Local streetwear retailer, General Pants Co, is preparing to rollout version 2.0 of its kiosks, beginning in March 2015. The kiosks were initially trialled in 10 key stores across NSW in November last year. Displayed on iPads, the interactive kiosks fuse music, fashion, and social media, and blur the lines between online and offline retail. The kiosks give customers the ability to share photos of themselves wearing items they’re considering buying with other users for real time opinions
s, request songs they want to hear played instore, and browse through latest looks and trends.
Craig King, CEO of General Pants, told Inside Retail PREMIUM version 2.0 will expand on the areas that were most successful in the initial trial.
“Customers loved the photography aspect, so version 2.0 will include an option to upload photos and incorporate more commentary so they can leave comments.
“They love the jukebox and they’re putting up a lot of tracks. They’re also sending a lot of images to their phones and purchasing looks later, so we’re just trying to expand on some of those areas,” said King.
“These kinds of things you set up, measure and adjust, measure and adjust, and just keep tweaking them,” he said.
Also in the pipeline for the homegrown retailer is talk of heading abroad.
“We’ve got medium to long term plans to open overseas in Asia and the west coast of America, but they are really early and there’s certainly nothing locked away – right now they’re just conversations,” said King.
Locally General Pants is edging its way towards 50 stores in Australia, with new stores opening in Sydney’s Macquarie Centre next week, Miranda in November; and Western Australia’s Joondalup in February.
King says the brand is always looking for new opportunities and plans to have up to 65 stores over the next couple of years.
“We’re happy with the way things are trading and if we can open stores and make them successful then we will,” he said.
The brand, which prides itself on “disrupting the average”, demonstrated this last month, with a swimwear launch that pushed boundaries, sending models wearing GoPros down a runway, which was actually a giant 50m waterslide.
“Sales have been far beyond expectation, several styles sold out in the first week, and several more will be gone by the end of this week,” said King.
