Digital twin technology in retail

According to McKinsey, 70% of C-suite technology executives at large enterprises are exploring and investing in digital twins. This interest has driven market estimates for digital-twin investments up to more than $48 billion by 2026. Let’s take a closer look at what digital twins are, how they benefit retailers, and how to create them with the 3DShot app.

What are digital twins and why do retailers need them

In a broad sense, a digital twin implies a virtual representation of a real-world physical product, system, or process that serves as an exact replica and digital counterpart for purposes of simulation, integration, testing, monitoring, and maintenance. Digital twins help brands optimize business processes and improve decision-making. For instance, a retailer can use a digital twin of a store’s layout to model different merchandising strategies, which will enhance customer experience. Similarly, a digital twin of a store’s inventory system can test different stocking and replenishment strategies, allowing retailers to identify the most effective approach.

A great example of how a brand can benefit from digital twins is Guess’s experience. The retailer uses digital twins to ensure brand consistency across its stores, creating virtual experiences for its employees, external buyers and wholesale partners. To ensure global brand consistency across stores, Guess captures a digital twin of its sample space with new layouts and displays and then shares it with store managers globally to replicate in-person. With immediate access to digital twins, retail associates can make merchandising updates on the fly and onboard new employees with 3D visuals that demonstrate brand guidelines and in-store layouts. Guess saw a 200% increase in productivity and a 30% decrease in team travel time, with the implementation of digital twins allowing for remote collaboration.

Digital twins of products also play an important role in retail. They provide a virtual visualization of an actual product which can be monitored, edited, and updated as the real physical product goes through different stages of its life cycle. Product digital twins allow retailers to improve the design, manufacturing, and support of products without incurring the costs and risks associated with implementing changes in the physical world. What’s more, they can reduce time-to-market and accelerate the organization’s response to new customer needs. McKinsey estimates that digital-twin technologies can accelerate time-to-market by as much as 50% and improve product quality by up to 25%.

How to create a digital twin with the 3DShot app

Cappasity has developed 3DShot, a mobile app for creating and embedding immersive product visualizations. 3D visualizations created with the app can help retailers improve team and workflow efficiency during all stages of the product development process. For instance, if you’ve made the first prototype of apparel and want to share it with your team, you can easily create a digital twin of this look with the 3DShot app. All you need to do is to launch the app on your smartphone, select a 3D shooting mode, and circle the model wearing the apparel. The app will instantly create its 3D visualization, which you can edit right in the app and then upload to your Cappasity account.

3D visualizations created with the 3DShot app allow your team to interact with products as they would offline: they can zoom in to estimate the quality and materials and change the angle of perception to check all the necessary details. Once the digital twin is uploaded to the Cappasity platform, you can share it with colleagues or embed it in PLM software, depending on where it needs to be reviewed.

If you get a prototype link from a colleague and want to leave feedback then you can create a 3D review. While commenting on the product, you’ll be able to interact with its 3D visualization like it’s a real item: show what details you want to redesign, rotate the item, enlarge it, etc. Watch the video to see it in action:

Thanks to digital twins, you’ll no longer need to wait for colleagues’ to become available and spend hours discussing feedback on a product. Moreover, if production and the head office are located in different places or countries, you don’t need to waste time and materials on creating many copies of a product, which will eventually need to be disposed of. There’s also no need to send it abroad and waste additional product packaging. All communication processes being digital helps to maintain sustainable production.

Download the app to create a digital twin: https://3dshot.io/

Contact our team at support@cappasity.com if you need any assistance.

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