Obsess, a leading experiential e-commerce platform that enables brands to create interactive, shoppable online virtual stores and showrooms, today announced the launch of “Shop with Friends,” a feature that enables consumers to shop in virtual stores together with groups of friends. Charlotte Tilbury is among the brands giving their customers a way to turn online shopping into the kind of fun social activity among friends that it often is in real life with just the click of a button in their virtual stores.

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Shop with Friends is the next step in the evolution of e-commerce, providing a more engaging, intuitive and human-centered online shopping experience. The feature brings the 3D virtual shopping experience to life, driving discovery, dwell time, average order value and conversion for leading brands while enabling them to reach new consumer audiences through word-of-mouth as shoppers directly invite friends and family members to join them to shop virtual stores.

“In the real world, so many of us love to go shopping with our friends as a social outing, but, until now, no one has been able to re-create that group experience online,” said Neha Singh, Founder and CEO of Obsess. “Our Shop with Friends video feature lets groups of friends navigate virtual stores together and talk to one another in real time to share advice and inspiration, just like we do when shopping in physical stores. Many younger shoppers have grown up interacting online with friends in video games and esports and this feature brings the best elements of the gaming world to the experience of digital shopping.”

With Shop with Friends, customers can opt to invite others to join them for a virtual store experience by simply clicking a button and sending friends and family a link to the virtual store by email or text. The video feature allows individuals in the group to see and hear one another as they navigate the virtual environment separately or together, just as they might in a multiplayer videogame. For example, when one friend is browsing Charlotte’s Virtual Beauty Gifting Wonderland on CharlotteTilbury.com, others in the group can easily interact, join the shopper on one of three immersive islands dedicated to Charlotte’s gifting universe, look at the shades their friend is trying and give helpful tips, all in real time. Users can opt to view a live video feed of the other participants on the side of their screen or hide the feed to see the virtual store in full-screen mode.

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Charlotte Tilbury MBE, British beauty entrepreneur, makeup artist and Founder, President, Chairman and Chief Creative Officer of Charlotte Tilbury Beauty, announced: “My 3-dimensional Virtual Beauty Gifting Wonderland is at the centre of the Charlotte Tilbury metaverse this holiday season! It combines all the sparkle and retail theatre of our stores with the ease and portability of the digital universe to unveil a truly immersive Charlotte Tilbury experience. Customers will be guided by my Magic Charlotte avatar to enjoy the magic of in-store from the comfort of their own home. Digital innovation is at the heart of everything we do and I am SO excited that we can bring this beauty tech to life for you to shop and play this holiday!”

Charlotte Tilbury Chief Growth & Technology Officer Corinne Suchy added, “We are delighted to announce this launch on CharlotteTilbury.com in partnership with Obsess. The new Shop with Friends feature is a hugely innovative addition to our next-generation online experience. We have always been a digital-first brand and by launching this new feature within our virtual store, we are truly operating as an omnichannel business to bring our customers rich and immersive experiences whenever and wherever they meet the brand.”

Shop with Friends will enable store associates, stylists and influencers to guide shoppers to different areas within the virtual environment to demonstrate products and share styling tips. Wholesale sellers will also be able to use Shop with Friends to highlight products for buyers in virtual showrooms created by Obsess.

Obsess uses virtual- and augmented-reality technologies to create memorable, immersive digital flagship and pop-up store experiences for consumers and to digitize showrooms for wholesale buyers. Leading brands are partnering with Obsess to offer customers an immersive way to discover, shop and experience their products online.

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