KnickerPicker: Interactive lingerie shopping without leaving the house

Tons of new lingerie sites are launching right now, but one store has broken the mould with a novel approach for online lingerie shopping – “trying on” lingerie using videos. KnickerPicker.com uses model videos to show you what lingerie looks like on a “real” person, letting the user drag-and-drop lingerie sets onto a choice of three women representing varying sizes and ethnicity. The folks at KnickerPicker have given us a handy demonstration video of their interactive features:

(If this video is too wide or doesn’t show up, just visit the KnickerPicker site to check it out)

Interestingly, KnickerPicker isn’t actually a retailer – they have layered their service over Be Cheeky’s product selection, giving you a new way to shop with an established retailer who enjoy an established catalogue of brands. This is a really clever partnership, as video can be prohibitively expensive for existing retailers, and KnickerPicker can focus just on their key service instead of handling stock as well.

KnickerPicker’s interactive features represent a new trend of interactive shopping in the online lingerie world – Silk Storm was first to introduce video in their product catalogue, and KnickerPicker’s integrated video represent a next step towards “interactive shopping.” Co-founder Dan Gleeson of KnickerPicker said they started the site because they wanted to offer a “more rewarding shopping experience,” instead of a site “that more closely resembles a paper-based catalogue.”

You can see Gleeson’s point when you try out a product – it feels less like shopping and more playing dress-up with an incredibly patient model. As you browse through the collection, you can’t help checking each piece out to see how it looks on each model and how the lingerie fits as the models walks back and forth.

There was a real danger of KnickerPicker becoming a fad implementation of a fad idea — interactive models wearing lingerie is a minefield for a serious-minded retailer, and we’re impressed at how well KnickerPicker has pulled this idea off. Video is difficult to get right — especially in the lingerie industry — and we hope to see other interactive shopping ideas as well-executed as this one. Check Knickerpicker out for yourself at Knickerpicker.com