You Don’t Need a PTO to Visit J.Crew’s Beach House
J. Crew partnered with Obsess, a platform that has helped brands like Coach, Corona and Prada with their virtual stores, to open a virtual store in celebration of their 40th Anniversary.
J.Crew’s Virtual Beach House is an immersive 360-degree experience that celebrates the brand’s iconic heritage and longevity in the market. Consisting of six shoppable rooms and a boathouse, customers are able to enter into the world of J.Crew and explore, shop and learn.
Visitors can roam around the spaces created for them and see displays that provide deeper information. For example, customers can enter the Floral Room and shop for Made in Spain espadrilles, while learning about the shoes’s origins.
Shopping’s New Era
By doing a virtual shopping experiences, brands want to drive their customer’s curiosity. And J.Crew is no exception.
While living in a highly digital world, virtual shopping is still something we, as consumers, are not used to. However, hearing that one of your favorite or preferred brands to shop in is doing a virtual shop, ignites your curiosity and desire to know more about it.
And exactly that — curiosity and desire of knowledge — is what drove customers into J.Crew’s virtual shopping novel experience. Once they have their customers where they want — in their shop — it’s time to shine —or rather —it’s time for J.Crew to make you want to shop.
And how are they making their customers shop in a new format?
By creating different rooms within the Beach House, each one themed and different, to immerse the J.Crew customer into their world. The curated spaces make customers visually attracted to the displays.
By informing their customers about the craftsmanship and history of their products, J.Crew is looking to educate their customer to further the appreciation they have for the brand and their products.
By doing pop quizzes and a scavenger hunt game, they are furthering not only their engagement, but their sales. Creating a place where the main goal is to shop, doing it in a seamless and creative way, makes the customer less aware of the fact that they are shopping.
Powered by Virtual Shopping
Virtual shopping is something that brands have started to do more and more. While personally still being spectical about it, I think it’s a great way to integrate customers to like to shop in person into their online platforms. Virtual shopping is something that will become more and more common and we will one day not even have to visit a brick and mortar.
J.Crew certainly thinks so, as they followed up their Beach House with a holiday themed Snow Lodge and Ski Chalet for men’s and women’s apparel. Further Proving that not only are virtual shops here to stay, but they can generate engagement and sales for any brand.
