Q&A – Paolo Mossa, Global Sales Director – inVRsion
Paolo Mossa is the Global Sales Director of inVRsion, a Virtual Reality company developing simulations of never-before-seen realism for CPG Industry and Retail. Paolo and his team are on a mission to drive leading brands and retailers towards a practical as well as strategic integration of VR within their organizations.
What does your company do? / What is your USP?
inVRsion is a Virtual Reality company, founded in 2015 in Milan, which has recently incorporated a subsidiary in New York.
Our USP is about simulating any retailers’ and brands’ in-store activities in Virtual Reality with the highest realism on the market, thus enabling them to validate any executions before their physical implementation, saving costs while accelerating their go-to-market.
This is done through the main pillars of inVRsion’s solutions portfolio: stores and environments virtualization, 3D SKUs and contents digitization and ShelfZone®, the Software as a Service (SaaS) that enables clients to create their projects and experience them in immersive Virtual Reality.
What’s special about the platform and your approach?
Our solutions answer clients’ needs across different roles and activities: store design and remodeling, category management and trade marketing, communication and POS material, extra displays and promotional activities contextualization, shopper research and new product pack testing, and even cross-functional training.
The highest level of quality required in terms of virtualization and digitalization is what inVRsion is globally recognized for.
How does a product/service implementation actually look like and how do you measure success?
Through the implementation of a VR Lab – made of an enterprise hardware and the SaaS solution ShelfZone® – inVRsion lets companies simulate and share activities related to perfect store execution across all business units.
At inVRsion we really measure success based on our long-term relationship with our clients, who have adopted our technology across their entire organizations.
How are retailers using your systems to gain competitive advantage and what does best practice look like?
By being confidently first-to-market everytime, our clients are repeatedly beating their competition.
The simulation of perfect store executions through Virtual Reality enables clients to accelerate the go-to-market only of the already validated options, thus preventing the risk of any wrong implementations.
The immersive representation of the proposed solutions accelerates the overview of the final result and therefore the fast finalization of an agreement between Retailers and Brands.
On the Retail side, the most common use case nowadays is the design and remodeling of points of sale, while on the Industry side, the most common one is the proposal of new category management project and merchandising flows within a “Perfect Store” approach, as well as the contextualization of promotional and extra displays activities, that they often validate with shopper research in VR.
What advantage does it add?
As previously highlighted, inVRsion’s solutions enable to perform in-store executions that would otherwise be far more demanding from both an operational and an economic point of view.
Companies often forgo experimenting solutions due to high investments needed, the heavy impact on in-store operations and the impossibility of having a clear idea of the final result beforehand.
3D digitization and virtual reality instead enable companies to cut the costs, as well as to preliminarily validate the final result avoiding any impact on the physical store, while accelerating their go to market.
Clients benefit from a complete in-house service with solutions specifically related to the peculiarity of their business, as inVRsion has direct control over the design, production and delivery of 3D contents, as well as on client service and after sales activities.
What challenges are retailers facing in 2020?
Nowadays consumers’ habits have changed and they are more and more aware and interested in important topics such as environmental sustainability, well-being and health. This constantly growing trend doesn’t foresee a reversal, so companies need to define a coherent offer. The point of sale has always represented a means of connection between consumers, industry and retailers, that’s why it is fundamental to adapt it to consumer dynamics with prompt versatility and effectiveness.
Big formats are not as much aligned to consumers’ changing habits and lifestyle anymore, as consumers now prefer the “made to measure” proximity store formats.
Large retailers shouldn’t overlook this phenomenon and therefore move to a reorganization of their network, which could even entail new acquisitions or an accurate restyling and remodeling, being both time and cost-heavy.
How will you address these challenges and turn them into successes?
The digitization of assortments and stores together with the adoption of virtual reality technologies helps CPG industry and retail fulfill the evolutionary process with less effort and risk.
As it happens, inVRsion has been addressing these challenges for many years with many successful case studies under its belt in both retail and industry.
What is on the horizon for you as a company?
inVRsion is currently working on a “v-commerce” vision, which enables companies to “open a dialogue” with their consumers. People can interact with the offer, the retailer, the brand in a thoroughly active and immersive way, without necessarily going to a physical point of sale.
Brands and retailers can “talk about themselves” in a more distinctive way as compared to their competitors, opening a real new channel and offering an empowered shopping experience to consumers, that today is flattened by e-commerce.
Any final thoughts?
From 16h to 20th February we will be at Euroshop 2020 in Dusseldorf, the World’s No.1 Retail Trade Fair. If you wish to learn more about the opportunities of Virtual Reality for your business, join us at our stand, Hall 11 E09, and experience the ultra-realism of our simulations.
Simply click on this link to secure a free VR demo!
https://invrsion.com/invrsion-euroshop2020
Paolo Mossa
Business Partner with 20 years of experience in Business Consultancy, Marketing Information and Market Research, Category Management, Sales and Business Development.
After 2 years of experience as Category Manager for one of the main Italian retailers, Paolo worked for 16 years with Nielsen as Client Business Partner in the Retailers Direction. In inVRsion Paolo is currently responsible for the commercial development of the company.
