PacSun clothing retailer deploys iPads to shop floor sales associates

Here’s another example of enterprise iPad usage — much like the Lowe’s news this week, it’s clear that businesses are ultra keen on putting smart technology such as the iPad in the hands of their customer-facing people.

Right now, sales people in shops are often highly redundant beyond issuing a greeting and helping you pay for goods.

“Have you got this in size [whatever]?” usually results in the sales person walking out the back to check and returning to tell you, “No, sorry.”

It really irritates me.

This is why I usually shop online.

But if the sales person was able to say, “No, we don’t have it in blue here, today, but… tap, tap, tap, I can have it sent to you for tomorrow morning?”

Yup.

I’d probably end up buying more.

This is the rough concept, I think, behind what PacSun is up to. Have a read here and then do click-through for more information from the team at Internet Retailer.

Like a handful of other merchants, Pacific Sunwear of California Inc., better known as PacSun, is blurring the line between sales channels by introducing iPads in stores. The retailer has armed sales associates in more than 300 locations with the popular tablet computers to give associates full product information at their fingertips and enable them to place orders on PacSun’s e-commerce site for customers when a product is out of stock in the store. PacSun will deploy iPads in an additional 100 stores by year’s end

via Mobile Commerce – PacSun arms store associates with iPads – Internet Retailer.

(Incidentally, if you’re a PacSun fan, they’re now shipping to the UK!)