The company’s stand at the most important Italian eyewear and eyecare show presented a range of solutions able to accelerate the digital transformation of the optical industry: a process which will benefit everyone, customers and consumers alike.

The first innovative concept, previewed exclusively at MIDO, allows eyewear consumers to interact digitally with Luxottica’s entire catalogue of products inside the store of any optometrist or optician.

The new virtual optical store, with Luxottica

This new concept is a true smart shopper: a virtual in-store interface where customers can explore (aided by the eyecare professional) the Group’s collections and brands, as well as virtually “trying on” any of the catalogue models thanks to the use of augmented reality and advanced proprietary virtual mirroring technologies. Thanks to the interactive screen, customers will be able to freely customize Ray-Ban and Oakley models, choosing from different colors, frame types and lenses, temples, tips, and cases, or requesting engravings and decorations for truly unique eyewear.

The virtual interface, fully integrated with Luxottica's digital infrastructure, will be made available by Luxottica to its best customers and is tailor-made for each retail point. Indeed, it can be personalized in terms of graphics, as well as providing adaptable “smart linking” to the current in-store collections.

These innovations complete the digitalization process of in-store communication launched by the Group in recent years. In 2018, digitalization enhancements were extended to the company’s eyecare professional customers.

Luxottica was the first company to implement large-scale digital window technology to the eyewear industry, making the consumer experience engaging and rich in content. In a very short time, the company has become one of the largest private digital broadcasters globally, with about twenty thousand digital windows installed both in its own stores and in customers’ optical stores all over the world. The management of real-time visual communication is centralized in the internal digital factory in Milan in order to guarantee flexibility and speed of execution, distribution of contents by store, country and timing and greater proximity to the needs of customers and consumers.

Digital showrooms and samples

Today Luxottica is also revolutionizing the way of presenting new collections to customers in its showrooms and stores around the world, by partnering traditional physical samples with a wider digital collection. Following the presentation of “digital sample bags” (i.e. the Group's entire product catalogue transferred onto tablet devices), at MIDO 2019 Luxottica introduced the new “digital showroom” concept.

Within this, visitors can enjoy an interactive and high-definition immersive experience, with multimedia content inspired by the brand and its world as well as virtual simulations of the in-store areas. The collections are organized into "digital couvettes" to facilitate interaction with every single model and the purchasing process. Each frame appears on screen as if it were real, thanks to the use of high-definition real-time rendering and navigable 360-degree technology that can be enlarged to magnify even the smallest of details.

Recently launched in Luxottica’s new Fifth Avenue headquarters in New York, and soon to be available in the avant-garde exhibition space in via Tortona in Milan, the digital showroom model will be available in a dozen branches worldwide by the end of 2019.