PERCH
Reimagining the Physical Shopping Experience

A pleasant surprise awaited a woman who walked into Jo Malone to purchase a perfume. The moment she touched a bottle, the screen beside her sprung to life with a stunning animation of honey, cherry blossom and fig that she swears she could then smell in the fragrance itself. It suggested combining with another bottle and thrilled by the experience, she eventually purchased more than originally intended, and became a regular customer. Behind the woman’s delightful experience was the meticulous thinking of avant-gardist technocrats and entrepreneurs, Jared Schiffman and Trevor Sumner. “Shoppers touching a product are 40 percent more likely to buy it. If you get them to hold it for 30 seconds, they will pay 75 percent more,” remarks Sumner. Mr. Sumner is CEO of PERCH—a pioneering retail marketing technology platform— which unites digital content with physical products through mixed reality interactive displays that offer magical experiences that surprise and delight customers.

PERCH pioneered the art of replacing conventional display screens with digital displays that seamlessly fit into any retail environment and sense consumer behaviors. “Our interactive retail displays use 3D camera sensing technology to detect when customers approach, touch, or pick up a product, to launch a new digital experience,” mentions CTO and company founder, Jared Schiffman. Each unit contains embedded 4G Wi-Fi hotspot that simplifies the installation process to connect with PERCH’s cloud-based server, leaving no room for breach of personally identifiable information. Accompanying the camera and display is a robust campaign management system that simplifies the creation of rich media and interactive product campaigns that unlock product-level marketing in otherwise crowded retail environments where brands can easily get lost. Campaigns for new products can be created and deployed effortlessly, while the displays track every customer interaction and the ROI is tied to product sales lift. The solution has impressed even the sales associates, for it allows them to dedicate more time toward providing valuable insights to customers on different products, as opposed to explaining the basics.

With regard to deploying solutions, Sumner mentions that PERCH offers pre-fabricated display systems, but the majority of its business is embedding its technology into retailers’ existing display systems, irrespective of the dimensions, to enhance customer engagement. The magical experience enabled by PERCH has often translated into an increase in sales by 30 to 80 percent for several retailers, with customer engagement rates witnessing a five to ten-fold increase. Sumner mentions that PERCH’s clients receive close to 400 percent returns on investments in projects, thereby turning traditional cost centers into profit centers. PERCH has a network for deploying its solutions in over 20 countries across five continents, all managed flawlessly from the cloud.

PERCH’s path-breaking capabilities have been instrumental in scripting success stories for some of the biggest names in the retail space. In the instance of Neiman Marcus, the famed department store, PERCH enabled a scenario wherein customers could pick up a women’s shoes, following which an interactive screen would pull up information on the shoe, the brand, what to wear it with and of course videos on the runway— captivating shoppers with the luxurious brands and increasing sales by 40 percent. A similar lift on gifts was over 140 percent!

Moving forward, PERCH has an active role to play in the premier fashion design group Kate Spade’s innovative “Make It Mine” venture that allows customers to create multiple configurations of custom handbags. “Shoppers select a base purse to which straps and flaps of different colors and designs can be attached and interchanged, thereby boosting the sales of both straps and purses and giving customers up to ten or twenty bags in one,” explains Sumner. With exciting projects in the pipeline and capabilities to usher hitherto unexplored possibilities, PERCH is making rapid strides on the path to success and reimagining the retail experience at scale.