Red Hot Penny

We use imagination and emerging technologies to deliver exceptional experiences, online, offline and in the world of e-commerce.

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Damien Hirst for Alexander McQueen

Damien Hirst has teamed up with Alexander McQueen to celebrate 10 years of the brand's skull scarf. Originally inspired by Danté's Divine Comedy, the design ties together two of its collaborators' most emblematic elements: skulls and entomology.

The limited edition collection comprises 30 butterfly, spider and beetle-covered silk scarves, in a kaleidoscopic take on McQueen's unmistakable skull motif.

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Louis Vuitton’s Selfridges Townhouse

Louis Vuitton’s new multi-storey "Townhouse" at London’s Selfridges offers an elevated, flagship-like brand experience inside one of the world’s most democratic and high-traffic luxury department stores.

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Google brings search outdoors in London pilot

Google has brought its search technology to bus shelters and tube stations across London, in a bid to make residents and tourists lives a little easier.

As part of a pilot scheme, called "Google outside", the technology giant has put display screens that provide information on local tourist attractions and businesses, among other things, across 160 locations in London - 100 bus shelters and 60 tube stations.

The screens adapt existing Google Now technology – which is used in smartphones – to provide people with information about their location, taking into account things like the weather. For instance, on a rainy day, the billboards might provide information about a local cinema.

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Nick Knight: #DIESELTRIBUTE

Ok, so first we saw Burberry shoot the live web streaming SS 14 catwalk campaign at London Fashion Week on the new iPhone 5S, now we see Nick Knight shoot Diesel's new campaign on his iPhone!

Have smartphones really evolved that much to warrant the blurring of everyday objects used for high end fashion shows/campaigns?

That’s the conclusion of Emily White, senior director, business opportunities, at Instagram, who points to the sophistication of cameras on smartphones as one reason for ushering in the transformative change.

According to White, industry data show there were just 4 billion photos taken by analogue cameras in 2011, compared with 380 billion using a mobile device. The sophistication of the screen resolution on the camera in mobile devices has changed dramatically, and people are using services such as Tumblr and Pinterest to share their experiences

Watch Nick Knight at work on ‪#‎DIESELTRIBUTE‬ with Nicola Formichetti in this exclusive footage - http://showstudio.com/project/dieseltribute

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Shop and Flow: Runway to Reality

Retailers are using data on customer flow and reactions to enhance their store's layout and design and, ultimately, improve profitability.

Burberry in particular are measuring the impact that digital campaigns have on their bricks and mortar businesses, and are joining up retail touch points with the use RFID tags in clothes to recognise individuals when in store.

Do these experiences really change our purchase habits? Can digital really work alongside the more traditional business of bricks and mortar? certainly from the outset, Burberry seems to be leading the way in this field, pushing technology in the APAC areas of its business to yield results from an emerging market of wealthy, early adopters.

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Nike House of Deadly: Stadium Installation

The new Nike Hypervenom is a seriously high tech creature, and so to launch it in Asia, it needed something just as advanced to bring the product to life. Enter the ‘House of Deadly’ from Nike, a mini-stadium with projection mapped walls and tracking spotlights that act as real-time virtual defenders that players have to get past to shoot and score.

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IDNA: 360-Degree Spacial Story Telling iPad App

I can’t remember seeing an iPad App Experience like this before, it’s what’s known as ‘Spacial Story Telling’ and plays out a 360-Degree Story Telling Experience on you iPad. As the iPad pans, so does the view within the animation and allows the story to play out through different paths, basically wherever the viewer takes it, certain angles or focusing on an individual character.

This is a very cool look at the future of interactive story telling. See it in action - here.

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Amazon woos fashion industry as new studio opens in N.Y.

The online giant just opened a massive photo and video studio in Brooklyn to shoot on-model images in its effort to build another massive sales category.

It’s easy to see why the business is so appealing to Amazon. According to Forrester Research, the overall apparel, accessories and footwear business generated $370 billion in sales last year in the United States alone. And just 11 percent of that business was done online. There’s little doubt that online fashion sales will grow, and few companies are as well positioned as Amazon to seize that business.

“They are tapping into very large buckets of consumer spending that are very little penetrated online,” said Mark Mahaney, an analyst with RBC Capital Markets who follows Amazon.

Because the category is so huge, Mahaney believes that Amazon’s apparel, footwear and accessory business will eventually surpass the sales of its books, movies and music, perhaps within five years.

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Victoria Beckham locates first London store

With direct neighbors like Acne and McQ (the casual line of Alexander McQueen), Victoria Beckham is positioning her brand between contemporary upscale and luxury, the biggest names of which are a few streets over on Old Bond Street. The store will carry the label's two ready-to-wear lines, an entry-level luxury collection and a more affordable range, as well leather goods.  Launched in 2009, the eponymous label has turned a corner this year, which it is now making tangible through this opening. The designer has made her runway shows one of the key events during New York Fashion Week and is now recognized by the profession that has forgotten her Spice Girl past and "wife of" title.

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Beautiful Satellite Photography of the Earth

Each week since January 2004, the European Space Agency has discovered a beautiful photograph taken from space.

Snapshots gathered under the name “Observing the Earth“, reminds us how beautiful our planet is!

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Aaron Rose and André Saraiva's Film for L'Officiel Hommes

“Paramount Studios is fantastical by nature,” says artist and filmmaker Aaron Rose of the faux New York City streets and sun-baked Los Angeles location. Sweeping through the vacant lot, Rose and his co-director, L'Officiel Hommes editor André Saraivashot a dreamlike portrait of professional skateboarders Jerry Hsu, Austyn Gillette, and Josh Harmony, besuited in Dior Homme, Saint Laurent, and Prada. Set to the epic pop of Duran Duran’s “The Chauffeur,” the slow-motion skaters are confronted by a trio of models in lace lingerie led by Belgian beauty Anouck Lepere, in a touch that echoes the band's 1980s videos.

Check out the amazing video for yourselves - here.

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Online Retailers Go Hi-Tech to Size up Shoppers and Cut Returns

Online retailers are trying to cajole consumers into revealing their vital statistics with new sizing technology tailored to turn back a tide of returned garments that is hurting profits.

Up to half of the clothes bought online are sent back, many due to poor fit, squeezing retailers’ margins and creating logistical problems in recovering and re-selling rejected stock.

Clothing is the most popular online shopping category in most of Europe: 45 percent of Brits and 41 percent of German consumers bought online in the last year, Mintel research shows.

Germany’s Zalando and Britain’s ASOS, online-only fashion retailers, grabbed market share by promising a free returns service – that now threatens to undermine long-term profits.

ASOS Chief Executive Nick Robertson said a 1 percent fall in returns would immediately add 10 million pounds ($16 million)to the company’s bottom line. ASOS reported attributable net income of 32.9 million pounds for the year to Aug. 31, 2012.

It’s not a problem that can simply be solved by charging for returns, retailers say. Businesses would still find it tough to recoup the cost of extra shipping and warehouse fees, damaged goods and difficulty in selling items that may no longer be season-specific – not to mention the intangible impact of unhappy customers.

“If you don’t have to return something then clearly that is a better experience than having to return something,” Robertson told Reuters, adding the average ASOS returns rate is about 30 percent, taking into account variations between markets.

E-commerce still only accounts for 15 percent of total garment sales. Much of the lag is down to shoppers’ reluctance to buy clothes they can’t try on. Fits.me, a London-based developer of sizing software, estimates that around 80 percent of all clothes bought in-store pass through a fitting room.

Fits.me is one of several start-ups to have recently sprung up in response to the industry problem, producing software they claim will reduce returns and boost sales by helping shoppers select the correct tailoring.

Fits.me, whose technology allows customers of brands including Adidas and Hugo Boss to visualise clothes on different body shapes, polled German online shoppers and found 35 percent of them aborted potential purchases because of concerns about fit.

“There is no size standardisation. The risk of buying online is very high,” said founder Heikki Haldre, noting that only a third of people sized medium will actually choose an “M”.

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GARMENT VISUALISATION TECHNOLOGY

With the online shopping experience constantly evolving, retailers are finding an increasing number of ways to bring their customer closer to the real thing. With zoom features, 360 degree rotations and catwalk videos, retailers are pushing the boundaries of technology to give their customer the best visual representation of their product before they buy. However, retailers are yet to offer a way in which customers can see how the garment fits – on someone of their exact size, height and body shape. This is where GVT (garment visualisation technology) comes in.

Garment visualisation technology is being developed by a number of companies including Mipso, Fitiquette and FitsMe, who are offering their technology to online retailers looking to offer the most revolutionised shopping experience to date. With 12% of consumers reporting that they rarely purchase online due to sizing concerns, it’s obvious that this downfall needed to be addressed.

Heikki Haldre, the CEO of Fits.me, suggested that GVT can increase a retailer’s bottom line by removing the risk of customers receiving and returning an ill-fitting garment. Fits.me allows the customer to adjust their weight, height, waistline and proportions to produce an online representation of their exact body shape. Once the customer has created their virtual body, they are able to try a garment of their choice on in any available size to see which fits best.

With retailers such as Barbour, Zenga and Gilt already buying into this technology, others are bound to follow – making this an online revolution we can’t ignore.

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Banksy: Better Out Than in

A new work by elusive street artist Banksy has appeared in Los Angeles. Titled “Better Out Than In,” the piece uses the surrounding environment to depict a young graffiti artist throwing up flowers.

The English artist has remained rather quiet since his last piece right before London’s Olympics. The piece seems to elude to an upcoming series or show of the same name, judging by the text via his website.

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Topshop Partner with chirp for London Fashion Week

For its London Fashion Week show on Sunday 15 September, UK fashion retailer Topshop partnered with Chirp, an app that enables users to share information quickly and easily via a ‘chirp’ sound that’s picked up by nearby phones that also have the app.

This season’s show took place in Regent’s Park in a space designed by Swedish architect Pernilla Ohrstedt, which aims to bring the outdoors inside and features real grass.

Additional content for Chirp users included images of the models on the catwalk alongside hair and make-up tests. In true Topshop democratic style, no one missed out: guests at the show were sent images from Chirp locations, shoppers at Topshop’s flagship Oxford Circus store in London received content at an in-store Chirp and Twitter garden, and Topshop.com featured a Chirp Gallery so that people could receive content at home.

Finally, those following the action on Twitter could review the show in 140 characters to win tickets to next season’s event. Echoing its last two catwalk shows, those watching online could click to order music, clothes and beauty products straight from the runway and could customise the colours of the clothes.

http://chirp.io/

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ALB Golden Chains - Interactive eCommrce

Pushing the browsers video-playback capabilities, this experience lets you interact with the artist ALB and his latest music video "Golden Chains".

Viewers are invited to purchase items that pop up alongside the music video in order to help ALB fund their upcoming album. Genius!

http://www.albgoldenchains.com/

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Red Bull Illume Photo Contest 2013

The 250 finalists were selected for this third edition of the Red Bull Illume Photo.

The contest invites photographers to submit images around the action and adventure sports. Winners will be announced in late August in Hong Kong... but for now, here's a selection of the nominees.