Unilin

A phygital experience in brand love and conversion.

Industry

Manufacturing

Offerings

Digital Design

Pre-prototyping

Proof of Concept

Making flooring something to experience.

Established but embracing innovation

Quick-Step, established in 1990 as a subsidiary of Unilin in Belgium, distributing its durable laminate, vinyl, and wood flooring throughout Europe.   By implementing a new approach through immersive experience stores within larger retail outlets, Quick-Step aims to boost brand-love while reinforcing its existing reputation as customer-first, quality, ease-of-use and innovative.

Let’s take the lead on the store floor

By creating a phygital, immersive, tailored, guided, future-proof, in-store experience we’ll offer advantages for retailers as well as a seamless journey to decide your new flooring as a visitor.

Scope

Phygital. Immersive.
Tailored. Futureproof.

An overall project goal took shape: a phygital, immersive, tailored, guided, future-proof, in-store experience. A hybrid experience where we want to extend Unilin's existing digital experience to drive more customers to the store and offer them an inspiring shopping experience.

When purchasing a floor, customers ask themselves many decisions: what material should the floor consist of, what color should it have and what does the floor look like after it has been laid?

A multi-sensorial approach was key to optimize decision-making for both consumers and retailers. As well as personalizing the journey, this means providing step by step guidance and tools to provide support before and during the in-store sales conversation.

Interconnecting challenges and stakeholders from home to store

Quick-Step’s existing set of digital tools, such as the FloorExplorer, needed to be integrated into a seamless offering. Geared towards clear advantages for Quick-Step, but also for retailer and consumer.

Letting retailers lead the floor

Retailer’s support and buy-in was essential in making an in-store experience valuable for them to keep a leading position towards consumer

^{Contribute to a more dynamic sales conversation}

^{Facilitate the sales process: provide retailers digital tools to convince the consumer to buy QS}

^{Optimize & streamline digital-physical touch points for a customized & interactive user flow}

^{Digitally interact/connect retailers with Unilin}

^{Maximize upselling and cross-selling}

^{Capture customer data & follow-up after store visit}

We’ve tested and co-created intensively with a number of Quick-Step retailers in Europe to make sure our assumptions were validated

While end-users control their journey

Creating a straightforward and inspiring hybrid shopping experience: extend the journey that people already start online at home.

^{Transforming product decisions to purchasing/lifestyle needs}

^{Better visualization of a floor in an interior setting}

^{Synergy of being able to touch materials}

^{Capturing consumers’s homework to the store seamlessly}

^{Capture customer data & follow-up after store visit}

A process of concepting and validating

The first steps towards the actual solution consisted of a thorough technical analysis and an ‘Inside Out’, with the aim of:

Addressing, precisely defining and weighing the many and diverse challenges
Charting the customer journey in great detail
Concepting potential solutions for every step of that journey.

While being a customer ourselves

Made conducted a long series of store visits at Quick-Step retailers, competitors as well as unrelated retail brands (e.g. AS Adventure, BMW, …) to explore, compare and evaluate different approaches to the customer journey.

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Workshops at Quick-Step

Were instrumental in creating a need-selector out of every conceivable but relevant factor in the customer journey. This allowed us to build assets on that need selector, which then established a UX-flow, closely followed by rapid development of UI.

In-store ideation

Relevant learnings processed, digital and strategical consolidation completed.

Made went into ideation with the partner providing the physical Experience Store infrastructure. The aim being to bring both the physical and the digital elements together into one mutually reinforcing whole.

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Inform and inspire

Self-guiding experience combined with expert advice: the best of both worlds, as customers can navigate independently through the store as well as receive expert guidance from a retailer.

A true phygital experience: where physical and digital are seamlessly merged. This way, customers can continue their online floor search in-store. They have access to digital tools that simplify the selection process of the perfect floor.

Seamless customer experience

A potential customer uses the FloorExplorer tool at home. Aside from insights, ideas and information about his chosen floor, he/she gets a QR code. When scanned at a Quick-Step Experience Store, this QR code allows him a real-life view of his/choice, compare with variations and see it under different lighting. This process feeds directly into the conversation with the retailer.

A progressive user profile tells the retailer what simulation a potential customer ran, information about style preferences and wish lists..
All relevant data that can facilitate a sale.