IMERSIVOASIA

ended

Europe is a very creative space, home to innovative designs and promising, high-quality products. European creations are highly appreciated around the world, but small designers and retailers are underexploiting the international markets due to geographic barriers. Over recent years, technology has fueled an unprecedented change in retail. In a highly interconnected world, with the web at our fingertips, we can look for and buy products from anywhere in the world through visual web and mobile. However, pure online solutions (i.e. e-commerce platforms) lack the personal touch of shopping and do not offer its unique experience and immediacy. Clearly, more innovative and high value-added solutions are needed to help European designers become international. Imersivo brings together online shopping and offline stores, allowing for a consistent experience across all of their channels –outdoor displays, web, mobile and retail, and making shopping a more engaging and fun experience. The full expression of the Imersivo concept is the imCUBE (figure 1), a 24/7 store that funnily attracts and interacts with the customers, makes recommendations to them and immediately delivers nicely wrapped products. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nCEpm6hYS8). The objective of this action is to produce 20 imCUBE units and place them in handpicked locations in Asia. This will enable firms to place their products outside or inside of brick and mortar stores, malls and airports at the other edge of the world at affordable prices, thus removing obstacles for market enlargement of European retail and design SMEs.