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Imagine walking into a luxury beauty store and, at the press of a button, you could be transported to the store section of your choosing. ByondXR, a retail-tech company founded in 2016, is virtually doing just that, as it designs 3D and virtual experiences for Shiseido, L’Oréal, Armani, and—more recently—YSL Beauty. ByondXR told Retail Brew that it currently works with ~40 big retailers.
- The company does not replace a brand’s existing e-commerce site; it acts as a supplementary immersive platform with features like gamification, virtual avatars, live streaming, and more, Noam Levavi, co-founder and CEO at ByondXR, told Retail Brew.
- The idea is to fuse brick-and-mortar experiences with digital elements and includes both AR- and VR-driven interactions.
Levavi called the platform, which has been five to six years in the making, “Shopify for the metaverse.”
Virtual retail (VR): Its latest work includes collaborating with YSL Beauty for its Australian virtual store. Levavi explained it as “the new concept of physical pop-up stores that they created, not only in Australia, but also in Japan, Hong Kong, Korea, and other places.”
- The store includes a loyalty rewards club, an interactive feature that lets users design their own lip shades, virtual avatars, and mini games. All features are supported across iOS and Android, on both mobile and desktop.
- Levavi said YSL, which first introduced the experience in Thailand before debuting in Australia, also plans to bring it to countries like China and, eventually, countries in Europe. The US is on the list, but for now, the timing is TBD.
Levavi said that with luxury beauty brands, users stayed on their product pages for 20–30 seconds, and 98% left the page after. As for ByondXR’s virtual stores, users tended to stay for about four or five minutes on average, improving conversion rates between 50% and 100% and drawing in younger audiences.
Local flavor: Experiences are also personalized according to regions since every country or local consumer base responds to them differently. “In different countries, we build those stores, and then we personalize them for each market,” Levavi told us.In the German iteration of a virtual store, ByondXR roped in a key influencer with millions of followers to promote the store on her social media.
Asian markets, on average, attracted higher engagement when compared with markets like Germany, where engagement was relatively lower. As for the US? It is on the list, but not for the next few months, at least when it comes to YSL Beauty, which Levavi said is “going to cover Asia first; it’s based on their strategy.” Lately, ByondXR has been working on enhancing its platform to focus on “specific segments” from fashion and beauty to CPG. But the final aim, according to Levavi, remains the same: helping brands create “user journeys that they embed in their own destinations.”