Fabindia Lets Shoppers Visualize Furniture in their Homes with Augmented Reality

A Case Study

Fabindia is India’s largest private platform for home and lifestyle products that are made from traditional techniques, skills, and hand-based processes. They are also one of India’s largest retail brands, with 235 stores in 91 cities.

Fabindia offers design solutions to create unique homes for its customers that serve as an extension of their personality. While the products are seeped in traditional techniques like hand block printing and weaving, the tools they use are modern and contemporary.

Summary

Prior to implementing Augment, the interior design studio team at Fabindia worked with customers by selecting furniture from catalogs and creating room layouts, but they faced the challenge of helping their clients visualize what their space would look like before they purchased the furniture. Fabindia wanted to work with its customers in innovative ways and needed the technology to do so.

Fabindia is an amalgamation of past and future, creating a unique solution for its customers.

The Challenge

In 2016, Fabindia added a service business by setting up interior design studios where they were able to display furniture out of a catalog, but in a brick and mortar space. This way, shoppers could use a physical or digital catalog while interacting with a designer to find solutions.

While the new service business helped Fabindia extend its impact, they wanted to better serve their new, young customers who are moving into their own apartments. One of the biggest challenges Fabindia faced was helping their clients visualize how the furniture would fit into their space before anything was purchased.

Fabindia researched technologies that would help customers get a better understanding of how their furniture would look and fit in their space.

They selected Augment and piloted the augmented reality technology with its first interior design studio in Delhi.

The Solution

Fabindia uses Augment in its interior design studios in two ways:

1. Interior designers at Fabindia studios consult with clients on site using augmented reality to show furniture that isn’t available on the showroom floor. Augment lets designers show clients any furniture option, regardless if it’s physically there or not.

2. Clients visualize furniture in their home that was recommended in the room layout created by their Fabindia interior designer. They’re able to see how their space will look and confirm that furniture will fit well before they make the purchase.

“With Augment, our interior design clients are more easily able to make their decision. The solution plays a role in converting the customer.”

- Sharika Bhan, Chief of Business, Home & Lifestyle

The Impact of Augmented Reality on Retail

Fabindia found that there was a lot of curiosity and interest from shoppers. After a client goes through the process with the augmented reality visualization component, there are positive reactions.

“They’re more confident in their decision making,” Bhan says. “In some cases, a client won’t think a piece of furniture could possibly fit in a particular room, but augmented reality helps them visualize it in the space.”

By the end of 2016 - 17, eight Fabindia interior design studios were using Augment. By the end of 2018, they plan on increasing their footprint to more than 20 studios with Augment.

Through its traditional, hand-crafted techniques and modern tools, Fabindia is an amalgamation of past and future, creating a unique solution for its customers.

Can Augmented Reality Benefit Your Shoppers?

Augmented reality is the segway for brands and retailers to create more meaningful and memorable shopping experiences with the goal of driving more informed buying decisions for consumers.

The future of retail lies in creating experiences that combine the convenience of online shopping with the tangible elements of shopping in-store. The primary challenge to online shopping is that shoppers fear purchasing the wrong item. Many of the sensory elements that customers use to make their purchasing decisions in-store are often lost when it comes to e-commerce. With online shopping, a customer cannot touch or feel an item, see how it works, or know how it will fit in their home. The loss of this interactivity and presence in the shopping experience leads to uncertain buyers and more abandoned carts.

Augmented reality is able to bridge the digital and physical. It is the technology that will differentiate retailers in the coming year.

68% spend more time at a retailer if they can shop with AR, according to Daymon Interactions.

Augmented reality in retail is in a place to springboard retailers over today’s hurdles. Although many brands believe that augmented reality is an innovation of the future, it’s providing business value right now. Innovation in e-commerce is quickly advancing, and augmented reality is in a position to bring a physical presence to online shopping.

Who we are

Augment is a venture-backed augmented reality software solution, keen on helping businesses merge our physical and virtual experiences.

Augment was founded in October 2011, currently headquartered in Paris (France) with commercial offices in New York City (USA) and Orlando (USA). Now, with more than 200 clients in 36 countries, Augment is a leader in the augmented reality space, revolutionizing the entire product life cycle.

Augmented reality is the segway for brands and retailers to create a more meaningful and memorable shopping experience by helping solve the burden of e-commerce through our full software suite and AR SDK.

For retail, Augment removes the guesswork by allowing customers to try the products in augmented reality at home before buying through their smartphones or tablets. Augment is in a position to bring a physical presence to the online shopping experience.

AR has always been anticipated to change the way people see the world around them, but it will also revolutionize the way we shop online. Augment is helping solve this pain point in retail through our AR SDK. The SDK is a software development kit that allows retailers to embed AR product visualization into their existing e-commerce and mobile commerce platforms.

Want to get the Augment SDK for your e-commerce app or site? Contact us today!

Learn More