LARP or Live Action Roleplay is no longer relegated to creative high schoolers in parking lots. As we emerge from the pandemic, consumers of all ages are driven to escapist, in-character retail experiences. The reason? Most consumers nowadays have more to escape from and looking “cool” has become more about individualism than conformity. It’s the perfect environment for people to get weird. “Experiential retail” isn’t just a buzzword that retailers whip out to describe pop-up locations or in-store events. Themed experiences such as the …
Experience
Pop Goes the Retailer
Let’s see: There are more than 30,000 dollar store formats in the country right now. Some 800 HomeGoods locations. Another 800 Bed Bath & Beyonds. And close to 150,000 convenience stores in America. But Popshelf? They have barely 75 locations across the country. Fresh and Direct Taking the best bits and pieces of dollar stores, HomeGoods, BBB and convenience stores and melding them into a hybrid format unseen in the retailing world previously, Popshelf is perhaps the freshest retail concept in America today. There is literally not …
The New Age of Wellness: Retailers, Listen Up!
Amidst rising inflation, crippling student debt, unaffordable housing, rounds of layoffs, a lingering pandemic, and a looming recession, workers of all ages are reaching a breaking point. But these stains are most notably affecting our youngest workers, Gen Y and Gen Z. According to LinkedIn, 66 percent of Generation Z wants a company culture built on mental health and wellness. Wellable Labs’ 2022 Employee Wellness Industry Trends Report found that 90 percent of employers reported increasing their investment in mental health programs, 76 …
Glossier’s Next Chapter
Readers, let us not forget this: Emily Weiss, after founding a wildly successful blog that spawned an even more wildly successful beauty brand, is still only 37 years old. Thirty. Seven. She’s achieved more creative, business, and IP success in her tiny time on Planet Earth than most of us can even fathom. Fading Supernova Human nature being what it is, however, the knives have been out for Weiss for a while. When she announced in May that she was stepping down as CEO following a good 12 months of spectacularly scathing stories in the …
Is Best Buy Unplugged?
Best Buy, under Hubert Joly’s run as CEO, defied the odds and became one of the great turnaround stories in recent retail history. Ever since he left, it appears that the turnaround seems to be continuing...but the question is: Is it turning the opposite direction? Impacted by factors both within and outside of its control, the big consumer electronics retail chain has most recently reported disappointing results while introducing a number of new initiatives that may or may not be consistent with its core merchandising strategy. At least one …
Return on Experience, the New Metric
ROI, or return on investment, has been the standard gauge for retailers attempting to quantify how expenditures lead to sales outcomes. Now in an era where customer experience has become the gold standard for building loyalty and lifetime customer value, the term return on experience (ROI or ROX) has entered the lexicon. Indeed, if retailers and brands have learned anything from the pandemic, it’s that brand loyalty has taken a hit, since consumers have become more demanding and less in love with their once favorite brands. So how can …
Hidden Opportunities
Over my career, I’ve worked with a lot of clients that had hidden opportunities to market their products and services, hidden in plain sight. These opportunities come as a surprise to the retail executives I consulted with, and I have noticed that there are still so many ways to deliver meaningful experience to customers that seem elusive to even the most sophisticated and experienced executives. So, I offer some of these observations as food for thought. Anatomy Lessons + Design In 1977 I published my first article on public design in a …
Private Retailing: For Your Wallet Only
One of the more fascinating ideas in retailing that never really caught on involved supermarket checkout lines. Some clever junior executive somewhere decided that instead of rewarding his store’s lowest-spending customers buying 10 items or less with dedicated lanes, why not create a special one just for big spenders who had overflowing carts, 50 or 100 items at least. Alas, while there might be a few such lanes still around, the concept never really gained wide acceptance. More recently new ideas about catering to your best customers seem …