How Goodr Is Supporting Causes and Making the Most of Augmented Reality

Fitness has always been big business, with people all over the globe willing to pay top dollar to gain a competitive edge - whether that's against other athletes or just versus their own limitations.

When we think of sports equipment, our minds are often drawn to weights, treadmills, bikes, and even running shoes - but there are a lot of periphery items which also have a stake in this incredibly lucrative industry. Indeed, the fashion around fitness, the clothes, and other items which play a role in making an athlete more effective at their chosen sport (whether that be through aerodynamics, heat management, or some other factor) and help them look good while doing it make up a big slice of the pie (or rather protein bar).

For example, anyone who has been for a morning run will tell you the sun hanging low in the sky can be rather dazzling - and many early risers will opt for sports sunglasses to help beat the glare in the most fashionable way possible.

Goodr

Launched via a Kickstarter campaign in 2015, Goodr wanted to create a new kind of sunglasses product designed specifically with runners in mind - and a bit of fun to boot.

High school friends Stephen Lease, Ben Abell, and Keri Blunt noticed runners generally don't wear expensive high-performance sunglasses when out running. Rather, they opt for cheap plastic frames - the sort you'd pick up for a few dollars in a gas station. From this realization, they identified a gap in the market for stylish, fun, functional, and affordable shades and Goodr was born.

Goodr prides itself on being 100% carbon neutral and is happy to make its position clear on important political and social issues, such as the Black Lives Matter campaign, and isn't afraid to put its money where its mouth is.

"We are a brand that is built on a $25 pair of sunglasses," said Goodr in a blog post. "So, we will be donating $25,000 to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund to support the work they are doing to fight for racial justice in the hope that this will help all individuals to be able to be unabashedly themselves."

Augmented Reality

Having built its brand on low tech, fun sunglasses, and taking a stand on important social and environmental issues, Goodr is now embracing something a little more tech-focused - namely augmented reality.

Being primarily an ecommerce brand, Goodr runs up against a lot of the same problems as many of its fashion business peers do. Recent research from Vertebrae quantified the main issues customers face when shopping for wearable items online.

• 58% miss not being able to touch or feel products
• 56% didn't know whether items they receive would look the same as advertised
• 59% are concerned with whether items will fit

Of course, the COVID-19 crisis has had an impact on these numbers as well. Because of the risk of transmission from contaminated surfaces, many shoppers are likely to not feel comfortable picking up and handling items in brick-and-mortar stores where hundreds of other people may have been in contact with them.

To meet this challenge, Goodr has embedded Vertebrae's augmented reality technology into its ecommerce experience, allowing its website visitors to virtually try on fun and funky shade designs. The technology is entirely web-based, which means customers don't need to download any apps or sign up to anything in order to take advantage of it, and can get a far better idea of how the products will look on their face than simply flicking through catalogue pictures on a webstore.

And the results are good. Shoppers who use the virtual try-on feature are 41% more likely to convert than those who don't. What's more, products which have the AR option available have seen a sales uptick of 10%. A/B testing has revealed a 12-15% increase in revenue per visit across three variants.

Data is also a big part of the Goodr mission, and the augmented reality technology feature makes even more information available for analysis and use in future marketing campaigns and promotional ideas.

"You have to be looking at your data, all the time," said Head of Consumer Sales and Marketing at Goodr, Dan Weinsoft. "We are constantly reviewing things because it is a shifting dynamic every day. Look at your paid campaigns, because they are going to perform completely differently, and try all sorts of different things. So, if you're not studying your data, and looking at the different segments you have set up, and starting to do more experimentation, you're just going to be completely lost during this time, and then moving forward, because we're going to come out of this in a whole different world."

Final Thoughts

Goodr is a brand on the rise and it's great to see how it's evolved from three high school friends working out of a single apartment to the socially conscious and tech savvy company it is today.

By putting fun and customer experience at the forefront of its mission, and using data and a sense of what is right to drive its decision making, we think Goodr has a bright future ahead of it.

You can hear Goodr's Cofounder and CEO Stephen Lease speak at eTail Palm Springs 2022, taking place February 28 to March 02 in Palm Springs, CA.

Download the agenda today for more information and insights.