TL;DR
Full Story
Remember all the hype around ‘phygital’ (digital/physical) products?
(It’d make sense if you’d forgotten — it’s been a hot minute since anyone talked about it).
But it’s something we’ve been quietly following for a while now.
Cause we ran a clothing brand for the better part of six years, and believe us when we tell you, we spent most of our time doing these two things:
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Trying to get folks to post photos of themselves wearing our stuff.
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Dealing with returns.
What does this have to do with ‘phygital’ technology?
First: incentivizing customers and influencers to post our clothes was a long, time-delayed process, which went often went something like this…
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Reach out to them with an incentive (discounts for customers, free clothes/payments for influencers)…wait…
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Send the items and follow up once the tracking said they’d arrived
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Follow up again
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Get the photos
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Post ’em
With phygital tech, a new, fully automated method is becoming plausible:
Collect emails → Put them into an automated drip sequence with an incentive → With a click of a button, the customer/influencer can take a photo, have AI overlay the clothing on them digitally, and collect their payment in crypto.
Then * ping * you get a notification on your phone saying you have new user-generated content to schedule.
And as for the returns issue, that’s way more simple:
If customers can reliably try on your items, checking for size, and pairing with their existing closet — you’re going to have customers that are much more certain of their purchase.
And if you’re wondering where our renewed excitement on the phygital space has come from — blame the team over at Myosin.
They just compiled a free research report that lays out the future being promised by phygital tech (covering things far, far beyond our selfish desires).
Want to read it? Say no more.
