Reshaping Fashion for a New Era with Smartphone Scanning & Augmented Reality

Fashion retail is in the middle of a digital transformation, with Augmented Reality (AR) emerging as a powerful tool to enhance in-store and online experiences.

AR bridges the gap between digital convenience and physical product interaction—creating immersive, engaging shopping journeys that drive confidence and conversion.

In this guide, we explore how AR-powered smartphone scanning is redefining fashion retail, improving customer experiences, and unlocking operational efficiencies.

It’s hard to overstate how significant an innovation the smartphone has been. Retail, and society itself, is being transformed in its image.

“We are in the first decade of a century long shift, where retail is re-organizing from the automobile (the 20th century) to the smartphone (the 21st century).”
Andy Dunn, Founder, Bonobos

Shopping in the fashion and lifestyle space has undergone major shifts:

1. Towns were born as marketplaces – Local network of producers, with towns as the focal point for commercial and cultural life.
2. 20th Century retail oriented itself around the car – Suburbia, retail parks, malls, and big box retail.
3. 21st Century retail reorients itself around the smartphone – eCommerce and mCommerce continue to grow, need to cater for delivery, on-demand, smaller more frequent shopping trips.
4. Pandemic impact – Growth in eCommerce and order fulfillment, increase in consumer adoption of services like click-and-collect and self-scanning.

Life has gone mobile and the way people shop is part of this transformation. People across all demographics are increasingly mobile-centric.  All of our interactions are based around the ubiquitous smartphone in your hand – and Scandit Smart Data Capture software helps retailers take advantage of this fact to solve the challenges you face.

The modern fashion shopper expects experiences that are interactive, visual, and personalized. AR delivers exactly that—enabling retailers to:

• Enhance product storytelling with digital overlays showing fabric quality, sustainability, care instructions, and styling ideas.
• Offer virtual try-ons for clothing, shoes, and accessories—reducing the need for fitting rooms.
• Increase purchase confidence, decreasing returns and exchanges.

Smartphones are central to delivering AR in stores. With a simple scan of a QR code, barcode, or NFC tag, shoppers can:

• Access virtual fitting rooms
• View available sizes, colors, and complementary products
• See personalized offers based on purchase history or preferences
• Complete purchases via mobile checkout—reducing friction and wait times

This turns every smartphone into a self-service assistant and product expert—empowering shoppers while freeing store associates to focus on high-value tasks.

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Retailers must ask themselves – ‘How are we engaging and empowering our salesforce, and ultimately our customers, via mobile?’

Mobile technology enables retailers to:

• Make employees’ jobs more efficient and more enjoyable.
• Improve the customer experience to drive more sales.

Scanning is an essential activity, with many tasks like shelf management or mobile point of sale requiring hundreds of scans per employee per day.

Fashion retailers might typically have a handful of hardware scanners in each store today, shared by staff due to the expense.  With Scandit technology, every member of staff can be equipped with a smartphone which is capable of matching fast and accurate scanning performance due to the lower device cost.

Delight customers by putting information at your employees fingertips

Consider this everyday example: a customer walking into a store and being unable to find an item of clothing in their size and colour.  This often results in an ineffective and disappointing interaction between buyer and sales assistant.

• The customer approaches an assistant to request a particular item.
• The sales assistant goes to a back office or stock room to check availability on a PC.
• The customer is waiting, unsure if the employee will return with what they want or how long they should wait.
• Meanwhile the sales assistant must check availability and find the item, wondering if the customer is still waiting, has moved or has even left the store.
• If the employee can’t find them again, it’s perceived as bad service, while the employee feels their time has been wasted.

Speed and service are even more crucial in the post-pandemic landscape, as customers want to get in, get what they need and leave – without dwelling.  By using scanning-enabled smartphones, a sales assistant instead scans the desired item and checks in real-time for the relevant information on the spot. They don’t have to leave the customer’s side, unless it’s because they are actually going to retrieve the item.

Even if that item isn’t available, the assistant can alert the customer if it’s in stock in a different branch nearby or if it’s available for home delivery, potentially saving a sale.

Make checkout contactless with mobile POS

No one likes queuing and Mobile Point of Sale (mPOS) helps fashion retailers short on space say goodbye to long lines.

Scandit scanning technology supports fast and easy retail point-of-sale transactions on mobile devices anywhere in store. This could be on specific pop up tables to supplement fixed tills or enabling employees to take payments in aisles while interacting with customers or when they see queues building up.

A barcode scanning-enabled smart device, integrated with your mPOS solution, cuts waiting times and reduces the costs of checkout infrastructure and staff. mPOS is a flexible technology that can be implemented quickly, without much fuss. It’s a fast, versatile solution that can be adapted for different store setups.

Omnichannel fulfillment is win-win for retailers and customers – if your inventory data is up-to-date.

Given the high cost of a traditional Hand-Held Scanner (HHT), most retailers never have enough devices in store, and as a result, stock counting is often compromised. Store stock positions often remain inaccurate for the purposes of stock replenishment and fulfillment.

Streamline efficiency with mobile barcode scanning and AR

Give multiple employees scanning-enabled smart devices integrated with backend systems, and as they fulfill orders, your inventory levels are constantly updated with every scan.

Ultimately, by putting more devices in more pairs of hands, retailers can achieve far greater stock accuracy with staff carrying out rolling stock and inventory counts.

Scandit’s MatrixScan software can also quickly capture data from multiple barcodes in a single scan, reducing time on inventory management by up to 40%.  Boxes of items can be scanned and booked into the stock room in one go. It’s a real time-saver.

In the mobile-first world, with unpredictable changes and with the pressure to remain competitive in the face of digital transformation, the ability to have scanning on any camera-enabled smart device is fast becoming a game changer. Scandit technology allows retailers to explore numerous possibilities to enhance interactions with consumers and empower employees.

These are just a few of the ways Scandit can deliver incredible cost benefits to fashion retailers keen to capitalise on a mobile-centric world without breaking the bank.