Print does not have to be static. Sun & Ski Sports, the outdoor sports retailer founded in Houston in 1980 and now operating more than 30 stores across 12 states, sells gear customers want to experience before they buy. WWC made products come alive by integrating augmented reality into the retail purchasing experience. Shoppers scan a QR code in a printed piece, direct mail, product catalog, or booklet, tied to a specific product, and it appears in their living room. WWC built the experience across AR/VR development, design and creative, and user experience, delivering it through .usdz files simple enough to run entirely on the shopper's phone. For a retailer carrying more than 350 outdoor brands, the work turned traditional print collateral into an interactive shopping tool and gave Sun & Ski a new way to shorten the distance between seeing a product and buying it.
A product on paper is easy to skip. Sun & Ski Sports, founded in Houston in 1980, had grown to more than 30 locations across 12 states on first-hand expertise and gear from over 350 outdoor brands. Its printed sales pieces still reached shoppers at home, but print could only show a product, never let anyone experience it. Sun & Ski asked WWC to close the gap between the page and the purchase, using augmented reality to bring specific products into the spaces where customers would actually use them, without adding friction to the buying journey.
WWC integrated augmented reality directly into Sun & Ski's retail purchasing experience, across direct mail, the product catalog, and a booklet, designing the mailer itself as well as the technology inside it. Each featured product carried its own QR code, and a single scan placed that item in the customer's living room, delivered as a .usdz file that runs on the shopper's phone with no app to download. WWC shaped the AR development, design, and user experience to keep the technology invisible and the product in focus. The interaction turned browsing into evaluating, letting shoppers judge gear at home before visiting a store. Print became the trigger, the phone became the showroom, and the product did the selling.
Shoppers embraced the experience, making it the most widely scanned AR promotion at the time of its launch, and it stayed well used long after the novelty stage. Sun & Ski saw an increase in sales during the program, and while no retailer can draw a straight line from a scan to a register, the direction was clear. More importantly, the work proved print still has a future in retail, not as a static page but as a doorway to the product itself.
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