These apps help retailers understand shoppers' behaviour

It’s become the norm with online shopping: you aimlessly browse through ASOS, randomly click on a banana-yellow jumpsuit and end up being blasted with alternative luminous jumpsuits available on other random websites every time you’re online for the next month. Or you make one late-night trip to Rightmove to see what you could afford in Norfolk and are spammed with bucolic property porn for the next year.

Now get ready for the high street to follow suit. A burgeoning group of London tech firms are helping retailers work out what shoppers like, who they are, and how to get us to spend more money — and it’s a lot brainier and more discreet than the facial-recognition cameras stores began secretly using to track and profile their customers.

Take Iconeme, the Queens Park firm which has developed “beacon technology” sitting inside high-tech mannequins that beam out information about the clothes in a window display to an app. Shoppers within 30 metres can then instantly buy whatever the model is wearing (from the store’s website or be guided to physically find it in store), or share a look with a friend or save it for later.

“It gives you a virtual assistant,” says chief executive Jonathan Berlin, who’s been in the mannequin business for three decades. “A large percentage of shoppers don’t want to talk to sales associates, this gets around that issue. Plus, you have many extra products on your device that may not be in that store due to space issues — creating ‘endless aisles’.”

Since the beacons work 24/7, even when a store is closed and with no complaints about zero-hour contracts, it’s little wonder Iconome’s mannequins have already been used by House of Fraser, Jaeger, Hawes & Curtis, Ted Baker, and George at Asda — plus “a lot of clients testing currently under non-disclosure agreements”.

Shoppers have to download an app to access the tech, so Berlin says he hasn’t faced accusations of creepiness. But other stores are using new technology to learn more about their customers without us even knowing: sometimes just by staring at our shoes. That’s thanks to Hoxton Analytics, the firm set up by two UCL data scientists who have created a camera that records shoppers’ shoes to count footfall (at 95 per cent accuracy) and analyse their demographics, while preserving privacy — unlike facial recognition cameras.

Hoxton’s shoe-analysing system works out gender (so supermarkets can work out things like, what proportion of females walked down the wine aisle? Should we be promoting more booze to women than men?), and uses shoe style and mix of shoes in a group to set out the kind of shoppers there (size 10 trainers, size 5 sandals and toddler-sized footwear? Likely to be a family). Stores could eventually use the data to target in-store ads to their customer make-up at that time, as well as more closely match stock to their footfall. So far, if you’ve walked into the O2 centre on Finchley Road or Spitalfields’ men’s lifestyle shop The Dandy Lab, your feet might have been tracked by Hoxton Analytics.

Virtual reality tech is also moving into high street stores to help shoppers try before they buy — without having to strip off clothes or make-up. At Charlotte Tilbury’s Westfield London store, a virtual mirror created by Holborn firm Holition lets users have one of 10 looks superimposed on their face — without having a face-scrubbing makeover that takes up to an hour and can involve pushy sales techniques. Holition is behind what it dubs “3D digital experiences and augmented reality applications” for stores stretching from Selfridges and Bloomingdales to LVMH, owner of Fendi and Louis Vuitton.

“Cosmetics is a good example where innovative technology can enhance the trying on make-up experience,” says Holition chief executive Jonathan Chippindale. “There is only so much make-up a woman can try on, whether in a retail store or at home, and sometimes it is a question of culture or hygiene. The virtual make-up application enables people to try out different looks and styles and make informed choices.”

By integrating tech, the future of retail doesn’t have to see the likes of Amazon killing off the traditional shopping trip, according to Iconeme’s Berlin. “I sincerely think that in the coming years, high streets will get stronger again — people need the interaction and social element. Retailers who are struggling with the high costs of returns from online shopping will be forced to charge, and this will drive more people back to stores to try products.”

Just don’t expect to be trying those products on in real life.