TL;DR

• Phygital (digital/physical) tech has the potential to solve some painful real-world problems in online retail: user-generated content marketing and returns.

Full Story

Remember all the hype around ‘phygital’ (digital/physical) products?

(It’d make sense if you’d forgotten — it’s been a hot minute since anyone talked about it).

But it’s something we’ve been quietly following for a while now.

Cause we ran a clothing brand for the better part of six years, and believe us when we tell you, we spent most of our time doing these two things:

1. Trying to get folks to post photos of themselves wearing our stuff.

2. Dealing with returns.

What does this have to do with ‘phygital’ technology?

First: incentivizing customers and influencers to post our clothes was a long, time-delayed process, which went often went something like this…

• Reach out to them with an incentive (discounts for customers, free clothes/payments for influencers)…wait…

• Send the items and follow up once the tracking said they’d arrived

• Follow up again

• Get the photos

• Post ’em

With phygital tech, a new, fully automated method is becoming plausible:

Collect emails → Put them into an automated drip sequence with an incentive → With a click of a button, the customer/influencer can take a photo, have AI overlay the clothing on them digitally, and collect their payment in crypto.

Then * ping * you get a notification on your phone saying you have new user-generated content to schedule.

And as for the returns issue, that’s way more simple:

If customers can reliably try on your items, checking for size, and pairing with their existing closet — you’re going to have customers that are much more certain of their purchase.

And if you’re wondering where our renewed excitement on the phygital space has come from — blame the team over at Myosin.

They just compiled a free research report that lays out the future being promised by phygital tech (covering things far, far beyond our selfish desires).

Want to read it? Say no more.