Virtual toy shopping is open in Lebanon

The widespread disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic has meant that many of us have been unable to go about our usual Christmas shopping rituals. However, Elias Alhaber wasn’t going to let this dampen our holiday spirits. Elias is the Founder and CEO of oVRlebanon, Lebanon’s first 3D Directory, and has teamed up with local stores to facilitate virtual shopping experiences this festive season.

JouéClub Liban Toy Store was a particular favourite: three floors filled with toys, the perfect venue for an online 3D browsing experience.

Q: What inspired the 3D capture of JouéClub Liban Toy Store?

With Christmas just around the corner, we wanted to provide the experience every family will be missing this festive season and give them the possibility to explore, tour, and Christmas shop from the comfort of their warm and safe homes, at any time and on any platform, via the wonders of VR.

The oVRlebanon team and I approached one of the biggest toy stores in Lebanon: JouéClub Liban Toy Store. They were amazed by the possibilities that could be achieved with Matterport technology. More than 1500 m2 were 3D scanned and more than 200 informative Mattertags were prepared to go live for a happy, safe, and virtual Christmas shopping experience. 

Q: What are the “must-sees” you want visitors to explore and why?

With Matterport’s technology, we want visitors to virtually explore every single corner of the 3-floor toy store. We also want them to enjoy the experience of navigating inside a 3D virtual replica of a space they miss and used to visit regularly. Visitors are able to browse their favourite aisles and transfer between floors and reach different locations in the store - and all in just the space of a few clicks.

With zero physical effort, exploring a virtual story has never been easier, with the help of informative Mattertags, visitors are offered further insights on content and ‘Buy Now’ links.

Q: The Mattertags are a great way of encouraging customers to visit the online store, how have sales been impacted by this?

We use Mattertags in our 3D models to present content or links to the relevant webpage of the tagged items or areas. While exploring the virtual space, visitors are able to click on these Mattertags to gain further information about what’s in front of them or click on links to get redirected to the landing page of the product. We have noticed that combining virtual visits, information, and ‘Buy Now’ links has positively affected the customer experience, resulting in increased sales.

Q: The Coronavirus pandemic has made Christmas shopping difficult this year, how have you been able to encourage customers to browse the toy store virtually?

Encouraging customers to browse the toy store proved no hurdle with Christmas around the corner! In fact, we reached out to children via a collaboration with Jouéclub, which consisted of a competition with daily prizes. Participants were invited to enter, explore, and click on Mattertags in order to find the winning hidden message. The competition was instrumental in spreading word-of-mouth, and word eventually reached adult consumers as well.

On the other hand, we encouraged adults by highlighting to them the convenience of visiting, navigating, and shopping for their gifts via a true-to-life 3D replica of Jouéclub.

Q: Do you expect 3D virtual toy stores (and other retail outlets) to grow in popularity in the future?

Due to the conveniences of visiting virtual stores, we expect many stores to switch to V-commerce. In fact, more than three retail stores reached out to us in less than a week from the publishing date of Virtual JouéClub Liban Toy Store, so there is plenty of scope to successfully replicate this formula across multiple types of retail stores