| We found evidence of how Inescapable Data could change the way retailers do business in an experience as simple as buying a pair of shoes when we spoke to Charles Redepenning, president of Stride Rite International. Since 1927, shoe retailers have relied on the Brannock Device to find the right-sized shoe for you. (Yes, that is what that shiny, flat contraption that measures your foot length and width, and that you only see in shoe stores, is called.) Like the utility of a nail clipper, it is hard to improve much on the simple elegance of the Brannock Device. For the most part, it does a fine job. As we all know from sometimes painful experience, however, it does not do a perfect job. In fact, the Brannock Device is essentially optimized to match you to a shoe manufacturing process that cares only about length and width, as opposed to the actual pair of shoes you want to buy and wear. Redepenning is focused on what happens after a pair of shoes leaves the manufacturing facility: At Stride Rite, we take pride in the expert training we provide our salespeople. We are quite serious when we say that we want a child to leave the store with the best fitting shoe. Parents are increasingly concerned about problems brought on by poorly fitted shoes. We have tremendous loyalty among our buyers as a result of the personal attention to the shoe-fitting process. He believes in leveraging data to deliver a better, more personalize fit; improve sales speed; and simplify the re-order process for busy parents. To do so, Redepenning envisions a Brannock Device replacement that is better able to capture more metrics about the foot. In addition to width and length, it could capture other important metrics such as arch size, instep height and length, foot-waist length, calf circumference, and body height. Low-cost technology and components exist today that could instantly "image" a foot placed into a shallow box-like device (infrared, digital image capture, ultrasounda variety of technologies to completely map out the dimensions of the foot). Not all shoes are sensitive to all metricsa low-profile sneaker has no interest in upper-calf circumference, for instance. Yet, there is great potential utility in saving this data. Redepenning continues: When a parent brings a child in for a fitting, each child could be processed through some device that would be even simpler than the Brannock Device in that there are no mechanical adjustments. It would be wirelessly connected to the POS [point-of-sale] system and ultimately to [our] corporate systems. Look at all the useful data we could get: all the normal foot metrics, all the extended foot metrics such as foot-waist and arch height and calf circumference, but also the subject's weight; and we could ask and note age and sex...All shoe brands and styles are made slightly differently, which is why one size eight fits differently than another size eight in a different brand. Without even talking about changing the back-end manufacturing process, we can simply find the better-fitting shoe faster and bring out only those that we know will be acceptable to the customer. This data could then be fed back into our manufacturing suppliers. We could design new shoes based on these metrics. We could quite possibly decide that length and width are not the only manufacturing variables for some shoes, and we would definitely see a relationships with the other metrics that we wouldn't know otherwise, such as the discontinuous relationship of the arch height to foot width. This could revolutionize our operations as we would see geographic trends in sizes and shapes that we never would have seen before and inject that back into our manufacturing through to marketing. The actual retail-purchase experience could be better for parents, too. Upon the initial visit to the shoe store, a parent could be in and out faster than ever and with the perfect-fitting shoe. Now that the retailer has an accurate record of foot and body metrics, a parent could confidently re-order shoes from a shoe retailer's Web site (with the site perhaps presenting accurate pictures of the child wearing a chosen shoe, viewed from a variety of angles). Over time, data gathered from a large population sample would allow the shoe retailer to predict the perfect-fitting shoe even as the child grows older. Scaling of 1 Retail "personalization" is an increasing trend, especially in e-commerce, but also among the high-volume, brick-and-mortar retailers of more personal items such as clothing. A physical store cannot stock every conceivable shape, color, and size of a particular item such as slacks or shirts. However, we all truly appreciate a good-fitting pair of pants and a well-tailored shirt, and sometimes brand loyalty is made stronger if a consumer is able to find the right color shade with special stylistic features he or she is looking for. The bigger retailers with both real and online storefronts offer extreme customizations via the Web. Polo, Nike, and Lands End are among those sites that are attempting to offer consumers custom-tailored clothes, orderable from the comfort of the kitchen while in pajamas. On the Ralph Lauren Polo site, a buyer can choose the color of a jersey, details about the size, and the color of the embroidered logo. Lands End is far more extreme, and a series of Web pages ask questions not only about shirt size and in-seam length, but also shoe size, shoulder broadness, and thickness of forearms. All of this data, they claim, is compared against five million other measurements and will result in the most proper "mathematical model of your body." Inescapable Data at work! IBM has termed this new phenomenon the well curvean upside-down bell curve. At one extreme are products, such as hammers. We do not very much care about differentiating or customizing them. Instead, we want the most efficient way to purchase them (in terms of price mostly, but also convenience of purchase). On the other end, anything that expresses ourselves personally, such as clothing or cars or nearly anything expensive, we want a lot of control over. Dell conveniently builds PCs "to order" (at no additional cost). Car makers will custom make you a car (color, finish, options, and interior) at no extra cost. The trend now extends to fashion items. Experts are calling this new craze mass customization. This trend simply would not be possible without extreme interconnectivity of business systems and a reduction of direct labor to the custom order. |
Stride Rite could also allow its customers to use their measurement data to buy shoes from noncompeting retailers (for example, soccer cleats or ski boots). The database could be made available to public health groups that want to use the data to show trends in increased childhood obesity and the related effects on foot shape and posture as the child's body develops under the increasing weight. Stride Rite could also make its data available to pediatricians as part of an effort to monitor a child's overall health. (Pediatricians have argued for years that proper foot care is as essential as proper dental care.) If use of the new foot-measuring device grows, Stride Rite could allow competitors to use it and jointly share the data it collects. Why? As adoption of the technology increases, the cost of these devices to retailers falls. Using the data generated by the device, more manufacturers who supply shoes to Stride Rite could become more efficient, again reducing cost while producing better-fitting shoes. It is even possible that a mass-market version of the device embedded in the common bathroom scale will become available, wirelessly transmitting its data to your home health database, available to your doctor as well as your favorite shoe retailer. |
