Supply Chain Management

I could get a quick view of things as I rolled the mouse pointer over items. Some sites even presented a “how to wear” section which had models displaying the latest styles. You could choose a look to see the details of various items. Some other sites provided a mix and match feature where you could drag a trouser and a sweatshirt to see how they paired up. This to me was new from the age old “new arrivals”, “outer wear”, “polos”, “sweaters”, “Jeans” et cetera sections. On choosing those you could only see a page full of thumbnails, you had to then click on the ones to see the cost, zoomed in view and such. I liked the newness which had more emphasis on the user experience, visual experience, to be more precise. I found myself spending more time on the sites that provided such interesting features and I guess I can safely say that it translates to more sales.

This brings me to the point that that’s what WWW is all about. The VISUAL EXPREIENCE! Wouldn’t it be cool to have a profile of your kitchen visually illustrated on potterybarn.com so you can see if a centre piece fits into your kitchen? How cool would it be if you could save your emoticon on puma.com to see how cool you look with a pair of their latest Ferrari sneakers? How about specifying your skin tone so you can try different shades on Revlon.com (Ladies I have got you covered)? You could have a pre release sneak peak if you are a privileged customer and perhaps receive a tweet about the pre release sneak peak. You could perhaps import your Oscardelarenta.com profile into Tiffany.com to see if the jewelry you are planning on buying goes with the gown you are planning on buying while it plays the tracks you would like. Well, you get the point.

There is tremendous potential in this old but new concept. This offers a new arena for service providers to create business cases based on “VISUALIZATION” particularly for the customers in your retail portfolio. There surely is some ground work that must fall in place to quantify the benefits of visual experience. Then, one must choose the right customers to pitch the idea.

Even Einstein – the greatest physicist ever, agreed to this! He said “If you cannot represent your idea in simple diagrams then it is not worth it”. So he visualized. The two diagrams he unleashed upon mankind changed the face of evolution.

So can you visualize the visualization? The sooner the better!! No?