UNIQLO has made choosing clothes more fun with UNIQLO IQ, a digital concierge that provides new shopping experiences powered by Google’s voice recognition and machine learning technology.
Within UNIQLO’s mobile app, UNIQLO IQ helps customers find style inspiration and recommendations with hourly product rankings, searching by occasion type, finding items featured in monthly magazines, and even discovering products based on today’s lucky colour based on your daily horoscope. Once the shopper finds products to purchase, UNIQLO IQ helps customers purchase within the mobile app or in store, providing directions to the closest stores with the products in stock based on the user’s mobile location.
In addition, UNIQLO IQ is integrated into Google Assistant app in Japan starting this month. By saying “UNIQLO IQ” or “UNIQLO FAQ,” Google Assistant becomes UNIQLO IQ and it helps find answers users are looking for. This is the first time that a brand is working closely with Google and using Google Assistant to create a brand-specific solution.
Brooklyn-based business invention firm Inamoto & Co. conceived UNIQLO IQ and created the brand and service design. Tokyo-based agency Party was integral to bringing this vision to life in Japan.
Rei Inamoto, Founding Partner of Inamoto & Co. states, “As retail moves deeper into the digital realm, shopping needs to be not just portable and perpetual but personal as well. There has been a lot of talk about AI in the last few years but most use cases have been toys, not tools. Available through chat, search and even voice activation, this iteration of UNIQLO IQ is the foundation of how UNIQLO will provide customer service on a personal level not just reactively but also proactively.”
UNIQLO first started testing the concept of UNIQLO IQ in the US. In October 2017, UNIQLO IQ soft-launched as a beta program to 2,000 select users in Japan. After continuous iterations and the growing user base, UNIQLO made the service available to millions of customers in Japan in the UNIQLO app, LINE messaging app as well as Google Assistant.
