Retail VR

Imagine you could show customers your business without them ever leaving their house. You could show them every product on your shelves, or every office room available for use. Your customers would be able to visualize your business before ever stepping foot in your space! Retail VR LLC is turning technology into art to help small businesses do exactly that! Based in Strasburg, VA, founder A.D. Carter works with small business owners to translate their physical workspaces into the digital world by using 360-degree imaging technology. Each virtual reality model includes clickable rooms to help visitors navigate your business, replicating the in-store experience

Carter is a Startup Shenandoah Valley (S2V) alum and, recently, he helped support another S2V alum business, Jon Henry General Store, in New Market. Carter’s virtual reality replica of the Jon Henry General Store allows visitors to “walk around” and see what’s inside the store prior to visiting. Carter enjoys working closely with other entrepreneurs, especially S2V alums because they can combine different ways of looking at projects and problems. He said “when entrepreneurs work together it’s like ‘look at my sandcastle, look what I did” which sparks new creativity in their work.

experience

Everytime you talk to Carter, he is most likely already brainstorming something new for his business. While he jokes that he is simply unable to sit still, it is that constant creative energy that marks him as a self-described “artist at work”. To him, visualizing different applications of technology, building, and playing with tools is like “mixing paint colors for DaVinci.”

The last time that we spoke with Carter, we - naturally - met in a virtual meeting room to view one of his latest projects, a construction site. Unlike your ordinary Zoom meeting, we were able to tour the entire project without leaving our desks. During our conversation, Carter gave us a hint of what’s to come for Retail VR: He is working on a virtual porter to be able to link several projects together in a single space, allowing businesses to have multiple models and iterations of their work all in one place.

Check out more of Retail VR’s work, and keep an eye out for A.D. Carter as he continues to push the boundaries of technology to create new “technology as art.”