News

American Tea Room steeps in-store interactive digital signage

American Tea Room debuts its new location in Downtown Los Angeles, featuring an Interactive Tea Zone, powered by T1V's OneShop application to drive product engagement and customer interaction.

October 23, 2015

American Tea Room, a retailer that provides a distinctly "American tea experience" by offering premium tea and tea ware to guests, has partnered to drive product engagement and customer interaction with T1V, a provider of interactive touchscreen technology, according to an announcement from T1V.

The retailer's newest location in Downtown Los Angeles' Arts District neighborhood features an Interactive Tea Zone that provides guests a hands-on opportunity to learn additional information about American Tea Room's collection of more than 200 global teas selected by CEO David Barenholtz.

Barenholtz approached T1V with the concept in mind. "We wanted to create a one-of-a-kind signature design feature at each American Tea Room location that guests could interact with and that would organically translate to our website and mobile app," he said in the announcement. "The Tea Zone was a natural result of creative technology that provides customers with a fun, dynamic experience to learn about our teas. It's also very helpful to us from a business perspective to see which teas are resonating with our guests in order to meet the ever-changing needs of the customers."

The Interactive Tea Zone features a 46-inch interactive touchscreen wall with projected capacitive touch, powered by T1V's OneShop software application. OneShop allows customers to shop for American Tea Room products on a touchscreen interface, where they can search and filter through tea options by type, origin, flavor, mood and other categories. To accompany the digital shopping experience, the Interactive Tea Zone houses physical tea vials marked by bar codes. The customer can scan the tea vial with the integrated barcode scanner, which will then populate the touchscreen with details about the tea, so they can have a truly sensory experience as they explore the collection. The Interactive Tea Zone will be available in all of American Tea Room's locations, including the newest store opening this November at Fashion Island in Newport Beach, California, and the original Beverly Hills shop, which will reopen with a new design in January 2016.

Marco Ventura, VP of Business Development at T1V, said in the announcement he believes this partnership will change the way customers are able to learn about teas. "American Tea Room is leveraging T1V's OneShop technology in a way that truly blends the physical and the digital," he said. "With the Interactive Tea Zone, customers can interact with both physical and digital information that drives education about the product, but that also has the potential to suggest complementary products based on customer tastes. What's more, this is accomplished on a fully branded touchscreen interface that aligns with American Tea Room's Web presence further blending the physical store experience with the brand's digital assets."

OneShop is fully integrated with American Tea Room's existing e-commerce platform, Shopify. When an item is updated on the Shopify database, those changes are then reflected in the Interactive Tea Zone touchscreen interface. This was developed to provide an omnichannel experience that is consistent across channels and requires no additional maintenance from American Tea Room, the announcement said. T1V is able to report on dwell time, active time and most viewed products, which is delivered in a weekly report in order to track activity in the Interactive Tea Zone.