Brief:
- Avenue Stores, which operates the Avenue, Loralette and Cloudwalkers brands of women's apparel, is collaborating with social influencers on Instagram to showcase its looks and let shoppers buy items instantly from shoppable posts, the company announced in a press release. The brand's "Confidence Series" features women wearing Avenue clothing that viewers can buy without leaving the image-sharing app.
- Avenue also partnered with mobile commerce platform PredictSpring on a new app that was created in four weeks. The Android and iOS apps host omnichannel features that let shoppers order items to pick up at a nearby store.
- PredictSpring integrated the app with Salesforce Commerce Cloud to provide a seamless shopping experience, including a private label credit card. Existing Avenue Credit Card members qualify for the same online and in-store benefits, and can use the card for payments in the new app.
Insight:
While Avenue Stores is taking an omnichannel approach to its updated strategy, its focus on a mobile app and working with influencers emphasizes the importance of commerce features made specifically for today's on-the-go consumers. The shoppable posts integrate Facebook-owned Instagram, which has about 1 billion users worldwide, with orders delivered to Avenue's physical stores. By offering in-store pickup, the chain aims to drive foot traffic to stores, where customers may discover additional items to purchase and can directly interact with the brand and store associates.
Avenue Stores is quickly adopting new features Instagram made broadly available last month to let people more easily buy products that brands and social influencers show on the social app. Instagram expanded shopping in Stories, a feature that strings together multiple images in a single post, after first testing the service in June. Instagram's newest shopping features help to close the loop between product discovery and direct transactions among the app's more than 90 million users who tap specially tagged photos to see product information on shoppable posts, such as the new ones by Avenue Stores.
Retailers continue to experiment with creative ways to merge mobile technology with physical stores, such as high-tech stores powered by smartphones or the cashierless Amazon Go stores that are integrated with the company's app. Meanwhile, Walmart is testing a cashierless Sam's Club in downtown Dallas, complete with 700 cameras that work with the company's mobile Scan & Go app, per Dallas News.
