Among the many uses developers are creating for virtual reality (VR), one practical application is that of maximising retail space. Supermarkets are planned out to an exacting science, where certain products should go, at what height and so on. Now SCA a hygiene product supplier in collaboration with VR studio Lab4242, has launched SpaceLAB, a piece of software what’ll help retailers to design supermarket planograms using the HTC Vive head-mounted display (HMD).
Using a programme like SpaceLAB branding strategists and marketers will be able t design and preview a store in VR, walking through it to get a far more immersed understanding of what they want to achieve. The system allows new products to be loaded, put in place or picked up and thrown away.
So rather than having to do all this in the physical world disrupting an actual store, all the required activities can be achieved virtually, which should result in saving costs and time, making their work processes more efficient.
Justin Hazendonk, customer marketing manager at SCA explains: “Before SpaceLAB it took a lot of time to design a planogram. It costs money and sometimes it even is a physical activity, when building up a physical retail store design. You want to make the planogram right from the start and save that design. We wanted to make this whole process easier and got in touch with LAB4242.”
Gijs Molsbergen, Co-Founder of LAB4242 said in a statement: “SCA challenged us to make the process of planograms more efficient and fun. We saw potential in this challenge. With SpaceLAB we’ve made a solution that really matters to their business, thanks to Virtual Reality technology. Within a few months we’ve developed SpaceLAB, with which retailers can create any planogram they like. Now their clients can directly work with them, while immersing themselves in their own branded retail store, saving costs and time in the process, while having fun doing it! This is the first version of SpaceLAB and we’re now going to talk to retailers who want to use other handy features within it.”
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