Wordle

I saw this today on the FireWire blog today and thought it really interesting. The FireWire blog is well worth reading, by the way. Back to Wordle, it turns words into art - sort of! Well worth playing with. I would love to see a version

Here's one I created using the words from one of the page on my website....Have fun.

You will find it here: http://www.wordle.net/

Retail innovation

Here’s a business that it is intriguing. It sells T-shirts. Ok, so what’s so new about that I hear you ask! What makes it unique is that the T-shirts are designed by customers. The T-shirt designs are then voted on by customers and the winning designs are printed up. Customers then buy the T-shirts. They can even photograph themselves wearing the T-shirt and send it into the website for inclusion on their pages.

If you are really interested, you can even browse the designs by designer. The designer page contains a profile of the designer as well as links to his other designs. Thus, promoting browsing across the site and building an added dimension to the interaction. I think this appeals to the “story” aspect of the product.

And when you get your T-shirt, the label is printed onto the shirt itself with it’s title and the name of the designer. Again, promoting a depth to the product that would otherwise be missing. Does this count as user generated content? MMmmm

Here’s another cool idea that I liked. Little Miss Matched sells 3 single mismatched socks in a box. Yep, that’s right, 3 socks in a box. In fact, they have branched out and sell all sorts of mismatched stuff. Nothing for blokes though. They have franchises in the UK and have just won a big deal with Macy’s in the US as well as raising $17M in funding. I thought the mismatched tights were funny – although you could make up your own mismatched socks (just take one from two separate pairs), this was going to be hard to do with tights (unless they were made that way!).

And here’s another example... Nike has launched a service to enable consumers to design their own trainers based on pictures taken using a camera phone. The PhotoiD service encourages consumers to take a picture of any subject using their camera phone, which is then sent via MMS to a short code. A personalised picture of a trainer is sent back which features the predominant colours of the photo. The message comes with a unique code which can be entered into the Nike website to buy a...you guessed it – a pair of trainers.

Classic photos in Lego

Ever come across something and I think "I wish I thought of that!"?

Well, here is an example of a photographer taking classic photographs and re-staging them using Lego. Sounds a bit weird (which great ideas don't?), but it works extremely well. You can view the complete set on Flickr here: Lego

A wooden mirror

I saw this on a blog entry recently on FireWire and was intrigued my the idea. I still find it fascinating.

It works using a hidden camera and then moving motorised wooden tiles (sort of wooden "pixels") to reflect the light. What a really cool idea. The Utube video included on the blog above shows some close-ups towards the end of the clip where it becomes clear how it works.

What a really neat idea! A wooden mirror. Who'd have thought of that!

PC World: Have you ever heard of Multichannel Retailing?

I know they have, but I think they missed the point.

So what am I talking about? Well, love them or hate them, PC World is one of the most successful computer retailers in the UK. They even have a website.

Now one of the problems with selling on the web as a high street retailer, is how do you compete with the web pricing which is generally lower because of reduced overheads? PC World's solution is straightforward, offer web based prices online and allow customers to pick up the products in the store. Fantastic!

Now consider this, I needed to purchase an ADSL2+ router. By reserving it online and picking it up in the store I could save £30 on a £200 router. Not bad. Process works pretty well too and I reserved it and went into the store to pick it up. Well, while I was there I thought I would browse around and see what was new. Then, I realised that I could do with putting some extra RAM into one of my machines. They had it in stock and it was on the shelf. I was just about to pick it up and I thought "But I wonder how much cheaper this would be if I reserved it online and picked it up in the store?"

Mmm....using the browser on my mobile phone, I could see it was £5 cheaper (a 25% saving!). Quite a few keystrokes later, I managed to reserve it. Using such a small screen is a real challenge. As I stood in the store (still browsing memory), I was tapped on the shoulder and sales assistant said "Excuse me, can I just pick up one of these?". He reached over and picked up the memory card that I was interested in. Eh? What's going on here? I followed him back to his "Customer Service" counter. "Has a customer reserved that memory?" I asked. He nodded. "So, let me guess the customer's name!"

He was almost as impressed as me. And I saved £5 too!

Now, "Collect in Store" is a a great ideato drive customers from online world into the Store. It is great for transactional based sales, but absolutely hopeless for in-store browsing. In fact, the process which encourages customers into the Store, then actively disincentives them to browse when they are there!