Al’s Formal Wear, one of the largest independently-owned formal wear companies in the U.S., has more than 90 locations in Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma.  Al’s stocks over 70 different styles of tuxedos for rental. However, displaying and stocking all possible item combinations in each retail store is not feasible; even in its print catalogs, Al’s Formal Wear only shows about 80 percent of its product options.

Best Practices:
Al’s Formal Wear uses Scene7’s rich media platform to power its Build YOUR Tux application. With Scene7 On-Demand for online visual configuration, Al’s is able to offer customers the ability to select tuxedos by color, style or brand, as well as the accessories to complement their selections.  Users can zoom in on each item to see fabric, color and pattern details, then view the virtually limitless tuxedo, shirt and accessory combinations and visualize what the final ensemble will look like when they pick it up. The online application enables millions of custom tuxedo configurations and integrates with Al’s Formal Wear’s POS system.

Scene7 On-Demand is a comprehensive rich media platform driving five key rich media solutions, including Product Configurators and Dynamic Imaging which Al’s Formal Wear is leveraging in its Build YOUR Tux application. The Scene7 Product Configurator solution allows users to visually configure products and options online prior to purchase. Using a single product photo or scene, Scene7’s performance-optimized, data-driven content serving automatically displays infinite variations from personal choices.  Scene7 Dynamic Imaging serves in real-time any size, format or zoom detail of an image using the same single master image.  In the Build YOUR Tux application, all imagery is automatically resized from original, high-resolution images and is streamed in to allow users to view and pan on product details.

Particularly targeted to brides and those planning weddings, Build YOUR Tux features an enhanced registration process that enables visitors to establish a personal portfolio where they can save their custom-configured ensembles, name combinations for different occasions or individuals, email composites of selected ensembles to ushers, groomsmen, parents, etc., as well as return to their portfolio to make changes and updates to their selections.

Results:
Al’s Build YOUR Tux application provides an effective tool to visualize options and reserve products without having to go into the retail stores.  Because of this, it is especially convenient for brides not close to Al’s Formal Wear retail locations, and is consequently driving increased wedding registrations from customers outside of Al’s Formal Wear’s market region.

“Deploying the Build YOUR Tux application was critical for us to differentiate ourselves and leverage the infinite possibilities available with the Internet,” said  Brad Barber, vice president of Advertising for Al’s Formal Wear. “With more than 40 million possible combinations, we were blown away by how effective Scene7 was at making our vision come to life, and the results have far surpassed our expectations. The Scene7 platform provides a remarkable tool for us to drive sales, as well as offer our customers a feature-rich shopping experience and the ability to browse at their leisure – 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”

Al’s Formal Wear plans to promote the application with direct mail, however, the response from just putting the application online has been tremendous. “Not only have we seen an immediate increase in out-of-market registrations, we now have an extremely high percentage retention rate of visitors completing the registration,”  added Barber.

To Clients Overview