & Bath Business / JANUARY 2017 / KBBONLINE.COM / The official publication of KBIS (KBIS.com)

http://www.bit.ly/1U4yLRy http://www.bit.ly/1P15i4P http://www.KBBONLINE.COM http://www.KBIS.com

Kitchen & Bath Business - January 2017

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Kitchen & Bath Business - January 2017