Small Gift Basket Chain Creates Practical Use For Streaming Video, But Will It Scale?
Written by Evan SchumanJuly 9th, 2009
When San Francisco area online gift basket merchant Gourmet Gifts create a custom arrangement, the selection of items and positioning reflects that particular artist's creativity. Unfortunately, it's not always what the client had in mind. Site owner Debbie Quintana started toying with streaming video in March and discovered that its realtime transmissions allowed for the item to be displayed, rotated and then continuously changed as the client—on the phone—revealed what worked and what didn't.
The overwhelming majority of retailers today that use streaming video use it as a toy, a fun thing that looks cool on the site but doesn't have much practical purpose. (A rare major vendor exception was a Staples two-way streaming video kiosk trial in Canada last summer.) What is so powerful about what Gourmet Gifts is doing is that truly recreates the one-on-one interaction that would exist in a traditional in-store gift basket shop.
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