Get With the Times, Retail

I am completely drawn to Swipe bookstore on Richmond Street in Toronto. They sell books on design, architecture, marketing and other creative disciplines. It has a magnetic hold over me, yet the magnet seems to not disable my credit card for some reason.

I was there yesterday with Tom Crawford. He has a device called an “iPhone” made by a company called “Apple.” Tom spied a book that looked interesting to him, took out his iPhone and started to take a picture of it. Before he could release the shutter, one of the store employees practically leaped out from behind the counter and briskly came over to Tom and asked “is there something I can help you with?”, which was clearly a euphemism for “put away your damn phone and stop taking pictures.” Her explanation was that no retail stores would permit someone to take pictures within a retail environment, presumably for competitive reasons.

That’s Retail 1.0. Get with the times, Retail.

Here is what Tom was doing: Tom was using his iPhone and an application called SnapTell to photograph the book cover and use that information to search the internet for reviews of the book. It was a fairly specialized book on infographics and diagrams so there is a good chance that he might recognize one of the reviewers and be able to make a more informed decision as to whether or not to get the book. Granted, Tom’s query also returned price comparisons from many other retailers and Swipe wasn’t the cheapest. Tom didn’t get the book.

The point is that with cool image recognition technology like SnapTell (and the equivalent for audio, Shazam), combined with ubiquitous computing and internet (see the TED talk by Pranav Mistry), shoppers will be armed with a lot more information with which to make decisions. Shoppers’ social networks will be constantly over their shoulder in the store offering advice and retailers better be prepared to be a valuable part of the real time conversation.