Virtualized retail shops are absolutely shoppable, 3D digital twins of brick-and-mortars, enabling manufacturers to recreate IRL areas in dynamic, digital environments and amplify the attain. These on-line replicas mix the intuitive in-person procuring expertise with the comfort of digital, enabling buyers to discover, browse and store at actual areas from all around the globe. Consumers can navigate the shop simply as they’d in actual life and work together with merchandise from their fingertips.
These digital experiences prolong the ROI of bodily areas, increasing a model’s attain with 24/7 accessibility, rising engagement and conversion charges by bringing real-world aesthetics to a extremely engaged on-line viewers throughout verticals. However how do manufacturers virtualize their retail storefronts? And what does the method seem like?Â
We sat with Obsess’ Director of Content material, Melissa Molina, to debate the highest three requested questions on virtualizing a retail retailer and the function our crew performs within the creation of those digital twins.
How Can Manufacturers Create a Digital Twin of a Bodily Retailer?Â

Molina: To virtualize a retail retailer location, we recreate the bodily retailer with pictures. First: we collect reference pictures of the shop, ground plan and sq. footage to get an thought of how large the shop is. Primarily based on that, we offer suggestions and a timeline for a way lengthy the method will take earlier than coordinating a time with the model’s on-site retailer crew and our community of specialised photographers to start the shoot.Â
A member of the Obsess crew is all the time onsite to direct the photoshoot, working with our photographers to mark viewpoints, guarantee the shop is ideal from each angle and prioritize any focus areas or hero collections. Our photographers will shoot a number of photographs in every route to seize the smallest particulars, after which sew them collectively for a seamless 360-degree impact. We work with the onsite crew to replace every little thing for an excellent, mobile-friendly person journey. This ensures the journey feels pure and the tip person is ready to transfer round, discover and uncover merchandise freely. That’s the enjoyment of procuring in individual that we attempt to translate over to the photographed digital twin.
As soon as shoots are full, our crew builds out the digital twin in our proprietary CMS, AVA, and works with the model to make sure all merchandise are shoppable. Previous to launch, we additionally dedicate sources to make sure that all content material throughout the retailer is of the utmost high quality and functioning easily—together with embedded media and marketing campaign property, plus e-commerce and different third-party integrations.Â
How Lengthy Does it Take to Virtualize a Retail Retailer?
Molina: We’ve rotated digital retail shops in as little as simply a few weeks! The launch timeline relies on loads of various factors, together with the scale of the shop. With bigger shops which have extra complicated layouts, for instance: it could actually take us slightly longer. Sometimes, we ship a photographed, shoppable retailer from end-to-end inside 8-12 weeks from a model signing with us.Â
Is There a Restrict on the Area that Manufacturers Can Digitize?
Molina: There are not any limitations–we are able to actually shoot every little thing! We’ve shot giant, multi-level shops with intricate layouts, and have digitized all of it. Over time, we’ve perfected this course of, launching greater than 100 digital twins, starting from flagship areas and showrooms, to pop-up activations for main manufacturers in trend, magnificence, CPG, media and extra.


Able to scale your bodily presence and have interaction a brand new viewers of digitally-native buyers with virtualized retail shops? Discover out extra by reserving a demo or emailing us at contact@obsessvr.com.