Nearly a year ago, Lowe’s entered the metaverse, with digital assets and NFTs. Now, according to their Innovation Labs website, Lowe’s is testing new augmented reality (AR) technologies to help support the efforts of their store associates.
Lowe’s Store Digital Twin project is described as giving associates superpowers to better serve customers.
Lowe’s is leveraging Nvidia Omniverse technology, and created an industry-first interactive replica of Lowe’s stores that showcases a future in which AI and XR are part of their associates’ daily lives.
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The are building toward a future in which their associates can visualize and interact with nearly all of a store’s digital data, thanks to the digital twin.
The digital twin stores fuse spatial data with product location, historical information, and data from advanced in-store sensors.
This technology is currently live in two [Lowe’s] stores, where their associates can not only visualize and interface with a Lowe’s store in 3D, but can interact with nearly all of a store’s data in new ways, across a range of devices.
Visuals show associates wearing Magic Leap 2 augmented reality headsets. The interactivity enabled by the digital store and AR tech “opens up numerous possibilities for Lowe’s associates.”
Lowe’s gives an example where the AR headsets allow associates to “see a hologram of the digital twin overlaid atop the physical store in augmented reality. This can help an associate compare what a store shelf should look like versus what it actually looks like, and make sure it’s stocked with the right products in the right configurations.”
The AR headsets will also provide a non-literal “X-Ray Vision” where associates can “view information on obscured items on hard-to-reach shelves.” In other words, they can view information without having to climb a ladder to read or peek inside a cardboard carton.
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With an AR headset and the digital twin, the associate could look up at a partially obscured cardboard box from ground level, and, thanks to computer vision and Lowe’s inventory application programming interfaces (APIs), determine and view its contents via an AR overlay.
Lowe’s says the tech allows allows for store visualizations and optimization.
Just as e-commerce sites gather analytics to optimize the customer shopping experience online, the digital twin enables new ways of viewing sales performance and customer traffic data to optimize the in-store experience using 3D heatmaps and distance measurements of items frequently bought together.
The tech also allows for simulations, where they can use historical order and product location data with “AI avatars to simulate how far customers or associates might need to walk to pick up items often bought together.”
Nvidia’s promo video advertises that their collaboration with Lowe’s is “reinventing retail.” The video presents a brief and interesting technical overview:
There’s a lot of power in this type of technology, and it will be interesting to see if Lowe’s expands the Store Digital Twin concept to more stores.
There’s also the question as to whether any of this will eventually benefit Lowe’s store associates or customers in significant ways.
Jared
I know it’s a marketing professional’s job to explain things in the most positive and exciting way possible, but when they start talking about “superpowers” and “showcasing the future”, my eyes start to roll.
It’s hard for me to imagine why an associate needs to virtually ascend a shelf to read a box in 3D – if they have the information to display onto it’s VR representation, surely it would be easier to just have the same information in a normal format – a product listing perhaps?
Arranging inventory makes a bit more sense, though even then I’m suspicious about how much that helps. The associate can tell if a product display in reality matches its 3D rendering, but they can’t X-ray reality the way they can in VR – they would still need to manually count to verify the numbers match for inventory purposes.
Simulations for the purpose of optimization – maybe. Is optimization done visually like that now? It’s not like store layout isn’t the subject of optimization already.
I guess my overall point is that this sounds like trying to find an application for a new technology rather than a result of problems prompting innovative solutions. Maybe I just didn’t drink enough coffee today.
Stuart
Home Depot and Lowe’s usually have boxes with only SKUs on the outwards-facing side of a box.
Let’s say I’m looking for fittings that aren’t on the shelf, or want to pick up a new product that doesn’t yet have a spot on the shelf/pegs. Having to find the right box might require scanning through dozens of boxes.
I usually try my best to locate a box before I find an associate to get it down. When I can’t an associate follows their scanner through the store trying to track down where someone else marked the overhead location. being able to see visual representations of what’s in those boxes might help a lot – in theory. In practice? I suppose that’s why they need to test things at 2 stores.
My Home Depot store takes days to get their holiday displays up. It seems that a holographic or AR-style overlay would definitely cut down on the manhours involved there.
Maybe there are more practical benefits, but this seems like the kind of thing that needs to be explored with testing rather than in an office setting.
Jared
That’s fair. I wasn’t thinking of the boxes of fittings. Seems like the scanner could just show a product picture if a visual representation is helpful, but maybe VR is just as easy in that context.
MM
I don’t see this working well in practice because, in my experience, the information the store associate has on their scanner is rarely accurate, and the fact that they are relying on that instead of their personal on-the-job knowledge IS the problem. The database says there should be X items in backstock in bay 5 on isle 11 but the merchandise isn’t there. A high-tech interface doesn’t fix that problem, and in fact is worthless until those underlying issues get fixed first.
I’d rather Lowes (et. al.) focus resources on training employees and retaining quality employees rather than relying on high tech solutions. I don’t want to rely on an employee using a fancy gizmo to look up what the computer says. I want to deal with an employee who knows where the merchandise is by experience. *I* can look up where the computer says merchandise should be using the store’s website. If I am talking to an employee it’s because that didn’t work and I am looking for personal experience, not someone who will parrot back what the computer says.
Bob
It will definitely help against the horrible work of the night crew at some stores that cause headaches and stress for the daytime workers. A lot of times the boxes aren’t marked, can’t be located near its selling location and aren’t found until days later from its arrival date. All because of the night crew doing less than half their work right and management turning a blind eye saying just put it on the report.
OldDominionDIYer
I can relate! I brought a very high-end hand truck up to purchase and when they rang it up it said it was more than twice the cost advertised on the shelf! I questioned it, and they had an associate check and when he returned, he confirmed the display and sold it to me for the price on the display despite knowing (and stating) the night crew had mis-labeled them. Still getting plenty of use out of that hand truck, thanks to the night crew!!
John
Yep this falls into the trap that so much of the latest ‘metaverse’ marketing appeals to. Years ago people thought that when we used a computer we would like walk around this 3d world and ‘physically’ interact with things in the virtual world. And you could get alternative shells for windows 25 years ago that did exactly that, I remember trying them and realizing how little sense it made. While 3d technology is cool it is way slower and more cumbersome and adds nothing to the experience. There’s a reason we still interact with most things using text in a 2d interface, it’s an efficient interface.
Lowes clearly has some anxious execs that have bought into some marketing agency’s vision of ‘the future’ which is the usual web3 bs. NFTs, metaverse, AR, and so on. It’s just embarrassing.
OldDominionDIYer
Good products at fair prices with good customer service always wins. This virtual stuff is a gimmick.
BigTimeTommy
The stuff that happens when your giant bloated company employs too many worthless marketing people who need to do something to justify their overpaid unnecessary jobs. Thanks Lowe’s!
JR Ramos
On one hand this is interesting but on the other hand it seems like tremendous effort and cost to address issues that were created from poor decisions in the past that piled on one another until the situation became the general mess that it often is these days (I think it’s actually worse at Home Depot but it’s been a disturbing trend for years now).
Lowe’s needs to reinvent *something* but I don’t know if this is the answer. Old school hardware stores with knowledgeable employees (product knowledge as well as store operations) are still the best way, imho, and what customers on all levels seem to still appreciate the most and clamor for – but that costs more money and time. It used to work great, though. Or they could go the old Service Merchandise route…..
Trimming sooooo many employees at all levels just leads us into the stupid mess. Started with the venture capitalists in the 80s and corporate-speak bs continued the trend in the 90s and here we are today where we have ridiculous inventory and shopping and theft issues in these large retail operations. Weird middle ground that isn’t making anyone satisfied. Not sure AI/AR is such a great approach here. I’m not grouchy or crotchety about this, it just seems dumb and another case of the tail wagging the dog when people lose sight of the big picture.
Hon Cho
Sounds like an interesting tool for managing the corporate produced plan-o-grams for store layout and merchandising. Merchandising does generally have a positive ROI so using digital tools with the very lean staffing available in stores might make a lot of sense. The PR fluff isn’t really intended for customers but rather to make investors and competition think Lowes is staying at the cutting edge of retailing.
I’d like more competent staff in the stores too but the marketplace refuses to pay for it. Until customers balk and go elsewhere, minimally staffed atores, perhaps with some texhnology assistance for customers is the future.
Al stults
Been in retail over 50 years and with lowes 10 years ai is great But there is nothing better then 1 to 1 contact with customers we need to train our employees much better not just put them in front of a computer. Have them work in each dept. Before there assigned. THAT way they at least have a working knowledge.
Richard
> Nearly a year ago, Lowe’s entered the metaverse, with digital assets and NFTs. Now, according to their Innovation Labs website, Lowe’s is testing new augmented reality (AR) technologies to help support the efforts of their store associates.
I feel that Lowe’s does not fundamentally understand the business it is in or its customers.
Mark Savage
Let’s hope you can find associates in AR, never any in the stores
Greg
Click Bait Gimmick. One more thing to break down
Saulac
Let’s be clear that this digital twin/AR that Lowe’s is boasting, while sounds futuristic , actually is very basic and “of the shelf”. It sounds almost like someone at Lowe’s was conned by some college kid.
MFC
Cool tech. Definitely the future, but I am concerned for Lowes. My local store has hardly anyone around and the few that are around don’t know much. It seems that they are penny pinching at the local level and spending an astronomical amount, as a company, on this tech stuff.
Maybe it will be a game changer, but I think it’s more of a stepping stone, and the first ones to implement stepping stone features usually get walked on so others can succeed.
Barbara
Lowes can’t even run a stire properly
HomerBucket
This would be very helpful for merchandisers at least. When it comes to keeping sets correctly laid out, faced, and with proper signage that’s a lot of written information. A lot of people don’t do well with looking at a written planogram and sign reference guide and then translating that into a bay. Making the process more visual will yield better and more consistent results.