, California, from June 22 through June 25.  Customers will be able to use an Apple Vision Pro headset and Lowe’s Style Studio app to explore preset styles curated by the retailer’s professional design team or choose from nearly 80 billion design combinations to create a kitchen design.  Once they decide on a theme, customers will then be able to save their style selections as a PDF and share them via email, text, or AirDrop. They will also be able to shop for the selected items in-store, online, or in Lowe’s mobile app.  “Lowe’s has a history of breaking new ground in our industry, and being the first home improvement retailer to offer an Apple Vision Pro experience in select stores is an exciting step in our omnichannel journey,” Lowe’s executive vice president and chief digital and information officer Seemantini Godbole said. “We believe Apple Vision Pro can enhance in-store kitchen design experiences, empowering our customers to visualize their dream kitchens using advanced spatial computing technology.” Creating a frictionless shopping experience  Lowe’s Innovation Labs vice president Cheryl Friedman believes that visualization technology will play a key role in the future of retail.  When it comes to room designs, Friedman noted that the kitchen, which is often considered the heart of a home, is one of the most difficult rooms to plan.  Changing out one component of a kitchen’s design, such as which handles to put on a drawer, often has a compounding effect on every other design decision.  “Customers are living in their 3D worlds, but designing in 2D is a very hard transition to make, like being able to envision how something on a flat 2D surface will look like in a real-life environment,” she told Inside Retail. That’s where Apple Vision Pro and Lowe’s Style Studio app, which was developed in-house by Lowe’s Innovation Labs, come in.  “Because it is so immersive, it gives you that full-scale experience of what it’s like to be in that kitchen,” Friedman said. “The fidelity that Apple Vision Pro is able to deliver in their spatial computing device with a 4K resolution allows you to experience those materials and fixtures as if they were right in front of you, versus having the challenge of trying to imagine a number of different, small samples coming together and what that would look like in its full form. “This is a great tool to give [our customers] more confidence as they’re making decisions along the way [to designing their dream kitchen].”  Friedman sees visualization tech as a way to enhance Lowe’s current offering, which includes the help of a knowledgeable Lowe’s associate.  “We do not see this as any bit of a replacement to our associates,” she said. “We work in service of our associates to make it easier for them to be successful in working with our customers, so we try to give them as many tools in their toolbox as possible to empower them to have great success in helping our customers solve their home improvement problems.” The pilot program is currently limited to North Carolina, New Jersey and California as the company tests out any potential kinks in the program and discovers areas for improvement.  Lowe’s Innovation Labs has also released Measure Your Space, a room measurement tool that uses ARKit, an Apple augmented reality framework, and the LiDAR Scanner (short for light detection and ranging), and Lowe’s Product Expert, a custom GPT that delivers home improvement product recommendations via generative AI. It has also launched the home improvement retail industry’s first interactive store digital twin in recent years to keep up with ever-advancing consumer desires.  “I think that the importance of Lowe’s Innovation Labs is that you have a dedicated team that can look around the corner, far beyond what most teams are working on, and be able to identify and anticipate how emerging technologies will evolve and how that will affect customer expectations,” Friedman said. “Then you’re able to be ready for when those expectations shift and you will have the capabilities ready to go and you won’t be trying to play catch up.” Leaning into the retail wave of the future While retailers have been experimenting with AR technology for some time, the Covid-19 pandemic helped popularize it with consumers. Stuck at home and unable to test out products in-store, many consumers started using AR services to get a better sense of the product they were trying to purchase. In 2020, 83.1 million people in the US used AR every month, a marked jump from 68.7 million the year before.  This switch-up in shopping technology is especially relevant for younger consumer groups, such as those within the millennial age bracket.  According to a survey conducted by Tata Consultancy Services, 60 per cent of millennials are willing to shop with or spend more money with a retailer offering virtual fitting rooms or virtual staging capabilities. In addition to the freshness of the experience, consumers can get a better feel for the product they are shopping for online and have more confidence in their purchase. In turn, retailers will have a lower chance of product returns.