The eBay/Rebecca Minkoff Retail Project: Brilliant And A Little Scary

Here’s the scenario: you enter a store fitting room to try on a skirt and a blouse. They looked like a good match when you picked them off the rack, but the mirror doesn’t agree. No, not that little voice of reason inside your head; the actual mirror. That’s the kind of experience that designer Rebecca Minkoff is giving her customers in her Big Apple connected store, thanks to a partnership with eBay’s innovation team.

As CEO Uri Minkoff explains in a promo video (see below), it’s about putting the theatre back into retail. In eBay’s words, it’s about innovation that goes beyond blending brick-and-mortar spaces and the Web; it’s creating an all-commerce experience. That strategy is exemplified in Rebecca Minkoff’s Connected Store in New York City, where shoppers can browse merchandise that’s on the shelves or do it on a connected wall that features a large digital mirror linked to a mobile app.

From checking out merchandise and ordering drinks to catching up on Rebecca Minkoff’s social pages and requesting a styling session in a high-tech changing room with personalized lighting, you can do it all with a few taps of the mirror. Scary progressive for tech hounds, and just plain scary for the privacy obsessed—the mirror is equipped with radio frequency ID technology to recognize the items that you brought in and store them in your personal profile.

Click on the video windows below for more on the Rebecca Minkoff/eBay strategy and to get a personal tour of the Connected Store.