Rocket Eyewear eyes next-generation sales experiences with Delight
“What’s happening on Google Assistant and Alexa is fascinating. We wanted to create and curate the voice of our brand on these platforms. Delight is the perfect technology partner for all things voice.”
— Ming Ong, Founder of Rocket Eyewear
Rocket Eyewear began as a partnership of Ming and Shing, two Harvard-educated siblings based in Singapore.
Inspired by their mother who would lose her sunglasses in extraordinary places, from a church in Ethiopia to a chairlift in St. Moritz, Ming and Shing re-created the P3 — a classic, round frame worn by 1950s movie stars like Grace Kelly and James Dean.
Since then, Rocket Eyewear has carved a name of itself for eyewear fashionistas, with a vibrant online store, 19 retail locations and 10,000+ Instagram followers. The sunglasses retail at US$129 and $139, and are carried at some of the world’s most prestigious hotels and locations, including COMO Hotels and the Four Seasons in Bali and Maldives.
Dealing with Growth
In addition to luxury hotels and beach clubs, the company also operates in shared retail locations like Design Orchard. With rising success and an expanding retail network comes challenges. The majority of retail footprint are third-party locations, so staffing sales personnel is either impossible or unscalable.
In the offline retail sector where shoppers have no time to download an app or browse a website, Ming began to re-imagine what may be the most accessible way for shoppers to learn about his brand.
Staffing a virtual sales assistant at retail
Ming turned to Delight for solutions. Using Delight’s software solution, Rocket Eyewear created a virtual sales assistant that is universally accessible to shoppers with Google Assistant, Amazon Alexa or Samsung Bixby built into their phones.
When shoppers arrive at a supported retail location, they can be greeted with the appropriate signage and encouraged to talk to Rocket Eyewear. Shoppers can just say to their own phones:
“Hey Google / Alexa / Bixby, talk to Rocket Eyewear.”
Rocket Eyewear’s virtual sales assistant then wakes up ready to answer questions and share helpful information — from how Ming and Shing started the brand, the inspiration behind each sunglass collection, to other sales information like fit and sizing.
Ming killed two birds with one stone — not only could he scale sales assistance without adding staffing costs, but he was also engaging tech lovers on the latest voice platforms. However, Ming didn’t stop there.
Using Delight with Shopify for omnichannel retail
Like many merchants, Rocket Eyewear had built its online shop using Shopify. With the arrival of Facebook Shops, Ming began asking himself: “in addition to Facebook and Instagram, why can’t my shop be on all the other messaging and voice platforms too?”
Ming was able to achieve omnichannel retail with Delight. Outside of time spent setting up accounts, it took literally 5 minutes for his team to use Delight’s SaaS solution and re-create his Shopify store on all major messaging and voice platforms.
In addition to Rocket Eyewear’s web store, customers are now able to shop for sunglasses on messaging platforms like LINE and Telegram, as well as voice platforms like Google Assistant and Amazon Alexa.
Using texting or voice, shoppers browse, search and view Rocket Eyewear’s sunglasses collections and products pulled live from Shopify.
Delivering value
Using Delight’s software solutions, Rocket Eyewear managed to successfully:
- Scale sales assistance as retail footprint grows
- Save staffing and training costs
- Sell on more channels and reach more customers
- Provide automated customer support
- Create a new user experience
When asked why the company felt the urgency to adopt voice, Ming shared the following:
“Don’t you wish your business was already on Instagram in 2012? How many followers would you have now if you had joined early?
We want to be on voice assistants now because we see them as the big platforms of the future.”
— Ming Ong, Founder
Ming also reflected on his team’s integration experience. “Using Delight’s voice platform, our team did not have to hire machine learning scientists, coders or linguists. Creating voice apps became as easy as blogging and filling out a form,” said Ming. “We focused solely on creating the content and curating the story we wish to tell.”
With its sunglasses, Rocket Eyewear has helped many of its customers see the world in a different light. With a little assistance from Delight, Rocket Eyewear has clearly taken charge of how its brand voice should sound on the likes of Google Assistant and Alexa too.
