For a textbook example of how to mesh the online and offline shopping experiences, keep an eye on Bombay Co.
The home furnishings retailer is evaluating a “shop by room” feature for its Web site that closely mirrors a new merchandising concept coming to all 500 stores next month. The in-store concept calls for 12 percent fewer sku’s, more upscale offerings and 8-by-12-foot accessorized room vignettes. Annual sales at the Fort Worth, Tex., retailer are $576 million.
“We are changing our [physical] store platform to focus on the room,” said Stacey Gross, Bombay’s director of Internet operations, during a presentation last week at the Internet Retailer conference in Chicago. “Customers will get strong design [stories] and ideas — a complete concept. They will be able to see how to put these products together.”
The retailer’s smallest stores will feature four rooms and its largest stores will have more than 20 room settings, Steve Woodward, Bombay’s senior vice president and general merchandise manager, told WWD ExecTech following the conference.
The Web site function Bombay is considering, which allows shoppers to visualize and manipulate furniture images within a virtual room setting, was demonstrated by Tom Beckwith, vice president of worldwide merchant services at Amazon Services, during the conference. Bombay’s Web sites are supported by e-commerce technology from Amazon Services, a subsidiary of Amazon.com.
Should Bombay decide to add the feature to its Web site, online shoppers could view product information and possibly even check inventory availability at specific brick-and-mortar stores all on one page, said Beckwith, who co-presented with Gross.
“The [online] shop-by-room feature correlates so beautifully with our new store concept,” said Gross. The Web site capability is driven by rich media solutions from Scene7 of Novato, Calif. Rich media technology enables consumers to interact with a Web site by moving images, enlarging them and rotating them for better product views. Gross noted that Bombay’s Web sites already use Scene7’s zoom technology, which enables shoppers to view fine product details through high-resolution images.
Consumers expect a consistent shopping experience from retailers regardless of which channel they are shopping, said Dan Hess, senior vice president of comScore Networks, a Reston, Va.-based consulting company. In a survey of nearly 900 consumers, he said, 97 percent of respondents said they expect to find the same products and policies in every shopping channel a retailer offers.