How can we use technology to shape the retail experience? PVH's answer started behind the curtain. Together we built a platform that assists staff and visitors in over 300 Calvin Klein stores globally: product recommendations, tailored search, multi-device navigation, and a back-of-house overhaul.
Strategy Experience Omni-channel Product Performance
Insight
Positioned content as a bridge to the guest.
Retail spends its technology where shoppers can see it: windows, screens, launches. The fitting room gets none of it, and the fitting room is where the sale is decided. She is half-dressed, one size away from a purchase, and her only interface is shouting over a door. The associate outside is running the store from memory: stock, sizes, alternatives, all of it in her head, none of it in her hand.
So the opportunity was never to add technology to the shop floor. It was to add service to the silence, and to arm the people who already carry the store.
Challenge
Making a design hotel native to the feed.
One platform, across brands, borders and job descriptions. The system had to run in more than 300 stores in 14 countries, speak over 10 languages, and hold together across six digital touchpoints, from the mirror in the room to the device in the associate's pocket to the stock screens in the back. It had to be multi-brand by design, which meant a scalable design system and digital brand guidelines rather than a single app. And it had to arrive without interrupting trading: rolled out into live stores, learned by staff mid-shift, trusted from the first week. A tool the floor does not trust dies faster than any gadget in a drawer, and this one had to earn thousands of uses a day.
The obstacle was never awareness alone; it was showing up with culturally relevant stories, at scale, while protecting a distinct aesthetic and voice. With little prior creator presence, the right voices had to be found and the right organic formats established — creators who reflect the mobile citizen, and creative that feels human, visual, and consistent with citizenM's design standards. The programme set out to:
Customer Experience
Positioned content as a bridge to the guest
Three people share one square meter of decision. The visitor, who does her deciding alone in the room and abandons the sale the moment friction beats intent. The associate, selling with both hands full, who needs the answer to "do we have this in medium" faster than the walk to the stockroom. And back of house, where the truth of stock actually lives, updated in real time or not at all. The platform serves all three or it serves nobody, so every feature was designed twice: once as service for the visitor, once as a tool for the person answering her.
01 IN THE ROOM
Customer
Decides alone, half-dressed,one size away from buying.
02 ON THE FLOOR
Associate
Sells with both hands full, runs the store from memory02 BACK OF HOUSE
Stock TeamOwns the truth of inventory,
2,000+ requests a day land here
Strategy
Positioned content as a bridge to the guest.
We treated the fitting room as a platform, not a gadget. One system, strong enough to run 300 stores in 14 countries, flexible enough to speak 10 languages across six touchpoints and more than one brand. In the room, the mirror answers what used to require shouting: other sizes, other colors, tailored recommendations, even the lighting. On the floor, Sell & Assist runs on smaller, discrete screens with up-to-the-minute stock accuracy, the full regional catalogue and integrated checkout, so the associate closes the sale where the intent is, designed and continuously improved since 2021 across 200+ stores in Europe. Behind it all, a responsive stock management overhaul turned back of house from a walk into a glance.
The way of working was as designed as the product. Every feature ran the same road: discover the right challenge, define the biggest opportunity, draft the right solution, deliver it the best way, with research feeding hypotheses, prototypes feeding tests, and tests feeding the build. Two years of that loop is why the platform kept earning its place on the floor instead of launching once and fading.
And the rollout was run as a campaign, because inside a store the first audience is the staff. Before a single visitor touched a mirror, the platform launched to the people who would stand next to it: pilot flagships first, then country waves, each wave carried by the same communication cascade, a regional briefing for managers, a floor huddle at shift start, onboarding inside the tool itself, and printed quick cards in every language the system speaks.
Champions in each pilot store became the trainers for the next wave, and their feedback wrote the following sprint. Store activation closed the loop on launch day: the mirror demonstrated live on the floor, associates running the script they helped write, adoption measured the way a campaign measures reach. Uses per day is the applause.
Reflection
What the arc prooved
The platform holds because it keeps paying rent in seconds saved. The mirror answers without a shout, the associate answers without a walk, and back of house answers 2,000 times a day without a single new meeting. Design has continued since 2021, sprint by sprint, which is the difference between a launch and an operating standard. The record:
4.2× ROI on the always-on creator programme
3.7M Impressions across the US and the UK
92% Positive sentiment — emotional hospitality reads as hospitality
18.5k Clicks to site, from 32 assets across 5 locations