April 30, 2019

C&A

C&A is an international chain of fashion retail clothing stores and one of the most enduring and pioneering retail brands in global apparel. Each day they welcome over two million visitors to around 2000 stores across 21 countries in Europe, Brazil, Mexico and China.

For generations, C&A has successfully led the way in offering affordable clothes in the latest styles and fashion. They are committed to evolving the look and design of their stores with a welcoming, light and modern touch for a memorable experience every day. C&A brands include Angelo Litrico, Canda, Clockhouse, Here+There, Palomino, Rodeo (ski and snowboard clothes), Westbury, Yessica, Yessica Pure, and Your Sixth Sense.

The Industrious are a retail-focused Interactive Experience Agency based in California. Their designers, developers and strategists are reinventing how brands connect with their audiences. Everything they create is purpose-built and completely custom to the client, environment and objectives.

The Industrious specialise in brand-driven, tech-forward experiences that help clients create emotional connections with their audience in physical spaces. Their strategy for digital retail breaks down barriers for potential customers, inspiring participation and sparking conversation with a brand in a way that deepens their knowledge of a product and increases dwell time.

The Challenge

C&A wanted to create emotion-driving interactions that would attract a new audience to their 200+ New Store Concept locations and their additional 1600 outlets throughout Europe.  They were looking to give their customers a groundbreaking; innovative, digitally enhanced store experience.

They turned to The Industrious, the retail-focused interactive experience agency based in California, who partnered with Ngoar, the London headquartered creative technology agency delivering enterprise level software solutions.

The Industrious led on creative concept, ideation, design and development services, Ngoar focused on technology, build, QA and testing. The Industrious and Ngoar have partnered together on a range of exciting projects.

The Strategy

The strategy was to create a digitally enhanced store experience that would help change how people felt about shopping at C&A.

It was based on The Industrious’ well proven strategy for digital retail. This aims to break down barriers for potential customers, inspire participation and spark conversation with a brand in a way that deepens their knowledge of a product and increases dwell time.

The strategy was built on three main pillars:

  • To use tech-forward experiences to help C&A create emotional connections with their customers in store.
  • To incorporate new technologies and methods for engaging customers.
  • To create touch points at key stages of the customer journey in store to provide opportunities to generate excitement, help customers search for and find the fashion items they are looking for and want. Also to ensure that their shopping experience is as positive and memorable as possible.

The Results

The strategy was successfully implemented and an innovative digitally enhanced store experience was developed and delivered.

The digitally enhanced store experience consisted of a number of standout elements:

Window To The Worlds

A vibrant large format interactive display to attract users and passers-by encouraging them to interact and explore C&A’s world.

Get inspired to buy the latest looks – large format interaction with motion sensors.

 C&A Famous

Selfie amplification via Instagram. This enabled people to share the excitement of their experience and favourite fashion items with family and friends via social media.

Discover Digital @ C&A

In-window advertising to draw passers-by into the new C&A shopping experience.

Browse C&A

Fitting room and lounge experiences where shoppers scan garment barcodes to get helpful suggestions on additional garments they might like to complete the look. Users simply scanned the barcode of the product being sampled in the fitting room and other suggestions were displayed for consideration.

In the lounge, products could be explored without a barcode via an easy to use interface.

Complete your look with recommendations – 10,000 products in a scanner-enabled catalogue

Animated Kids Screen Game

There was also a fun animated kids game where children could dress cartoon characters in C&A clothes by interacting with a screen in-store using gestures.

Fun for the kids while you shop  – gesture based dressing-up game using C&A clothes.

 The project goals were threefold:

  1. To drive traffic of a new demographic into C&A stores. A demographic that expects instant gratification and digital enhancement of physical experiences.
  2. To change the perception of the C&A brand and its products for these new shoppers.
  3. To overcome SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) overload through inventory management and tracking at stores.

The project was delivered on time and on budget. The strategic aims and project goals were very successfully met.

‘Working in partnership with an agency as forward-thinking as The Industrious, on a project as groundbreaking as this, for a retail brand as renowned as C&A has been a privilege and a pleasure. Andy Austin, the CEO of The Industrious, is a genuine thought leader in his field and a true innovator in the space where retail customer experience meets digital technology. The team he has built around him in California is at the very top of their game so all of us at Ngoar are delighted to be collaborating with them. There is a great synergy between our agencies which we both hope to build on in the future.’- Peter Meadows, Founding Partner and MD, Ngoar.