Realtime "Likes" displayed on retailer's clothing hangers | Hacker News Reader

Realtime "Likes" displayed on retailer's clothing hangers

theverge.com

73 pointssmoody28 comments

I wonder if the logic behind this is straight-faced usage ("people will find it useful when shopping") or marketing ("this sets us apart - nobody will really care, but it will grab their attention").

I hope it's the latter, because the former would seem to me to be a hilarious case of trying to compete with etailers at their game, without realising what a flawed strategy that is. But I've met plenty of people I can imagine thinking it's a good idea, so unsure.

Either way, the geek in me loves what they've physically done.

One of the huge advantages of online shopping is the ability to see customer feedback as you browse. Backporting that to physical stores might not let them beat etailers at their game, but it might help close the gap.

That's one way to look at it, and maybe you're right, but the other side of the coin (and the one I'm leaning towards) is that this is an area where retailers cannot beat etailers, they should be focussing their time and money on USPs, aspects that beat online shopping, not aspects where they can become slightly less behind online shopping.

On the other hand, people who are put off by the idea that thousands of other people bought the same shirt aren't so likely to shop at chains like C&A anyway.

the former would seem to me to be a hilarious case of trying to compete with etailers at their game

You may be thinking of it wrong. Online has advantages, brick-and-mortar has advantages. If brick-and-mortar can start to take away some of the advantages of online, they can out-compete by virtue of their natural advantages.

The gamble being made here is that customers want to buy clothing that is popular.

I wonder if this might signal the exact opposite of what a shopper is looking for. Instead of clothing being an expression of unique individuality, he or she sees the huge number of people who have 'liked,' and possibly purchased the same item. Not that customers are normally fooled of course, but the volume of sales aren't usually brought to their attention so directly.

While carefully side-stepping an obvious joke about hipsters, if this was a problem careful analysing of stats could get around it, theoretically to a point of having dummy products shown to be hugely popular while items they want to sell artificially un-popular and therefore cool in their exclusivity.

Doesn't this also help customers who want to buy clothing that is less likely to be seen on other people?

Which requires the reference to the xkcd (If you're quick with a knife, you'll find the invisible hand is made of delicious invisible meat):

http://xkcd.com/958/

Well, from a women's perspective certainly in terms of mainstream shopping environments I would generalize that shoppers want to know that what they are buying conforms to the status quo. So, in the right environment a Like button could do very well to increase sales of certain items. Those who are comfortable buying on their own taste level will likely be turned off by a Like button or would be shopping in another kind of area, such as second hand or locally made. There are also things such as bras and underwear that are Liked because of how comfortable or effective they are: women definitely like to share this information.

That is the whole idea behind fashion. There is a big difference between fashion and style.

Great marketing for their Facebook page. How many people will have fun with this by finding the item on their phone and hitting like just to watch the counter go up?

They drive more people to their Facebook page to like something which will drive more people to the page and store.

Of course, of this happens, it'll be a short lived novelty. We'll see how much this helps afterwards.

I think this has quite a bit of utility for store operators as well as consumers, although I wonder how they deal with the problem of confirmation bias. Far from being gimmicky, this looks like the start of a trend to me.

Brazilian here... For now, not many people, as mobile internet doesn't have a lot of penetration here, unfortunately (about 20% last I heard) and even in areas where it does, the quality of the phones still isn't very good, with many people accessing the internet with the old feature phones instead of smartphones, and the (mostly android) smartphones are barely capable of running Angry Birds).

But it will grow a lot, with forecasts saying it will be about 60 to 70% by the end of 2014.

For now, mobile internet is somewhat restrict so showing some initiative in this area is good for the C&A brand, because it associates it with a feeling of status, which normally doesn't come when one is thinking about C&A. So good for them. I haven't seen the hangers in the stores yet but will check them out (and try to see the counter going up) soon.

My question is how effective will this be based on showing the number of likes alone? If you go to the store and see a string of numbers associated with each item on sale at what point does it lose its meaning? For example, I see one item over 1000 and one with just under 200. It's either liked five times more by a random sampling of socialtech-aware shoppers, or it's just a difference of 800 people from a group of 280,473 people (the number of likes on their FB page) which is less than insignificant. I'm sure at least a few people will start to get headaches as they try to manage what their "sweet spot" is for pants, jackets, shirts, etc. each.

Edit: I do think it's an interesting start, and at the very least I'm sure it will look good to marketing by encouraging more people to "like" what they buy– whether or not that leads to more buyers in the end I don't know.

Amazing, I'd never thought of a hanger as a display device - much less a haptic one. Other data sources can be added for the consumer, but the data gathered by the retail store could provide some amazing insights.

Aticle hijacked from

http://www.springwise.com/fashion_beauty/brazilian-fashion-r...

Is there any way for the hangers to detect what clothing is currently on them (e.g. RFID)? If not, how are they going to deal with the issue when clothing inevitably ends up on the wrong hanger, if at all?

The better question is, does it actually matter? If this is a marketing ploy then we can just assume that its an attention grabber. For all we know, it could be a PRNG that increments when it feels like it.

I went to iguatemi shopping in sao paulo to test this stuff, it it apparently work, there's no rocket science behind it, because, you're not allowed to take those pieces from the hanger since they are a simple "thermometer".

I had this idea, minus the FB angle, for restaurants. Imagine if the best dishes were somehow rated (like films on IMDB). I know everyone has their own taste but if I saw something I normally wouldn't order had '5 stars', I'd surely try it.

The downside of course is that it would more than likely bias people's attention towards negative reviews / low ratings. The low-tech solution could be to simply print the good ratings ("4/5 from customers since 2009", "Most liked on FB", etc...), but even that might still cause a few people to question the things that get no comment. That being said, I think it would be an excellent idea for restaurants with quick menu turnover, with seasonal dishes or a kitchen that likes to experiment.

Pretty sure there's a few startups that already do that. Lemme Google...

... ah, Foodspotting is the website, and Oink is a mobile app that does a similar thing.

Oink shutdown

Whether it's useful or not, it's a pretty cool idea, no? Bringing Facebook like counts into the "real world".

This seems like it would be much more useful on a product that you can't try out and examine in the store.

That's a good point. Where this would really be useful, is online stores ... wait

This is just begging to be gamed :)

Pink check lumberjack shirts are going to be the new rickroll.

I already feel that the world is a better place

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