Brick-and-mortar retail has changed significantly during the last 20 years. Over the 20 months of the pandemic, this trend accelerated. Late-adopting businesses that experienced issues prior to COVID-19 were compelled to make dramatic changes and close their doors. But, brick-and-mortar stores are a growth industry and the basis of a successful business strategy for health-conscious retailers who understand the buying process and utilize cutting-edge strategies.
With the world finally recovering from the Pandemic, cities now require a fresh movement, something to inspire people and draw them in. Just like before online shopping became the norm.
Understanding your target demographic and providing them with something they can’t obtain online is essential for success in the retail comeback. Brick-and-mortar stores can succeed in today’s digital retail climate with the correct strategy.
Image Credit: Braun Büffel Store
Consumers still value the benefit of touching and sizing before purchasing
Technology is wonderful and may compensate in many ways for a lack of physical presence.
Nonetheless, matter how practical the internet retail industry has become, physical stores continue to offer a level of comfort that online shopping cannot match. Many people still prefer to purchase in person for urgent requirements like groceries or a new phone charger. Customers frequently want other things like apparel or a relaxing bubble bath the same day they place their order.
In addition, brick-and-mortar stores are still advantageous regarding waste reduction generated by needless packaging and shipping in addition to offering customers convenience and unique experiences.
Several online stores have to put their items in sizable boxes with loads of padding to guarantee that they will reach a perfect shape. Nonetheless, physical stores allow customers to buy products without any additional packaging, a feature that has become more important with the rise of millennial and Gen Z consumers whose attention to environmental issues is paramount.
The New Retail Design
It's not a recent development for retail design to undergo a creative transformation. Before the pandemic, significant changes were taking place, which sped up inventiveness and the drive to remain relevant. Retailers were lacking some uniqueness long before Covid because they had become overly transactional, but in the years leading up to 2020, creative improvements were already being made to re-engage customers.
As one-way systems and hygienic transactions were prioritized during the pandemic (as if we needed reminding! ), the experiential design clearly took a backseat. Since then, we've been aware of the necessity for businesses to push the limits of creativity with store flexibility, experiential design, and 'phygital' touch points, paving the way for a 'New Retail'. With virtual stores, sustainable store fixtures, or immersive environments, this new era is giving marketers countless opportunities to test the limits of customer loyalty and the customer experience.
Image Credit: the Hipanda flagship store in Tokyo
The Art of Window Display
We believe that window design needs a new focus to be enjoyable and interesting once more. The design of shop windows has always been devotedly partnered with art. Cities adorn themselves with stores that represent a particular era or fashion and recreate memorable moments.
Because they create "pieces of art that dress" with an essence of lasting worth through time rather than ready-to-wear, luxury brands and designers with a close link to art are well aware of this.
Jacquemus' latest project during Paris Fashion Week, March 2023, "JACQUEMUS OBSESSION" with Galeries Lafayette including 3 boutiques, 1 coffee shop, and 1 flower shop taking over all 16 store windows of Galeries Lafayette is an excellent example of how a brand can turn store windows into art pieces. For this project, Galeries Lafayette's store windows are turned into all about the designer/the brand's obsessions: love, the french coast, bucket hats, pool sides, dogs, photobooths, breakfast, coffee, biscuits...
Video Credit: Jacquemus
Keeping It Experiential
Experimenting with various store formats is one method to bring the focus back to the in-store purchasing experience. Nevertheless, experimental concept stores can help your brand in ways more than just enhancing the shopping experience. You can use various store formats to test out new concepts and increase awareness of your company.
So, which concepts merit testing further? And where do you get the inspiration for these experiments? To gain inspiration, look at these three retail spaces that have experimented with their own concept stores:
1. STORY
New York City concept store STORY is on a mission to reinvent retail. Their concept store changes about every month. The 2,000-square-foot store “takes the point of view of a magazine, changes like a gallery, and sells things like a store,” according to the company website.
Here’s how it works: STORY sells curated products from different brands. These items are selected around a common theme. Every four to six weeks, STORY reinvents itself with a new theme. Past themes include love, wellness, creativity, and the holidays. What originally started as an experimental startup has turned into a permanent NYC retail concept.
Image Credit: Story
Key Take Away: Stay fresh and Relevant
Even the most loyal clients can always learn something new from Stories since they frequently reinvent themselves. All year long, the store remains relevant by staying current. And a fundamental strategy for encouraging recurring purchases is to make a new promise.
2. Burberry Open Spaces
Burberry opened a store with a social focus in Shenzen in the summer of 2020. Thanks to its design, customers may interact physically and online with the items and brands at the store. They can reserve seats for store events or tables in the store's Thomas' Cafe, for instance, and access retail tours and product information using the messaging app WeChat.
Customers who engage with Burberry on WeChat are rewarded with the social currency in the shape of an animated animal avatar that changes over time. Customers are also rewarded with new characters, personal content or unique dishes from the Thomas Cafe menu as they interact with the brand, which can also be done by scanning QR codes on the products in the store.
Image Credit: Burberry Open Spaces
Image Credit: Thomas' Cafe
Key Take Away: Keep it Personalized and Shareable
One way of creating an experiential fashion store is to meet the customers’ individual needs. To create highly engaging experiences, relevancy is king – and relevancy for the individual customer is in today’s highly digitized society often created through data. Collecting data on your customers will help staff recognize the customer as soon as they enter the door, and it can be combined with other technology, such as an app, that customers can use throughout the entire store experience. If your store ends up on Instagram, you know you have been successful in creating an engaging experience. Consumers want to share their best experiences and most cool moments, why Instagram-worthy installations are a great way of not only pleasing visitors but also a very cost-effective marketing tool to attract new customers.
3. Nike House of Innovation
Nike's House of Innovation concept is always worth a visit thanks to a wealth of omnichannel integrations like pickup cabinets and return service, but in January, Nike transformed their flagship store in Paris into a special House of Innovation with an experience focus that offers a virtual adventure. Here, customers can engage with the products using augmented reality technology on their smartphone, which allows them to do things like to explore product stories or call up virtual animals by scanning QR codes throughout the store. Also, the store features a "geofence microsite," which serves as a virtual basecamp and gives consumers a checklist and an interactive map with the route they must go to finish the entire trip.
When customers have completed the adventure and the various tasks, they are rewarded with a physical gift, which they receive from an employee in the store, and a virtual model of the brand’s “ACG Hiker” mascot on the phone.
Image Credit: Nike House of Innovation
Key Take Away: Focus on Immersive and High Service
Keeping up with the digital consumer means creating immersive experiences in the physical space. The priority is not the sale, but the level of customer engagement, you can create. Experiential stores offer customers the maximum value for their time by not wasting it. This means exploring how you can offer a high level of service that eliminates time spent on aspects of the visit that doesn’t add value to the experience, e.g. eliminating cues, making it easy to find products, etc. But a high service level also means more time-consuming services as long as they add value to the visit, e.g. being able to co-create or personalize fashion products.
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