Swedish home improvement retailer Clas Ohlson is exploring this new way of engaging customers via smartphones and four smart digital displays at its experimental Lab Store in Stockholm.
The displays use customers’ smartphones to create a purchasing experience that can begin and can finish on the sidewalk, or alternatively in the store, with customers guided by in-store displays that communicate with their smartphone, showing promotional deals and the product catalogue.
The Lab Store demonstrates the potential for mobile devices, interactive displays and e-commerce to reshape the consumer retail experience in a way that’s helpful and convenient.
Ombori, a tech startup that bridges smartphones with digital displays, helped Clas Ohlson’s Lab Store create this new retail experience via the four smart displays, which are located at strategic points in the store and on the storefront.
Passersby on the street are flagged by the storefront display’s ‘wake up’ feature...
Clas Ohlson opened the Lab Store across several countries in Scandinavia to test out new ways to help customers solve home improvement problems, spanning lighting, kitchen appliances, and hardware tools. The Ombori smart display solution, dubbed Remote Display, is now integral to the future Clas Ohlson is testing out with customers.
“We see good opportunities to try out new digital solutions here,” said Fredrik Uhrbom, Clas Ohlson’s country manager for Sweden.
The Ombori Remote Display solution offers an answer to Sweden becoming a cashless society. Today, just 9 percent of Swedes use cash, according to Sweden's central bank, Riksbank. Card payments now dominate are used for payments over cash and e-commerce is reshaping how people shop.
