Clarks is no small operation. They’ve got more than 1,000 stores throughout the world and they also manufacture their own shoes which they sell in their own shops, as well as via third party retailers.

The new system embeds an iPad in a traditional plastic foot gauge:

A plastic bar touches the tip of the toes, but the precise measurement is recorded by the tablet’s touchscreen, rather than the human eye.

The team has also developed a new kind of digital tape measure as part of the system. The Digitape looks like a plastic claw, and measures the width of the foot by gently clamping around it, before communicating the data by bluetooth to the iPad.

The child is enticed through the whole procedure by animated cartoon characters, who hop around telling the youngster what to do next.

Behind all this is the goal of gathering data to aid their shoe manufacturing operation. That data is the real gold here, allowing Clarks’ shoe manufacturing operation to get ahead of the curve on trends in foot size changes and buying habits.

Smart, smart, smart. [HT to Rob Richman]