Paper Pilot was the first store in the world to exclusively sell paper airplanes. The store introduced the Smart Store concept and showed that even a simple sheet of paper can be sold in an innovative way. Paper Pilot is an initiative of Count3r. The young company made an app for sales staff to turn regular stores into a Smart Store.
Store visitors could choose between 35 different paper planes on offer and match their selection to their personal preferences, such as distance, aerobatics, and float time. The planes that were displayed in the store were even customizable with texts and images of the customer’s choosing. Many customers left the store with a uniquely designed paper plane!
More than 4 in 5 people purchased a paper plane in the Paper Pilot store. Typical conversion rates in retail are below 50%. The 136 paying customers bought 2.15 paper planes on average. All revenues were donated to Amref Flying Doctors.
Customers were in the store for 16 minutes on average. We found that women lived up the stereotype and really did shop longer than men. On average, females spent a full 4 minutes longer in the shop than their male counterpart. Men were in store for 14 minutes and women took 18 minutes.
Connected customers are doing everything digitally nowadays, while retailers are still selling like it’s 1999. Retail was the art of staff selling stuff in a store, but customers expect stores to do better. The slow digital innovation monster is killing traditional retailers every day. A Smart Store helps physical retailers to fit our digital world. Will you help the retail chains with a shot of insight?
From the 35 paper planes that were sold, some were more popular than others.
As in every store, Paper Pilot had its bestsellers and flying flops. The classic Basic Dart was the most popular airplane overall. This model was also most popular among women. Men had a preference for the more futuristic UFO model.
Overall | Men | Women |
28 x Basic Dart | 18 x The UFO | 11 x Basic Dart |
27 x The UFO | 17 x Basic Dart | 9 x Fast Swallow |
24 x Fast Swallow | 15 x Fast Hawk | 9 x The UFO |
Every paper plane in store had a tablet as digital price tag. We tracked all activity on these tablets and how they interacted with the tablets of sales staff. This enabled us to create a heatmap of all the activity in the store. Insights will become even better when we correlate these figures with actual sales or beacons. Count3r enables stores to stop guessing and start knowing.
The Net Promoter Score (NPS) is the most widely used indicator of customer satisfaction in the world. The score is measured on a scale between -100 and +100. The Paper Pilot score of +72 is significantly higher than the retail industry’s average of +6. Women scored the store even higher with an NPS of +86, while men scored us at +64.
Count3r helps to digitalise physical stores and transform them to Smart Stores. Media Markt is the first large customer and the electronics chain is planning to use Count3r in all the Dutch stores. Earlier this year, Count3r won the jury prize for Best Retail Innovation 2017.
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