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Macy\u2019s has been in the news a lot this week, and many are worried about what the latest round of store closures mean for the long-running retailer, and the future of in-person shopping in general. But Macy\u2019s resident XR guru Mohamed Rajani came by our podcast a little while back to suggest that the future of retail exists in the virtual world.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAlan: Welcome to the XR for Business Podcast with your host, Alan Smithson. Today\u2019s guest is Mohamed Rajani, responsible for VR and AR initiatives at Macy\u2019s. Mohamed is part of the new Business Development and Innovation team at Macy\u2019s, and is responsible for driving change through the development of new retail concepts and partnerships amidst an evolving retail landscape. \u201cMo\u201d also leads Macy\u2019s immersive technology initiatives, including VR and AR in furniture, which is removing key friction points for the customer, enabling an AR view in-room capabilities on the Macy\u2019s mobile app. To learn more about the work he\u2019s doing, you can visit macys.com. \n\n\n\nMohamed, welcome to the show.\n\n\n\nMohamed: Thank you. Thanks for\nhaving me, Alan. Happy to be here.\n\n\n\nAlan: We had the opportunity to\nto have a few calls prior to Augmented World Expo. We were on a panel\ntogether, and you were talking about the amazing work that you\u2019re\ndoing at Macy\u2019s. So let\u2019s start unpacking that. Mo, tell us about\nwhat you guys are doing at Macy\u2019s.\n\n\n\nMohamed: So just a little bit of\ncontext that our team does. Our team\u2019s about two and half years old.\nI\u2019ve been with the company for over eight years, across a variety of\ndifferent functions. But about two and a half years ago, as a\ncompany, we decided to establish a dedicated team that\u2019s purely\nfocused on what\u2019s new, what\u2019s next. That\u2019s focused on the emerging\nconsumer landscape, the emerging technology landscape, and making\nsure that the Macy\u2019s brand continues to be relevant not only today,\nbut 10, 20, 30 years from now. So as a team, we\u2019re purely focused on\nlooking at new business models, new concepts, emerging technologies,\nbut then really tying those to our strategic businesses. We want to\nmake sure that any new innovation that we bring into the organization\nhas a lasting impact. But more importantly, a meaningful impact that\nis actually moving the needle. \n\n\n\n\nSo if we think about from that context\nof how we ended up playing in virtual reality and augmented reality,\nin our business we have a strategic business fillers, and furniture\nis one of them. It is a business that is high touch, a high margin\nbusiness, so it\u2019s margin accretive, more profitable to the company,\nand it\u2019s destination business for us. We\u2019re top of mind for the\ncustomer when they\u2019re thinking about furniture. And if you\u2019ve had any\nexperience in buying furniture, it is not a very easy process. It\u2019s\none of the few businesses that\u2019s still overwhelmingly physical\npurchases. More business happens in-store than online, and by a\nhigher margin. And part of it is just the friction involved in it.\nYou don\u2019t know how it\u2019s going to look, how it\u2019s going to fit. And\nit\u2019s a business that we, as a company, need to fortify. It\u2019s a\nbusiness that if we want to remain relevant for the next five, 20\nyears, we want to make sure that we\u2019re not only fortifying the\nbusiness, but growing and capturing market share. So is that context,\nwhereas we came across emerging technologies as part of our job, we\nwere navigating the landscape and looking at what\u2019s coming out. \n\n\n\n\nThis was 2016, into 2017. We started\nseeing virtual reality technologies, especially in the furniture\nspace, and we started exploring and we wanted to make sure that there\nwas a practical a