Q20 Retail Ideas

Retail post COVID-19

Fri, 10 Apr 2020 17:03:24 GMT

A multi-tier approach to dealing with uncertainty

Everyone is grappling with the realities of this pandemic. What it means for their business, customers, employees, and the future of their brand is uncertain. As dire as that sounds, always keep in mind, this will all end eventually. "Social distancing" and "shelter in place" orders will end. People will leave their homes to seek out social interaction with rekindled interest. That interest will be more than just a desire to no longer have a screen as a dinner companion. For many, it will be returning to brick and mortar retail.

Quarter20 is always looking ahead, and now is no different. When people go into stores, what will they find and how will it be changed is a question that we are looking to answer. Going forward, we see a few levels of response to make returning customers feel safe in your space. Our area of expertise centers on how your retail spaces look, feel, and function. For concerns about staff, there are many other resources. We hope that you are listening to your employees' needs and providing the protection they need right now. Your actions now will help you retain good people but are also are a signal to your shoppers. Our focus is making sure your retail spaces are the most they can be as folks return to stores. We will run through a few ways to approach the new normal. Whatever steps you take, remember that just because this is what is front of mind for everyone and will be for the foreseeable future, does not mean that your brand should react in ways to tie your retail space to this pandemic. We hope to guide you through creating a safe, engaging space where your brand is the focus, nothing else.

Tier 1 - What you can start doing now

If you are currently keeping your stores open, tier 1 consists of how to meet the CDC , WHO , and local health guidelines. The foundation of any reasonable response is centered around direct communication with your customers and being flexible for whatever comes next. Tier 1 focuses on experimenting with communication to find what works best for you and your brand while allowing you to still adapt to new information as it develops. Change is confusing for everyone, especially with so many conflicting options about how to act. You cannot rely on conventional social norms to build on to determine how people will act in an indoor public space. Focus on clear wayfinding communication in your space at each step in the process - entice, enter, engage, exit, extend. When people enter- first lay the groundwork for what people should expect in-store during this event, direct different shopper types (pick-up, returns, shopping, check out, etc.), explain what people do when they wait, dictate how far apart they wait from each other, explain what is next after each step, and then ultimately how do they leave the store safely.

A few ways to achieve quick changes to address today's concerns are by rearranging retail layouts patterns to make more space and prevent bottlenecks. Typically, high traffic areas are packed with visual merchandising. For keeping spaces clean and open, graphic merchandising and product storytelling that hit the right tone will serve you better than cross-merchandising. Being upsold will turn people off. Messages around what you are doing now to keep your store safe or your approach to addressing COVID-19 can reassure your customers that you are looking out for them and appreciate them. At each step of the shopper journey, always keep in mind how close each participant will be to each other. For instance, waiting areas will require replacing banks of chairs with graphic tools like temporary floor decals to show proper distancing and freestanding signage in conjunction with well-placed moveable physical guides like stanchions. People will need the cues at each point of where to stand and where to move. These are all easy to move and repurpose. While at check out, distance or plexiglass barriers between a customer and employees along with graphic explanations of where to stand and what are the safe steps to take will make a new process clearer. Lastly, look at the rate people move through your space and what steps you need to take to slow that without boring your customers. A layout that allows for multiple customers to be in your space but not near each other is possible for some, and others may have to look at phasing shopping or accelerating aspects like pick up or altering hours to allow at-risk customers a safe period to shop. If your space is very small and you have a way to directly talk to interested customers, setting up shop by appointment may help give your customers the best possible experience while allowing you to properly reset the space each time. Right now, the goal is to make everything clear and uneventful but it is also an opportunity to find what types of communication people respond to and develop a larger cohesive plan to expand what is working into set practices.

Tier 2 - Mid-level alterations

A step up from experimental communication and clearing space is to setup physical manifestations of your effort and to ensure your customers feel safe. Tier 2 is building on tier 1 but factoring in a longer timeline, which allows you to consider more permanent options to implement new store processes. These are steps to set in motion while your stores are open or to consider while your stores are closed and looking to reopen soon. At this point, you have time to order sanitation kiosks, upgrade your stanchions to look less temporary, and create cohesive printed signs to better implement set paths through your space.

Brick and mortar's biggest strength over online is now one of its largest obstacles – lots of people touching your products. Tier 2's will address how to navigate the new balance retail needs to strike in the tenuous weeks after shoppers return to stores. Tier 1 is more about addressing needs of getting what they already know, tier 2 now opens up to customers exploring new items or giving it the final evaluation before purchase after looking online during their isolation. We will need to look at this barrier from several different angles. To start with, we will explore the boundaries to product merchandising. Do any of your systems carry the perception of being unsanitary? Packed together apothecary jars used to be a chic merchandising system. Now they may elicit fears that they are masses of hard to clean items. After the 1918 pandemic, the communal drinking cup- that everyone drank from at the fountain- went away. Something that was a common everyday interaction became unhygienic. Now is the time to give your merchandising systems a second look before your customers do it for you. Moving to items that should be touched by customers such as items to try on, stores can implement communication that items have been cleaned recently to help alleviate uncertainty for your customers. Once an item has been interacted with, what should customers do with it afterward? Setting up clearly visible steps such as sanitation bins for items can be one method for making the steps you're taking to protect them more visible to your customers. As you consider the products on your fixtures, you should also look at surfaces in your store. A brand's materiality is a long-debated topic but now your customers may worry about the ability to interact with surfaces that don't seem like they have been properly cleaned since the last pandemic. Beat-up wood tables may need to be reconsidered or have an intermediate material cover, like tempered glass over them. Some surfaces are hardy enough to look good while withstanding industrial cleaning agents while not looking like they belong in a hospital. Active antimicrobial nano particles can be embedded into countertops and high-traffic surfaces such as laminates and resins. Metals like Silver and copper- including its alloyed compatriots, brass and bronze- have natural antimicrobial properties. These materials carry the microbial fighting characteristics through the entire material vs. a coating which will need be maintained. Keep in mind these materials don’t make a surface clean, they only contribute to your larger efforts. The US CDC does not recommend these materials over proper personal hygiene and cleaning practices to reduce the spread of contagions. Also, protective screens do not have to look like all you can eat buffet sneeze guards or bulletproof glass 24hr gas stations. Each material type can have viruses, bacteria, and other microorganisms living on them for hours, days, or even weeks. The actual and perceived hygienic qualities of a material will be a part of considerations for the near future. Our goal is to balance the physical requirements for everyone to be safe and have your store be accessible while not losing sight of telling your brand's story.

Tier 1 explored the need for direct communication. Tier 2 is where you should be exploring a cohesive in-store communication plan that spans all graphic content, wayfinding, and employee talking points. Omni-channel is the term-du-jour. Your brand will dictate the tone and type of communication. You also know what platform types your customers most respond to as well. With these tools you can explain what you’re doing to clean your stores – frequency and intensity- to protect your shoppers, what steps shoppers can take to protect themselves, what your employees are doing, or any motivating stories that reflect how your brand is uniquely dealing with this situation. Now is a time where showing you have all your duck in a row really counts.

Getting creative with personal sanitation options. Moving from the quick drop in hand sanitizer dispenser to a more integrated option will help normalize this essential ritual. It is also a habit that- again is essential to combat this virus -which will start to slip as time goes on. Making options readily available and thoughtfully distributed, will help make hand washing second nature. Depending on your space you can look to dispensers which are free standing, wall mounted, or integrated into fixtures. Locations that are purposeful will make the difference – enter, engage, exit. When a customer enters the threshold of your space they can be greeted with a warm welcome, an explanation of your new format, and a complimentary hand washing station. As they move through the space different types of shoppers will engage with your space differently. A pickup shopper will present their phone to show a receipt, UV phone cleaning stations will offer a thoughtful touch after the transaction is finished. When a shopper exploring your space handles a product, they could use a touchless hand sanitizer dispenser that is close at hand. Dressing rooms are also a great pause moment to offer hand sanitizer and a UV phone and change station. In the coming months we will see many companies announce options for hand and face personal protective equipment (PPE) that won’t look like medical gear for your employees and can be c. The right mix of approaches in a balanced integrated form will underpin your emphatic approach to customer concerns.

The final area of tier 2 is about the layout of your stores. As in tier 1 people will need to move through your space differently. You will not need to blanket your space with 6-10' safety bubbles but people will not be ready to bunch together as they did before. If we are honest, corralling people together wasn't a great experience before. A few ways this new space planning might manifest will be with how experiences and categories are distributed around a store. Milling in spaces will not be as common in the near term. Tracing several purpose driven paths through your space is one approach so that a grab and go shopper is not over lapping with someone who is seeking help or on a set path to find something particular. If you already know your key shopper journeys, consider making common touch points across all shopper journeys more frequent so multiple people don’t get stuck in the same space. When it comes to merchandising with several paths, having large visual blocks of a product type in a single category or large single story moments work when multiple people can stand shoulder to shoulder, but now smaller distributed personalized groupings will be needed. Smaller groupings paired with good stories will serve to spread people out and still give an opportunity to delight customers with new ideas. As with the apothecary jars, dense collections of products may elicit the same perception of being unsanitary. Adding options to have items pulled by an associate or where to find them will be key to a multiplied layout. Open up waiting spaces and main thoroughfares so that anyone in your store has a way to avoid others and reduce bottlenecks.

Tier 3 - Largest, most intensive steps

Our last tier focuses on more substantial process changes touched on in the previous tiers. Tier 3 goes beyond adapting what you have or used before to how your customers can best interact with your brand in this new normal. This level also is based on the resources you have. We are not flippant about the hard choices that must be made but also know that some brands will be caught flat-footed. COVID-19 will not be the only crisis we will all face. The next one won’t look like this, but this can be a moment to develop a groundwork that will be more flexible for what may come. We are going to look at a few possible examples of this level of thinking. In this section, we will address significant systemic changes that will allow the brands to adapt better going forward.

Retail is a social experience. Interacting with the actual product is one thing, but the level of service you offer instore is paramount and will continue to distinguish brick and mortar over the commodity of online shopping. The level of service is also the reason people will want to venture out to your stores. To further enhance the services you can offer to customers, bring in thoughtful, well developed digital tools to supplement the types of services that have been working for you up to this point. Customers queuing up at bulky POS is not going to sit well. The ability to interact on a 1:1 basis so that one employee can help a customer all the way through to check out without bringing more people or steps may be more appealing now. A flexible POS system that allows anyone to check out anywhere is no small undertaking. It involves overhauling almost every aspect of a business. It also requires an investment in tools to help employees have the information on hand so customers will want to interact with them.

Another significant undertaking will be if customers want clean product options. Before we mentioned visualizing the efforts you are making in-store such as telling the story, adding markers to packaging that it is clean, or places to put product that customers interacted with. A step further would be to have options for a personal interaction in-store with options to then move to a touchless and sanitized delivery. That could mean products deliver to home after seeing it in-store with a guarantee that it is safe. Looking at new packaging options for your products that are safer is a signal to customers that you have their safety in mind.

Not all the products you have are high touch, high service compatible items, but the touches you bring to having those items ready and accessible is a place where you can differentiate yourself. Running pickups through customer service desks or managing a curbside pick up over the phone is a way to get by for now, but to implement that program at scale will take a new approach. Developing set locations that are engaging can help make pick up more appealing. There have been efforts by larger retailers to bring automated lockers into the process. Walmart has set up a form of a lounge by their pick up lockers. Target has pick up beacons in their parking lot, which still require customers to have their phone scanned. Amazon has tried free-standing outdoor lockers, ones in partner retailers, and whole stores devoted to lockers. We think these are an interesting direction in a time where physical interaction is suspect but needs some help. Perhaps manned pickup windows will make a comeback.
Take a moment to also consider that the four walls of your store are not the limit of your experience. You may still want to limit the number of people you have in your store and need to have people outside. Thankfully, as the weather improves, that will be an option. People can make purchases or select items before they get in your store. You can also prompt direct purchases with smart ads in the area to catch foot traffic that cannot drop into your store. Peapod and Tesco experimented with facilitating online ordering with QR code enabled signage at public transit hubs a while back. Keep in mind shelter will also be a factor for these outdoor experiences, and every locality will have their own restrictions on these structures.

When you are thinking of extensive changes, also look to your store structures. Many locations are set up with a rush to meet a holiday or peak shopping season, so considerations such as airflow are often low on the to-do list. Now is a time to consider if taking steps to improve indoor air quality can help with the feel of your spaces before they are fully open again. Improvements like this are very dependent on your location and lease restrictions. Installing windows or taking down interior walls can help flush out stale air. Taking steps to purify the air, such as new filtration systems integrated into your HVAC or stand-alone, can also increase the quality of your air exchanges. These steps will reduce the amount of air containing microorganisms and help with how the air quality feels. This is also the point to consider if permanent hand washing stations will enhance your customers experience. Coming back to the CDC’s and WHO’s recommendations that handwashing is the best way to reduce the spread of contagion, we would suggest giving this a serious look. Brands like Aesop have integrated beautiful sinks into their spaces as focal points of their diverse locations. They are selling soap so it fits, but retailer may find themselves in the business of selling peace of mind. Running plumbing for new sinks is much easier to do when your space is already being working on rather than as a retro fit down the road. If you are planning to remodel you spaces during this time, think of any future plumbing needs.

Lastly, evaluate how your supply chain weathered this event and take steps to strengthen it or develop a plan for future events. Investigating new options is an intensive effort. Right now, you can establish criteria for evaluating new vendors and start making a list of candidates. As things settle down and business opens up more, you can begin to begin requesting information. With the further development of robust video conferencing adoption, you don’t need to travel around the world to get information anymore. You should also ask your trusted vendors to help you with suggestions and contacts to see what resources you may not have considered. Most of all, this exercise is about understanding how your supply chain and vendors can flex, so when the time comes, you have a better plan to implement.

Quarter20 is built on services to help our customers to make the difficult task of making amazing retail possible. We will keep doing that even with the challenges of a pandemic. We are always here to help our customers identify what these different tiers will look like for them. If this frame work resonates with you and you want help developing your plan forward, we are ready to help you come out of this stronger than before.

5 Major Retailers That Nail Sustainable Design In Their Brick And Mortar Stores And How They Do It

Mon, 06 Jan 2020 14:37:26 GMT

It’s the retail trend that’s gone from out of the ordinary to mainstream. As consumers become more aware of the impact their lifestyles have on the environment, they’re demanding the manufacturers and retailers they support take a more sustainable approach to how they do business.

To be sure, major players in the retail industry have been moving towards sustainability since the turn of the century. But while grocery stores have worked to eliminate food waste and clothing stores have focused on ethical fashion and locally sourced materials, to date less progress has been made on sustainable design in physical stores.

That’s all changing as retailers realize that to stay relevant with a more environmentally conscious clientele, they must make sustainability a core tenet of their operations. Here’s how 5 major retailers are taking on this new world order.

Reebok Makes a Run for It

Reebok’s sustainability practices in environmental impact, labor conditions, and animal welfare have been recognized as leading edge. One of the company’s latest innovations, Cotton + Corn shoes, are aimed directly at its eco-minded fans. With an upper made entirely of cotton, corn-based soles, castor bean oil insoles, and 100% recycled packaging, the brand is making a bold move into leather alternatives, a change their customers welcome.

Urban Outfitters and the Repurposed Space

Operating under the belief that the greenest building is the one that’s already been built, Urban Outfitters’ sustainable design strategy is focused on preserving structures through what the company calls “adaptive reuse.” The brand’s headquarters was built in renovated abandoned Navy shipe yards in Philadelphia and its brick and mortar stores have fascinating previous lives. One beautiful example is their store in the totally transformed Rialto Theater in Los Angeles.

Starbucks’ Splash of Green

It already uses ethically sourced coffee and has pledged to develop and introduce fully recyclable and compostable cups. The brand’s latest plan is to build 10,000 greener stores by 2025, including renovations to existing spaces. In what the company is calling a deeper commitment to sustainability, customers can expect to see innovations like solar and wind power along with the use of sustainably sourced materials for interiors.

Adidas Aims to Save Oceans

In 2017, Adidas sold one million pairs of sneakers made from ocean waste. Now the brand is introducing a line of recycled clothing in its drive to become even more eco-minded. Collaborating with Parley for the Oceans, the company is finding new and exciting ways to use plastic pollution to create sustainable fashion. Its expanded line includes everything from quick-drying tees to shorts and hoodies. A few of their other sustainable goals include reduction of waste, water use, and energy consumption.

Under Armour LEEDing the Way

Like other major retailers, Under Armour relies on LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) to support sustainability and give its customers the transparency and environmental responsibility they demand. New retail spaces include LEED elements such as:

Controlled LED lighting
Remote controlled energy management systems
Concrete floors free of dyes
Recycled rubber flooring
VOC-free paints
Sustainable wood

Along with its other sustainability efforts like recycled packaging and a reduced environmental impact, the brand is using green buildings to further its commitment to a cleaner and healthier world.

Sustainability is an all-round good practice and sustainable design is quickly becoming an important factor major brands want to embrace and project. While trends and market circumstances will always evolve, sustainability as a foundation is here to stay. It holds brands accountable for their carbon footprint while enhancing their reputation and building a loyal customer base. That’s a retail environment where everyone wins.

The Case For Convenience. How These Retailers Built Convenience Directly Into Their Brand Experience

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 14:41:43 GMT

Experiential retail has been gaining popularity in recent years and seems to be here to stay. Ecommerce has disrupted the retail sector, but the desire for In Real Life shopping is on the rise, with millennials being more inclined to experience-related purchases.

There has been a shift in the market, with the younger demographic valuing and investing in experiences over material possessions. Research indicates that consumers are spending less on buying things, but instead on doing things and sharing their experiences on social media. Businesses across all industries are now focused on adapting to this shift. Retailers are driving more people into their stores by ensuring they don’t only receive products and services, but also memories.

Sephora

Sephora has done an outstanding job in making shopping an experience, whether you visit one of their stores or shop online. The Beauty Workshop, for instance, has become quite popular with shoppers who want to learn beauty techniques. Customers who love learning online can now watch how-to videos and get beauty tips via their branded Beauty Talk Community. For shoppers who have a preference for visiting physical stores, makeovers with professional artists is proving to be a worthwhile experience. The retailer also offers beauty classes in stores that cover topics like teen makeup, no-makeup makeup, and age-defying skincare.

Sephora is a great example of how a store can morph into an education center, which allows brick-and- mortar retailers to differentiate themselves from those who operate purely online.

Sephora’s Play! Subscription box is yet another way that the retailer is offering premium experiences. Subscribed customers receive a box in their mail each month containing curated, deluxe samples. After receiving the box and using the samples, the customer then goes online and provides the store with feedback on what she did not like so that the next box that Sephora sends is on target.

Lululemon

Active wear store Lululemon is committed to winning the hearts of consumers. To achieve this, it has transformed its retail stores into studios, where customers can take a yoga classes taught by a professional instructor. Their website also has an inspiration section that acts as a guide for the experiences they offer. The brand acts as a living experience, rather than just something you wear. By use of RFID, customers are also able to access inventories online and know what is in stock and out of stock.

Virgin Holidays

Virgin Holidays has opened a chain of retail concept stores in diverse locations. Their aim is to create a relaxed and immersive holiday experience. This allows vacationers to get into the holiday mood and try out exotic elements of the Virgin Holidays experience.

For instance, there is a mock-up of the Virgin Atlantic cabin, allowing clients to test-run first class and economy seats. The company also offers a virtual reality rollercoaster of global destinations. These stores make use of sensory activities to build excitement around getaways. This allows the company to demonstrate the human side of the brand, which cannot be achieved with online bookings.

Tiffany and Co.

Tiffany is a brand known for its high-end retail experience. To bring more fun into the mix, it has a ‘Style Studio’ that sells the brand’s everyday range, which comprises of a mix of accessories and housewares. It is designed to attract consumers who want to spend less, but still want to enjoy the luxury brand.

Decorated in their iconic duck egg blue color, the store is designed to be more interactive. This includes a vending machine stocked with Tiffany perfume and a #MakeItTiffany personalization bar where you can have your jewelry engraved. Its highly Instagram-able interior is a clear strategy to modernize the brand for a younger and social media savvy audience.

Experiential retail’s focus is curating an on-brand experience from the moment a customer walks through the doors. This allows them to forge long-lasting emotional connections with consumers.

How Retailers Build Convenience in Their Brand Experience

Mon, 18 Nov 2019 14:57:02 GMT

The evolution of the retail market has created a chasm between the online and offline experience. The transactional nature of e-commerce has created a consumer expectation of ultra-convenience, which retailers are incorporating at all levels of the purchase process. In the digital age of convenience, shopping online and in-store from the same retailer can feel different resulting in the massive adoption of technology to help build convenience in shopping experiences in online stores and brick-and-mortar stores. The following tips highlight the various ways that retailers can build a convenience store concept among their customers.

Connect Physical and Digital Experience

Retailers must recognize that the customer journey is no longer linear but an omnichannel fluid experience. Retailers should be able to develop their brand to create seamless experiences that resonate with customer’s expectations of convenience. To accomplish this, you will need to have a customer-centric view of the entire journey right from when the customer makes the purchase decision to the time they execute the purchase.

Through the market attribution model, you can use your web and mobile properties as an avenue to inform and inspire consumers in the purchase process of your products. You should be able to avail both online and offline data to allow consumers to make purchase decisions conveniently and visits your stores online and offline. Argos’s Click and Collect system have been successful in connecting the physical and digital experience by reserving products from the same stock pool for their loyal customers.

Address The Direct-To-Consumer Disruption

Taking brands directly to customers is an emerging trend by innovative brands as a way of optimizing the number of players in the delivery channel. The aim is to increase the margins and enhance convenient shopping among consumers. To apply the DTC model successfully, retailers could improve data sharing with their suppliers through 3D printing, where they demonstrate their customer intelligence. Partners in the supply chain process to adopt the data to improve product development and encourage product personalization.

Automobile retailers such as Tesla and Hyundai have adopted the DTC model by allowing customers to view their vehicles online and have their selection delivered to their doorstep for roads tests rather that visiting showrooms. With a DTC model, retailers will have time to concentrate on connecting consumer experience with brands. Furthermore, retailers can create a 24-hour convenience store concept that is solely mobile with no staff, registers that will self-drive to deliver goods to customers.

Adopt Voice-Activated Shopping Models

Voice-enabled devices to have the potential to disrupt the retail shopping experience. Google Home and Amazon Echo have taken convenience in the retail industry on a high notch by simplifying the product selection and delivery models. They have created an experience that changes the shopping dynamics from a web-based visual process to a voice-based process where customers place orders at the convenience of their location and have them delivered. The Amazon Alexa is a common voice-activated model used by Starbucks to enhance the ordering and delivery process through Amazon Ecommerce. Voice-activated shopping will take the retail space by storm with retailers, especially small retailers, leveraging technology to keep the domain from dominance by larger brands.

Improving In-Store Experience

As a way of leveraging competition by enhancing convenience and customer experience, retail stores across the globe have embarked on improving-instore experiences as a strategic priority. With technology such as interactive kiosks and voice-activated devices, allowing retailers to create greater shopping sophistication, convenience efforts should be made towards building excitement in the stores. As a retailer, you can succeed in market attribution by designing a unique model based on customer data or follow an already existing model. The trick will then be applying the market attribution model to generate personalized synergy between the brands and shopping experience offered both online and offline.

To improve the instore experience among customers, retailers should share information, technology, and tools with associates enabling them to provide value to brick-and-motor shoppers. One way this can be achieved is through mobile technology, where retailers share mobile technology by giving associates such as Walmart mobile devices and applications with the aim of using them identify customers based on their needs, enhance customer engagement, enhance associate training and task management, point of sale (POS), and payment models. In so doing, retailers are able to create convenience in the stores where customers are availed with products without going round stores looking for the shelf where your items are stocked.

The retail industry is in a period of great upheaval and opportunity and change will be inevitable. As retail disruption continues, brands that survive will have to find ways to improve shopping experiences and convenience and provide consumers with the most satisfying post-purchase and loyalty-building interactions. Furthermore, with the retail industry demanding a smaller footprint, retailers will be required to optimize overheads and increase convenience for their shoppers. To accomplish these tasks, you will be required to leverage technology, particularly marketing technology, to meet customers’ expectations at a time when convenience rules the digital space.

The Stages of Retail Development

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 18:28:12 GMT

Anyone who has ever opened retail stores knows that success requires more than just renting space and opening the door. Taking a brand to new places can open the door for creativity in retail design.

At Q20 we ask ‘what if’ a lot. We want to create new retail experiences that engage our client’s customers like never before. While asking ‘what if’ can expose us to the unknown, we support that question with a solid process that allows us to assist clients at any stage in their retail project. In this way, we access our team’s creativity within a structure that keeps projects on time, and on budget!

We would like to offer some insight into our process to show how it supports creative new ways to deliver world class retail experiences. Take a look at the brief descriptions below and get in touch if we can help you in any of these stages for your retail development project.

1 . Design Engineering

Retail store design starts with conceptualizing how to best use the space in order to fulfill the retailer's goals. We work together with our clients to establish those goals, researching sources for the right materials. Fixture requirements, modularity and capacity are all taken into consideration, ensuring adequate fixtures to properly display all of the store's goods.

2. Identify the Environment

Our team works with clients to plan the use of the available space. This includes the marketing side of planning window display areas and merchandising for the retail store design. While this is happening, construction teams are working on site evaluation, permitting and regulatory factors that might affect the project.

Because of restrictions imposed by the environment, each retail store design is unique. Restrictions must be taken into account early in the process, to ensure the best possible results for the retail construction and design project.

3. Engineering and Estimating

We often explore a number of different options, seeking a mix that fits the client's budget. Drawings, specifications and initial pricing are prepared in this stage. At this point, clients make a decision on whether to build custom fixtures, source fixtures domestically or source them overseas to best meet their time and cost requirements.

4. Prototyping Fixtures

With the concept well in hand, prototype sketches or models will be prepared, in a "proof of concept" process. All elements of the design must be vetted, to ensure that the fixtures will fit in the available space, provide the overall aesthetic appearance desired, and provide necessary display space. Further design modifications may be made based upon the results of the prototyping process.

5. Client Approval

While the design process takes shape between the contractor and the retailer, this decision rests solely upon the customer's shoulders. Even so, like other stages of the process, it isn't about accepting or rejecting the overall concept, but rather seeking insight to further refine the design and make any additional changes that the customer deems necessary.

6. Engineering Updates

Based upon the collaborative effort of the client approval process, engineering works to incorporate any necessary changes to the retail store design. Further drawings or prototypes are produced, as required, so the final design meets the customer's needs.

7. Fixture Production

With approval of the design complete, it is time to begin production. We always start out with a first fixture fabrication to check that the design can be completed per the drawings and that the finished product will be the same as the prototypes. Potential problems with the manufacturing process are identified and rectified at this stage. Once everything looks good, any custom materials or tooling is created, and fabrication of the store's fixtures begins.

There are two key elements in this stage of the process: quality control and transparency. It is the responsibility of our quality control team to ensure that each finished fixture matches the intent of the design. At the same time, the production process must be shared with the client, so they can see the progress and verify that the finished product is delivered to specification.

8. Retail Construction Management

All the preceding steps lead up to the build-out. Once complete and the fixtures are installed, the retail store design will meet our customer's needs and provide a retail space which is attractive, effective and experiential.

Installation of the fixtures is the high point for everyone in the team, as it is the cumulative result of the planning that went before. All fixtures are inspected to ensure their function and that they reflect the concept. We maintain close contact with our client through their opening or reopening to support them with any additional details needed to help ensure their success.

Cannabis Dispensary Design Best Practices

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 19:28:39 GMT

What's Hot in Cannabis Retail Design Right Now

As legal cannabis sales continue to grow, there's a movement among dispensaries to improve the perception of cannabis, from educating consumers to providing a luxury buying experience. There is a growing trend across the industry to create spaces that are cutting-edge design statements and feature elegant décor and a one-of-a-kind, branded luxury buying experience.

Cannabis dispensaries are giving designers like us a new canvas to explore. From incorporating natural materials like rich woods, stone, and bright lighting, to creating retail establishments in alternative spaces - creative dispensary design is working to brand cannabis retailing as a luxury experience. We are more than up for that challenge.

Creating A Compelling Brand Through Cannabis Dispensary Design

Cannabis dispensary design has taken to heart the theorem that great design shapes human thinking and experience. Innovative design can help build trust in your brand. The best examples provide users with a high-end retail experience that rides the line between a pharmacy and a luxury wellness retreat.

Cannabis dispensary design offers an unparalleled opportunity to change the perception of cannabis by applying a design-forward approach to every aspect of the store's environment and customer experience. Focusing on creating a safe, flexible environment while providing patients an educational experience in a customer service focused setting can help to build brand awareness. Custom display cases with illuminating shelves, deep, rich colors, natural materials, and bright lighting can work together to create a sense of welcome and calm.

Cannabis Dispensary Design Examples

Retail fixture designers face a challenge to provide a customer experience that reflects the changing perception of marijuana. Cannabis dispensary design incorporates all of the elements of great retail design while addressing the unique display and service challenges faced by the cannabis industry. Designers have risen to the challenge and are creating high-end designs that incorporate materials like reclaimed wood, natural stone, and industrial lighting.

Here are some of the best examples of innovative design in the cannabis retail space today.

Silverpeak Apothecary – Aspen, CO

Colorado was the first state to pass recreational use laws and boasts some of the most innovative dispensary designs in the industry. Silverpeak likens their design to a Sonoma winery. This space is upscale but comfortable and features beautiful natural accents, wood display cases, and bright lighting. They created a warm and inviting atmosphere where people enjoy hanging out after making a purchase. This space features comfortable chairs, and a selection of books and music to enjoy, as well as display cases of merchandise on the perimeter.

Serra –Portland, OR

Serra's design is clean, sleek and simple. Triangular prism-topped cases neatly display products along with smoking accessories similar to miniature, beautifully designed green houses. Tidy little product information shadow boxes look to be taken out of a high end museum.

New England Treatment Access (NETA) – Brookline MA

NETA is the newest entry into the recreational cannabis space in Massachusetts. Housed in a historic former bank building, the design retains the original look and feel but with modern updates. The open and airy interior features a soaring blue domed ceiling, wide stone floor, large columns, a wood-lined balcony, and high arched windows.

Barbary Coast – San Francisco, CA

Brass studded bar stools, exposed brick, oriental rugs, and mahogany accents come together to make a statement at Barbary Coast. This cannabis dispensary design is all luxury and harkens back to the days of luxurious jazz clubs and Prohibition-era speakeasies. Visitors relax on period settees and order from menus that look more like craft cocktail lists than cannabis catalogs!

From stylish, sleek and modern, to pure luxury, these cannabis dispensary designs are incorporating all the best elements of retail design. Comfortable upscale looks create a totally new approach to retail, while helping to adjust the perception of cannabis into an upscale experience for consumers. As more states work toward legalization, we're bound to see creative designers take this niche to new levels of design to enhance the customer experience.

Retail Spaces That Build Community

Fri, 09 Aug 2019 21:10:10 GMT

Branded experiences that foster a sense of belonging and loyalty

Although the digital world has become the prolific 'place' of community, there is a growing shift back to face-to-face interaction. Industry experts now cite community building and personalization as key ingredients for physical retailers to remain competitive in an increasingly virtual marketplace ( Retail's Seismic Shift, 2019 ). In particular, retailers are finding success by delivering these in-store community experiences to consumers who want to feel a part of something larger and desire a sense of belonging.

As you probably know, brick and mortar environments must adapt to go beyond just providing an opportunity to purchase a desired product ( Latest retail results show department stores need more than touch-ups. They need reinvention , 2019 ). And while both online and in-store transactions are part of the overall experience, it's the retail space that currently requires new ideas and layouts. These new layouts must make the physical shopping experience either distinct or preferential in comparison to the easy and quick online checkout. Smart retail brands are placing a strong emphasis on creating a place where their customers love to “hang out” and in doing so are increasing sales both in the store and on their own ecommerce sites, many times while customers are still in the store.

What does a retail community look like?

Retailers that want to create a sense of community are implementing environments that support immersive community interactions . It’s not merely about the product, but about using unique fixtures and storytelling pieces to contextualize products in a relatable life-style.

Many of us recognize Lululemon as a stand out brand that fully embrace the concept of a retail community in their spaces. Their goal: Give consumers the tools and opportunities to become their best selves . This mission inspired a loyal following. Lululemon achieved their community goals through a number of tactics. The company offers free events, like yoga classes and wellness classes in-store. They cultivated content that supported their customer’s goals and integrated that content into their retail and online experiences. They partnered with local influencers, and modeled how their product fits into a lifestyle. They implemented fixture programs that include areas for customers to mingle while sitting at the folding table bar in the fitting room area, and receive personalized, by name assistance using whiteboards on fitting room doors.

Community Retail Brand Building

Really as a brand manager or someone charged with the development of your retail design strategy, you're going to be able to fill in these blanks better than any outside source (other than your customers themselves). There are however, a few central themes we can see in community building around brand experiences. Each takes different approaches that work together to foster emotional connections with consumers.

Giving the product a purpose: Consumers can better learn why a product exists, what its function is, and how that function fits in their lives. Think about in-store experiences, installations, technology, lighting, pathways, and artwork that can inspire this sense of purpose during a customer visit.
Drawing on local communities: Who in the local community is using your product, and how? Finding the leaders and inspiring them to become part of your movement provides you with a human element that ties your retail space into the subgroups these people lead within the community.

Drawing potential brand ambassadors into events, and letting them help strengthen your network provides an organic element to driving retail foot traffic. This is not just influencer marketing, but full ambassador programs with local in-store interaction. For example, lululemon features photos of local fitness coaches (ambassadors) in their retail stores and gives those ambassadors 25% off retail purchases. The result? Walking, talking local advertisements that push people into the retail stores where they can continue their community experience (by seeing their coach featured in the store, etc). These local fitness leaders also provide yoga classes and running clinics or other community events that relate to the product in store. Community events drive traffic, re-enforce brand loyalty and of course drive sales.
Inspiring a narrative: We all have the need to express ourselves, and we trust the word of others like us over the word of the company. Finding ways to inspire these narratives and capture them during store visits are a crucial opportunity. How and where will your community interact, and how will you capture and promote those interactions?
Starting a movement: The need for purpose is growing in the face of endless noise and information. In 2016, a Korn Ferry study showed that, “ companies with teams focused on their organization’s purpose had annual growth rates nearly three times the annual rate for their entire industry. ” This trend continues to grow, with a large number of consumers wanting their retail experience to have purpose and value. In other words, a side of doing good along with their purchase.

Supporting the brand community: What your retail environment requires

While you are assessing what your brand is trying to promote you will want to think about how to pull together a community through your retail environment using your product/purpose/movement. We have pulled together a few examples in this article to get the creative processing flowing. Take a peek at how these global brands implemented community building and then ask yourself questions that help your team design a unique community-oriented retail environment for your next brand experience build out.

REI

Since its humble beginnings, REI has inspired its consumers to get outside, and has provided the tools to get there. However, in recent years, they have upped their game. With campaigns like #OptOutside and a prolific number of events and experiences , the company has created a devoted and thriving community. Step into any of their locations and you will find the support and suggestion you need to take on the outdoors, at whatever level adventurer you are. REI pushes the hands on experiences with in-store rock climbing structures, boulders in their shoe area for trying out hiking boots, and weights to test fit hiking packs all guided by knowledgeable, friendly staff. They have also been thoughtful about the setup. Promoting the outdoors means leaving the tech and digital props that many retailers now use behind. Instead, you’ll find a raw, rugged environment filled with avid outdoors people. Even REI’s frequent local garage sales support the relaxed, happy atmosphere and a community that wants to get back to the basics, and nature.

Brooks Running

Local ambassador athletes, community runs, personalized footwear; Brooks Running is a growing success story. Brooks Running may not have the same notoriety as Nike, but they’ve developed an intensely loyal following. Through outreach at races , a movement to “Run Happy,” and iconic special edition shoes , runners are finding their way back to this brand that’s been around for over 100 years.

Lush

Body care enthusiasts welcome the chance to try out products in-store with the help of cheerful employees. They also love being part of a movement toward zero waste. With eye-catching “naked” campaigns and digital technology offered as a replacement to the information usually found on packaging, Lush is walking its talk, and building a strong community. They also draw people with things like their largest retail space that promotes experience. It houses a perfume library, hair lab, and more unique experiences.

Brand Strategy for Your Retail Design

What is your purpose? What will support that purpose in a retail environment? How will it build community? What campaigns, events, fixtures, spaces, and tools will support building your brand community?

Each strategy will be unique and require a well-thought-out plan. The payoff is succeeding in a retail industry where consumers desire an immersive experience that builds a strong, purpose-driven community.

Retail fixtures that foster in-store community building

Here is a shortlist of fixtures that, when mixed with the right design elements can support in-store community building that will attract customers and help them interact with your products while in the store.

Open spaces that allow for usage / trial / testing of products and other community events for groups of at least 10 people
Bars and bar stools that promote 'hang out' time while in the store
Interactive kiosks that engage customers with each other and the product.
Shelving and racks that promote conversation between customers
Your ideas... tell us how your brand created an in-store community experience below!

Developing desirable spaces in the airport

Wed, 24 Jul 2019 20:21:34 GMT

Airports are getting returns by focusing on experiences

Everyone who flies knows the struggles of finding a rest bit from the hustle of the airport environment. The relentless torrents of people. The same newsstand convenience store you thought you just passed a few gates ago. The looming departure time that is present but also an arduous wait. The dwell time people have after security and before boarding is both captive and rushed. A recent Supply Chain Dive article notes that people spend 90 minutes in large and medium airport terminals before their flight. This “golden hour” offers a unique opportunity for some brands.

Desirable spaces

Airlines are investing big money into making their lounges spaces oases. Gone are the days of space for business travels to get some work done before they board. The bare minims of wifi, a spot to charge, and a few comfortable chairs, and slightly better food than out in the main terminal are gone. Now the airlines are in something of an arms race to out pamper their elite loyalty fliers. Lounges in major hubs now offer amities like celebrity-chef inspired menus enjoyed in sit-down dining rooms, spa and meditation spaces, private day beds, unobstructed views of the tarmac, and kid-focused play spaces. Retail dive spoke with Alexander Darrow, director of United’s premium services, who notes that new lounges can cost upwards of $10 million. That price tag includes more than just a new touchpoint but also designing in future flexibility to accommodate the next experiences that may develop in the decades to come.

Regionalization is also a key point for this new breed of airport environments. Darrow notes that not every lounge can be cookie cutter. Different airports require different experiences. O’Hare’s travelers are looking for something different than those passing through Hawaii. Delta’s lounge at Reagan National Airport features a custom chandelier made to look like branches of a cherry blossom tree, a nod to the cherry blossom tourist. Other airlines are bringing in smaller touches like Alaska’s new airport clubs feature local beers. Airports across the country are working in local art or giving space to local food favorites, or tourism favorite stores. The airport is the first and last touch point for any city or country.

In 2017, travelers spent more than $1.7 billion at dozens of the country’s largest airports' newsstand and travel convenience stores, according to this year’s Airport Experience News Fact Book.

Certain retail brands are using the airport to play to aspects of their identity that speak to the hurried flyer. Brands such as Brooks Brothers, Spanx, and the recently revitalized FAO Schwartz are finding success with experience-driven spaces. They are investing more in these slower spaces. As people rush through the terminal, a little space for pampering or fun are welcome retreats. Other brands have found that an instant gratification emphasis has enhanced their brands. On-demand tech is being delivered by Best Buy vending machines which have popped up across the country. Uniqlo also has seen success with their clothing vending machines. One brand, whose core brand attributes clashed with an airport's inherent lack of privacy, was Proactive skincare. They ultimately shuttered their attempts at selling acne products in airports. Flyers noted that it was too embarrassing to buy.

Is it right for you?

The airport environment stands as a great opportunity for some brands but setting up in a post 9/11 airport also offers some serious challenges that need to be taken into account. Keep in mind every space go through a strict bidding process. Not even Amazon can buy that barrier away (yes, there are rumors that Amazon Go stores may be going into airports, via The Washington Post ). Construction in airports, big and small is fraught with hurdles as to how to get workers and fixtures in through security, negotiating with the many groups who work and manage parts of the airport, working within existing partnerships, restricted working hours, let alone dealing with getting a dumpster. That is just setting up. Operating a space poses many unique challenges such as longer store hours, rigorous staff training to work within security clearances, managing stock, restricted delivery times, and handling returns.

The future of retail is changing across the board, not just on main street. Airports offer some brands an opportunity for new success. The question comes down to, does your brand fit with the demands that different airports foot traffic need?

If you have some more time on your hands, take a look at an airport retail experience that could have been: https://www.core77.com/posts/22785/An-Eames-Idea-That-Didnt-Fly-The-Expanding-Airport

Most of the information for this post was from a recent NYT article

Review: GlobalShop @ RetailX

Thu, 18 Jul 2019 14:20:32 GMT

New and noteworthy from GlobalShop 2019

Senior Project Manager Scott Jacobs and Senior Account Executive Stacey Santoro visited GlobalShop @ RetailX. A few stand out highlights from what they saw.

STEALTH MATRIX - A system to help shoppers locate items they see on display in the store quickly with AR or interactive maps. A next generation sensory-based, item-level tracking system that locates merchandise in a department store or warehouse within three feet, using IoT sensor technology and 2D mapping.

CITY LUXED - Shelf edge technology that is a plug&play system and self-contained for any type of shelf ( 2 sizes available ). It just needs access either through the shelf or at the back for power.

HERO - connects online and physical store. They use Black Book technology platform to give sales associates more tools to talk with customers. They are no longer waiting for the next customer to come in but actively engaging with new and past customers.

STYLESHOOTS – Newest in high output 360 photography systems that allows for video and still images. These high output “photo boxes” come in a variety of sizes with accessories to capture product images for E-commerce use. The systems have a contained space with rotating platforms, lighting, and full editing options. These can be built into our retail designs where products need frequent remote image uploads (image attached). Opening an NYC showroom in Brooklyn late July/August

DATA DISPLAY – Digital signage system platform including audio, interactives, and content management. Data Display offers full digital display solutions including hardware, software, and content management that could complement our fixture designs and installations (video attached).

This year, there was a specific area of the floor dedicated to Pop-up Talks and it was a huge hit. This was separate of the paid conferences outside of the hall. A GREAT idea and experience to get interesting info in 20-30 mins on a wide range of topics. A few talks that were really interesting and are still talking about:

Augmented Experience - AR is nothing new, but there have been advancements in the sensors, hardware, and software to make these experiences more seamless than in the past. This digital experience combines well within a brick and mortar space. The market for AR is set to exceed $50 billion by 2024, according to various trade organizations.
Experiential ROI – Adding Experiential to the Retail mix! It's not just sales that count but also t he building of the brand. How do we quantify that value? Eventually, Experiential ROI will be added to the mix via “experience per square foot” or “engagement per square foot.” An example would be Lululemon adding juice bars to its retail mix and consumer experience.
Unhurried Ambience – In one word – SIMPLIFY. This trend captures the art of slow living and brings this concept into the retail space. A new Time More coffee shop in Shanghai is using this Simple feel to exemplify (fixtures/graphics) the slow process of growing, extracting, and brewing its fine coffee. Sip and relax! (image attached).
Robots at Retail – Walmart’s efforts to improve the employee experience by adding robotic devices to handle the mundane task at hand. Think cleaning floors or maintaining inventory. These “smart assistants” allow the team member to spend more time interacting with customers.

Review: Louis Vuitton Pop-up

Fri, 12 Jul 2019 15:20:21 GMT

Louis Vuitton Men's FW19 Randolph st. take over

If there is anyone that knows how to stand out in Chicago, it’s Louis Vuitton. From June 8th to July 7th, Louis Vuitton’s bright orange pop-up shop made its temporary residence in the West Loop of Chicago. Intrigued by its vibrant and vast nature, Quarter20 had a field trip to evaluate the hype, and experience the fusion between art and retail. Virgil Abloh: Artistic Director at Louis Vuitton/Fashion Designer/Former Creative Director to Kanye West/Jack of all Trades/ is promoting his upcoming Men’s Fall and Winter 2019 Collection through the shop. The Chicago pop-up is its first collection on tour.

The buildings orange exterior patterned with classic Louis Vuitton monograms, paired with orange dipped benches and phone booths on its facade made for great photo ops that worked in Vuitton’s favor — free advertising. We applauded the exterior’s paintwork for its expansive surface area coverage and embrace of the original brick beneath it. When you walk in, Abloh’s monochromatic art installation takes center stage on the first floor of the space. This work is an extension from his exhibition “Figures of Speech” currently at the Museum of Contemporary Art here in Chicago.

At the entrance, you are taken aback by the size of the human figure that extends all the way to the second floor. Among the rest of the open floor, there were other human forms in various casual poses: sitting, standing, cart-wheeling, looking out from a balcony above, and throwing a peace sign. While we didn't notice at first, the orange figures were wearing pieces from the summer collection branded in Louis Vuitton.

Most of the featured collection was set on the second floor. The number of pieces was limited to a small narrow section, and many accessories integrated rainbow-colored elements. It is said that some orange accessories like hats, sunglasses, and bags were exclusively made for Chicago. None of the merchandise had price tags, which exemplified a luxurious experience where the price is an afterthought. We learned that there was no back stock and everything you saw in the floor space was ready to buy and take home. Some figures more resembling of mannequins wore pieces from the Fall/Winter Collection. Upon observing the different statues, one can speculate the orange figures represents the summer season that has come and gone and is making room for the next fashion season.

While the concept of the installation integrated with retail was interesting and accomplished its goal of garnering national attention, not many of us felt compelled by the collection as most of our focus gravitated towards the art installation. The fixtures used for setting accessories and clothes were simple in stature, which allows it to fit virtually in any space and location. Small areas designated for shoppers to sit down were soft and cushioned, compared to other hard-edge stools and tables in the space. As a retail space, it was not functional for a large number of people, but it could very well have been Abloh’s intention to make the entire experience feel like an art gallery. With the growing popularity in Instagrammable moments and locations, news of this pop-up spread like wildfire through social media. It stirred conversation and peaked many's curiosity, something Abloh regularly likes to do with his artwork.

Louis Vuitton opens their next pop-up in New York City this Friday, July 12th. The shop will be transforming into neon green and have another unique collection for New York. It will be open through July 21st.

More info: https://us.louisvuitton.com/eng-us/articles/pop-up-chicago

Review: Neocon 2019

Mon, 08 Jul 2019 18:48:22 GMT

Some key take aways that would work for retail

Neocon has come and gone again from Chicago. The hustle and bustle of those several days are over, as are the crowds packing the area around the Mart and all the best lunch spots around our office. Quarter20’s senior designers along with our summer intern, Nora, walked the show. Neocon is not aimed at new retail products, but we are always on the lookout for new trends, materials, technology, or aesthetics that could work for our clients. If you missed the show, here are our takeaways.

One constant item we kept running into was the ubiquitous personal meeting cube. Both big furniture makers and small vendors were showing them off. They all had different names for them, but it was hard to walk anywhere without running into someone showing off their take on personal meeting spaces. In case you have missed them, these are free-standing, tech-ready, sound-proofed oasis from the open plan offices most of us inhabit. They ranged from the one person phone booth to a ten-person conference room with styles to suit most any office aesthetic. Our take was although we do see the need, who wouldn’t want to step away to a private space for a personal call or want their coworker to take their conference call somewhere else when you’re trying concentrate? These versions were a bit too cozy for our liking. They are certainly much too intimate for most retail situations. Would you want to step into a four-person booth with a salesperson as the door closes behind them? We got to experience that first hand when a salesperson rode our coattails into one to share all of his booths features- it was an intimate experience that we’re not sure everyone is interested in when shopping.

The vast number of personal meeting booths were the most obvious marker of the increase in privacy products for the office but far from the only one. There was a strong undercurrent of ways to create some privacy from almost every brand. Companies do seem to feel that there is a need. We saw new cubical concepts with modular hoods to create a person cave over your desk. There were a ton of new privacy screens. Some of these were for aimed at the vagabond pop-up workshops, but others were without a secondary purpose. They just helped create a bit more personal space. There was a swath of high-backed chairs that felt like delightful reading nooks. If all of this marks a backlash from open plan offices or just a desire for a bit personal space than more than a standard cubical afford, time will tell. It is a good reminder that shoppers also need some personal space. It helps them absorb the information you’re trying to tell them. We all need a little reflection time so don’t forget to give them some space.

Standing desks are the other big item still being pushed. Most every furniture brand has integrated standing desks to some degree. A considerable swath of vendor booths on the 7th floor were showing off their new standing desk components like controls, hydraulics, or adaptive add-ons. This marks good news for brands that are interested in adding modular pieces into fixtures as the quantity of those parts drives down prices.

Neocon is always a great time to see some old favorite vendors to see what is new and to meet new vendors. We enjoyed seeing Plyboo has introduced several new patterns and stains. They also now have a palm wood product as well, Durapalm, that could have some great applications. Felt is still very big. It is showing up on those privacy screens we’re mentioning but also on lighting, like Luxx Box’s Linea and Blade products. We collected a bunch of cards from new felt vendors on our tour. Filtzfelt is not the only game in town anymore. Concrete is still a look our clients are asking for, and we met several new vendors such as Concrete Collaborative . CC had a vast range of tiles, new patterns, modern colors, exciting products such as bold terrazzos, and options for indoor and outdoor solutions. Our friends over at Chemetal also showed off some nice concrete laminate options they have launched in their Interior Arts line. Laminates vendors, in general, have started pushing into some exciting new textures. Whether that is the no-touch finish that is available in any style or the new embossed finishes such as Lab Design .

To top it off, we discovered a few local Chicago companies. All of these people, from all over the world come to Neocon, and here we are discovering something new in our own back yard. Two standouts we talked with were GL LED LLC and Threekit . GL is a Chicago based lighting supplier. They were showing off their flexible LED strips, LED neon options, and a whole host of nice capabilities. Threekit is working to make online retail a bit easier by showing all the ways you can configure a product before someone buys. By collecting and managing a ton of images of companies product (they showed examples of couches, it is a furniture show after all) they can show that new sectional sofa in every possible format so your shopper know what they are getting before they commit. It’s easy to see how this can go way beyond just furniture.

That’s the long and short of it. We certainly have a bunch of new inspiring images and contacts to carry us through until next year. Hopefully, this write up sparked something for you. If you’re looking for more inspiration, let us know.

The 2019 - 2020 Retail Experience - More Intimate, More Urban, More ‘Real’

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 16:34:16 GMT

“No. Online shopping did not overtake brick-and-mortar store sales

…” said Forbes . The death-of-the-mall articles are like fake news; without much substance and designed to scare retailers. Unfortunately, when reported by a reputable source – like CNBC – entrepreneurs, investors, and even long-time retail professionals run for cover.

The “real” retail experience – shopping, touching, tasting, feeling – is alive and well in 2019. But we still have to work at creating a profitable, winning retail experience. Think reality show. Then, apply that authenticity to your customers’ store experience. That’s the goal for the remainder of 2019, and as we prepare for holiday shopping season.

2019 Holiday Shopping - Retail Experiences

our internal culture is ever-more visible, and that means it’s an ever-more important part of your public-facing brand. That’s an epic, transparency-fueled shift sweeping across the entire business arena, and the consequences will play out for years.
- Trendwatching.com

Yes. This year will show a marked blending of two retail shopping experiences:

online sales and in-store sales. So just as you have to design your website content with magnetic content to pull those shoppers into your landing pages and click-throughs, your storefronts and interiors have to draw customers in from the outside. And keep them.

Integrating Tech and Transparency

Lush retail takes transparency and authenticity to a whole new level. Most savvy U.S. retailers won’t try this at home, but it works for the demographics toward which UK’s Lush is marketing (Some of the sales staff are naked behind their full-bodied aprons.).

Something that appeals to shoppers of all ages and means is technology. How can you integrate technological design into a retail setting ? Let’s be honest: All of us love bling and flashing lights. But keep it in a space designed for that purpose so serious, hands-on shoppers are still within a comfort zone.

Nobody said it would be easy.

Tiffany & Co. developed the “Style Studio” in-store design. This section of the store specializes in selling all-things-Tiffany-blue in a setting that screams “Pay attention to me!” There’s even a Tiffany vending machine.

Another terrific way to integrate technology and in-store shopping is to encourage online shopping with local store-pickup. And the pickup site is often strategically placed in a merchandise-rich location.

Less is More: Urban Experiences

Perhaps your retail stage needs to shrink; not grow. Look to your local geographic setting for design ideas that can enhance your customers’ in-store experience. To add an urban intimacy to customers’ shopping experience, many experienced retailers are promoting sustainability. You can utilize recyclable shopping bags. Burberry implemented (and promoted) a campaign to reuse, repair, and recycle unsold merchandise.

Nordstrom Local is downsizing to increase its market share. Last year, it opened a 1,200-sq.ft. store in a Los Angeles suburb that focused on styling and alterations. Another store opened downtown site featuring to-go food, concierge services, a barbershop, and shoe repair. Both stores offer dry cleaning services as well.

All the World’s a Stage

…But at the heart of it, we’re all consumers. What makes your shopping experience different? What really makes you go back [to the store]? Answering these questions can help developers arrive at the right solutions.
- Whitney Burns, senior manager/corporate communications, Hines

Loyalty programs continue to flourish. What company is your main competitor? It doesn’t matter if your company is The Mom & Pop Shoe Store on the corner of SmallTown, USA or Walmart. Your biggest competitor is Amazon. Targeting and rewarding brand allegiance with loyalty programs are a great incentive for today’s shoppers, and Amazon wrote the book.

This year and beyond, shopping retail has to be an “experience;” one that shoppers want to repeat. As you plan your marketing strategy for holiday shopping 2019, look to the feel of your brick-and-mortar store, from outside and within. Set the stage.

When your design strategy magnetizes and speaks to your customers, you’ve got the foundation for a profit-driven, winning retail experience.

Q20's retail design work with adidasGolf

Fri, 05 Oct 2018 16:44:57 GMT

Our PGA SiS Featured in Adidas Shop in Shop!

Big "Thanks!" to Shop! for praising our shop-in-shop pad we did for adidasGolf!

We had the great opportunity to heighten the experience for adidasGolf at Downers Grove's PGA Super Store. Quarter20 created a high-visibility shop-in-shop design that captures shopper attention the moment they enter the store. Large backlit, overhead graphic lightboxes and backlit oversized, dimensional logo along the back wall hook the shoppers eye from any point in the store. An open floor plan and fixtures assortment make it easy to find the products they’re looking for while four fully merchandised mannequins as well as bust and short forms along the wall highlight collections and key products. The new space also created a brand new opportunity for both the brand and the retailer in cross merchandising the brand’s new footwear products into the apparel space.

Quarter 20 is happy to help work with you to upgrade your experience in store! Contact Quarter 20 if you would like to talk through ideas for a space that stands out.

Lighting in Your Retail Environment

Wed, 26 Sep 2018 01:11:20 GMT

Lighting is just one element of design in retail environments, but it plays along with others to create a complete retail environment design. Since 80% of the sensory information a customer processes is visual, naturally we need to make sure lighting leads them where we want them to go, and that they’re able to see the message.

Historically, lighting options in retail environment design were limited mainly to the wall or the ceiling. With the advent of technologies like LEDs, it’s possible now to integrate lighting into store fixtures and interior elements, enabling nearly any lighting effect you can imagine.

What should lighting do in retail environments? Ideally, lighting creates an experience and affects the customer’s mood. The right type of lighting can guide the path customers take through the store, and direct attention to key messages and products.

Overall, your lighting communicates your message and creates a mood. Whether you want that mood to be that of a basketball court, a nightclub, a coffee shop, a fashion runway, or a cozy living room is up to you and the story you want to share. Your store fixtures and the lighting create an experience for the customer and affect feelings about your product and your store.

Planning lighting into an overall fixture program or retail design plan is one of the best ways to tell your story. Some of the lighting considerations to support your story include:

Angle of light/ distribution: whether it is spot, flood, or wash each will alter how your product is featured in a space and how visible the lighting will be in the space.

Temperature: determining the right color temperature of the lights in your space does a lot for the feel. Temperature is where you dial in the color of the light. Too blue and it sharp or too orange and it space becomes too rustic. A balance needs to be struck with each product.

Color Render: Some lights will mute colors others make them more vivid. The color render index helps with finding the right light to make aspects of your product stand out.

Direct or indirect: similar to light distribution, how focused the light is in a space or on product can dramatically alter the mood of a space. Direct light such as the kind often used in jewelry stores, works well for a product behind the counter or featured. In stores with broad offerings, accent lighting is generally used to highlight a particular item, like a sale product. For spaces that the more direct hot spotting would be distracting or harsh, indirect light can help with washes illumination to make atmospheric spaces.

Decorative lighting: more story than function. Decorative lighting can include lamps, chandeliers, or custom neon lighting.

Ambient lighting: sets the overall tone in most retail environments, since it is generally the largest light source. Often times lighting conversations are driven by the ambient light of an existing space.

Natural lighting: wherever possible, works well because it is proven to enhance mood, so it tends to make people more open to your message.

Integrated lighting: in store fixtures can include effects light uplighting, for a premium effect, or backlighting, for a halo effect. Integrated lighting in store fixtures encourages customers to pick up the merchandise twice as often. When designing a fixture program, be sure to consider integrated lighting.

Even the most innovative design falls flat if the lighting exhibits missteps. When you discuss your fixture roll-out and implementation, often times you need to see options to be able to make an informed decision. It is better to experiment with how lighting works in your space and with your product before rolling out.

Quarter 20, we love to partner with you in planning and executing the lighting and design, every step of the way. Contact Quarter 20 today to incorporate lighting in your retail environment design plans.

Fitness Meets Fashion

jhonor@q20lab.com (Jonathan Honor) — Tue, 25 Sep 2018 14:02:25 GMT

How Quarter 20 Helped Reebok move into their new HQ

Building on our longtime partnership, Reebok came to Quarter 20 last year with the mission to help with their new retail direction that builds their on-going goal to inspire people to be their best - physically, mentally and socially. The new type of retail space is within Reebok's new Innovation and Design Building, located in a 100-year-old warehouse in the Seaport District . All the fixtures and treatments in the space highlight the natural elements of the space such as the concrete pillars, high ceiling, and natural rock flooring. The store conveys Reebok's innovation and creativity, while continuing to honor their rich heritage through the store's features and natural influences of the historic industrial space. It is both minimal and exciting, with features like an in-house shoe customization shop, fabric printing station, and a full gym combining fashion and fitness seamlessly for a true "athleisure" experience. We were happy to help kit it out.

Read the full story in design:retail's recent article:

https://www.designretailonline.com/projects/stores/fitness-meet-fashion/#7

Customizing a Successful Fixture Program

Mon, 20 Aug 2018 14:09:15 GMT

With fixture programs, speed of delivery has always been one of the biggest measures of success. It makes sense. When revamping the experience in brand stores, a speedy fixture roll out and implementation helps the updated design become current and consistent across geographic locations.

When brand stores like Starbucks begin reducing their footprint worldwide, the consistent, comfortable brand presence may no longer be enough. More recently, many retail stores have been pursuing other approaches for a fixture rollout.

As Chain Store Age recently observed, “Where speed was once the primary goal for any rollout effort, the notion of nuanced, site-specific design sensitivity is becoming just as prevalent.”

Issues of unit economics and maintaining project schedules are sometimes cited as reasons that it is challenging to localize store concepts. However, there are any number of strategies that help to provide a localized element for at least some stores in a fixture roll out and implementation plan:

Some retailers favor a focused approach to a fixture rollout, with efforts spent on redesigning a few flagship stores in key markets. A plan can be developed to create a certain percentage of community based formats, along with more cost efficient standardized locations.

Each store can be designed to include local elements. In some cases, the local aesthetic can be accomplished by using locally sourced materials like stone on the exterior of the store, with prototypical design elements on the interior. Mod Pizza provides an example of a rapidly growing chain of restaurants that incorporates localized elements while maintaining the brand of the parent stores. Architectural elements within Mod Pizza locations pay homage to the original stores, while elements like a “Wall of Fame” with messages from the community create a local connection.

Source a local artisan in each location to create and showcase a custom fixture, display, or work of art from identifiably local materials. Whole Foods is an example of a chain store where each store layout is designed to fit into the local market. The new Whole Foods Lakeview location in Chicago, designed as the flagship area store, features distinctly local murals from local artists in the parking garage and wine bar.

One of the key components of an easily localized fixture program is the concept of modular displays. Modular store fixtures allow design flexibility in various store layouts, and also enable easy re-configuration and quick response to changing display needs. Beyond that, modules can often be specifically targeted with local content.

Digital displays can also be customized with local content – but only if content management responsibility can be assigned to a local team member.

Localizing at least some retail store designs makes great business sense. For larger retailers, localized store concepts are nearly impossible for competitors to track, and therefore hard to copy. Retailers have learned through hard experience that look-alike stores just take a company one more step towards becoming a commodity, with slower growth and reduced profits.

Wherever you are in your design or redesign process, contact the professionals at Quarter20 to work through next steps in creating and executing your custom fixture rollout and implementation.

Colors in Your Retail Environment Design

ginger.schmidt@worldsourcetech.com (Ginger Schmidt) — Wed, 01 Aug 2018 13:49:05 GMT

Most innovative design professionals will tell you that color is a key element in retail environments. Colors have a language all their own, with generally agreed upon meanings in a given culture. Yet every store we enter looks a little different, even if they offer similar merchandise. Color is just part of the package defining a retail store, communicating what the store offers and suggesting how to interact. It’s amazing the range of powerful ways to use color on walls and in store fixtures.

Furniture stores are just one example of retail environments that employ different approaches to color. According to a recent article in Furniture Today , the colors we recognize in furniture retail stores often follow one of two approaches – a bold brush or a subtle hand.

One example of the bold color approach can be seen at Cardi’s Furniture, where colorful walls define the space the moment the customer crosses the threshold. The ceiling features a robin’s egg blue – a color that has been shown to enhance creativity. The color helps define and set the store apart, and is intended as well to help boost customer confidence in their own decorating decisions.

The furniture that sells best most often consists of natural colors, neutrals, whites, and browns. Cardi’s and other stores that favor the bold approach use colorful walls throughout the retail environment to provide a backdrop for the furniture that sells best.

Other furniture stores prefer a different color scheme – softer shades rather than primary colors. They may use mid-tone greys for perimeter walls and darker variations for store fixtures and interior accents. This approach, chartered in 2000 by Restoration Hardware, has become a furniture retail standard that continues in the modern incarnation of RH as well. The subtle colors are employed to avoid detracting attention from the furniture itself, and also to create a more upscale appearance.

Furniture stores also use a combination of muted colors with occasionally bolder hues. These color statements are one method used to pull customers through the store to other areas, or to set apart a shop-in-shop. The new Script home furnishings store in Bangalore is just one example of a store that uses pops of color. The store is designed primarily in neutrals, with grey perimeter walls and floors, and spaces defined using flexible modular store fixtures. Some of these fixtures feature a medium blue – a color that connotes trust and appeals to almost everyone. Various tones of the color are used in fixtures and products throughout the store to create a cohesive design.

In an industry like furniture, with its close link to interior design and increasing general knowledge of design through popular TV and magazines, color plays a particularly important role. These ways of using color in retail environments have evolved beyond the furniture industry to many retail environments.

Of course innovative design involves much more than just a pop of color on the wall. Contact Quarter 20 for retail environment design projects and creative partnerships that go beyond color.

3 Ways Retail Experiential Design Helps Customers with Big Home Purchases

Sat, 07 Jul 2018 02:18:11 GMT

Major home purchases like building materials and appliances have been slow to adapt to changing consumer expectations of retail environments. Despite the availability of virtual and augmented reality that has taken hold in many retail stores, and the omni channel marketing that has become a hallmark of most retail segments, these products often compete for space in big box stores in very traditional ways.

Consumers often like to experience big ticket items first hand – particularly items they will be living with on a daily basis, like furniture, appliances, and home fixtures. Recently some brands have taken steps to evolve their retail locations from product showrooms into fully fledged experience centers. One of the biggest benefits of these new retail designs is that they engage the customer directly, and also show respect for the shopper’s time. Builders and designers are reporting that decision making processes that usually span months can often be completed in a single day.

Kohler is one manufacturer that is stepping up their game with their own brand stores. Although Kohler products are still sold through other channels and distribution processes, when customers are working with design professionals to build or remodel a home, Kohler offers a new type of space to try out their products. These 10,000 sq. ft. Experience Centers, located in New York and Los Angeles, allow customers to interact with functional showers, tubs, sinks, and toilets. Customers can even try out features by scheduling a shower experience. The need for this type of retail experiential design has become greater as technology advances have enabled digital showering systems, hydrotherapy, and intelligent toilets.

Other manufacturers stick with more of a showroom concept, but with a decidedly modern interpretation. The Marvin Windows and Doors design center in Boston has the feel of an art gallery with high end furnishings. Homeowners are given a digital notebook when they enter, and browse through the gallery with help from a professional designer. Features include a design table where customers can handle samples of wood. The table scans a code that then displays an interactive menu of window models and sizes available in that wood.

High-end appliances, electronics, and fixtures store ABT allows customers to experience their appliances in a multitude of ways. Not only do they have a space that resembles more typical sales floors, but they also have brand rooms and expert demonstrations. In any of these brand spaces, customers can have one-on-one experiences in which they get to try out any items ABT sells. Customers can also attend a variety of professional demonstrations varying from local chefs showing new techniques to digital wellness lectures. With all of that in one space and top-notch sales teams, ABT is consistently ranked as one of the top appliance retailers in the nation.

Moving from the catalog to a retail experience is helping customers satisfaction on major home purchases. Customers can enjoy the shopping experience while learning through hands-on use, digital assistants, or professional demonstrations. When you are looking for creative ways to engage your customers with new experiences, contact the team at Quarter 20.

Retail Environment Design and Return Customers

Wed, 13 Jun 2018 13:56:01 GMT

There are a number of elements that play into the store’s ability to retain customers – knowledgeable salespeople, well curated mix of products, and story-telling. One that may not top your list is one of the most powerful elements which is completely within your control: retail environment design.

Your store’s design is the first “salesperson” your customers see. How this environmental “salesperson” engages with your customer is key to establishing and maintaining an ongoing relationship. Fully immersive spaces communicate who the brand is and what makes them unique more so than a website banner ad can. Engage the customer with the design is key to establishing and maintaining a brand loyal relationship.

Here are some questions to help evaluate if you retail environment design is pulling its weight…

When you walk into your space, do you feel your brand? Stores that have a clear look, feel, and narrative are better able to cultivate relationships with customers.
How can the customer interact with your brand in the space? If your space is passive, people may be walking right past your brand moments.
Are your brand’s talking points consistent? Your brand’s online presence, marketing, graphics, and physical space should all be cohesive, and the voice of your brand should come through your design as a whole and in every section.
Does your space have good communication skills? Can it “talk” to the majority of your customers? People enter a space in a lot of different mind-sets. Meet them where they are. Individualize the customer experience with distinctive product groupings or backdrops that speak to different people.
Is your “salesperson” telling you what you need to know? Good retail design should constantly assess customer interactions to find out what they are being drawn to in the space. Even small changes in design can open the door to new demographics.
Is your space repeating itself? In an over-saturated market, it’s easy to stay with safe. Many retailers engage outside help to spur creativity and introduce new ideas.

To establish relationships and brand loyal customers, retail environments need to be growing and evolving. At Quarter 20, we understand the impact of creative, engaging, and interactive store design to make those customer connections and build loyalty. Let us partner with you to bring your brand into the physical space!

Innovative Design in Sports Stores

Fri, 08 Jun 2018 01:12:10 GMT

If there’s any sector of retail that could use a boost from innovative design, sporting goods is certainly a candidate. The whole business of sporting goods has been evolving at an especially rapid pace, and brick and mortar stores remain an important player.

As the sporting goods market has grown in recent years, retailers have been challenged to keep up with changes as well. Youth sports alone has grown to be a $15.3 billion market, as that segment of the industry grew 55% since 2010. At the same time, consumer demand for athleisure clothing has made notable strides. And retailers face increasing competition from brand stores like Under Armour, Nike, and The North Face that used to sell a greater percentage of their merchandise through retailers. That trend is only increasing, as Nike shifted in 2017 from 33,000 retailers to focus on 40 retail partners. Direct online sales of athletic gear are also increasing, and 21% of Americans purchased their athletic apparel directly from the manufacturer online in 2017.

To address these changes in the marketplace, sports stores are evolving in interesting ways. The key is innovative design and making the effort to offer something ecommerce can’t, something that invokes an emotional response.

Event Marketing

Many successful retailers use events to connect with customers, and at the same time stimulate foot traffic and growth. Some of this engagement can be generated through free in-store classes and training like yoga classes at Lululemon or Nike running clubs.

Creative event marketing ensures that events are organized and promoted, while tracking how successfully engagement has been achieved. Lululemon even uses local events to scope potential physical retail locations.

Patagonia’s Worn Wear events convey brand values and generate store traffic. The traveling Worn Wear program schedules events to repair existing Patagonia gear at their brand stores and retailers that sell Patagonia gear.

Patagonia’s event marketing for each location’s Worn Wear event helps connect the customer with the brand’s story, and even encourages customers to share their own stories as the tour “celebrates the stories we wear.” This tour resonates with Patagonia’s customers because today’s shoppers, and particularly millennials, like to feel a match between their values and those of the retailer.

Community Engagement

Community led and tailored spaces can help a retail store drive community engagement – connect with brand, dwell, generate brand loyalty. Some sports stores are benefiting from store environment changes that make it more convenient for people to fit fitness it into their everyday lives. In addition to running groups and classes, these include things like changing rooms for athletic commuters, sports nutrition, and more holistic health services in-store. In this way, athletic stores can go from talking about living an active lifestyle to actually enabling customers to live that lifestyle through engagement with their stores.

More Innovative Design

Regardless of the exact strategy, sports stores that thrive are using some form of innovative design. Creative use of the shop in shop format is just one example of how Dick’s Sporting Goods has remained the largest sporting goods retailer while others have faded away. Dick’s has continually updated their retail environments in an effort to keep pace with the changing marketplace. To capitalize on customer loyalty to brands, Dick’s retail environments include shop in shops like Nike Field House and Under Armour All American sections.

Sports stores are finding many ways to connect with their niche customers and continue to draw them in. Contact the creative team at Quarter20 to learn more about making store events and retail environments that work for you.

What All Retailers Can Learn from Toys R Us

Wed, 16 May 2018 22:30:56 GMT

By now everyone knows that Toys R Us announced its closure less than 6 months after initially declaring bankruptcy in September 2017. Although that end may have been more related to debt than retail environment design, there are lessons all of retail can take from Toys R Us’s misfortune. And the good news is, other stores – both brand stores and multi brand stores –are really getting it right.

Incorporate Retail Experiential Design

Consumers drive the demand for experiential design in retail. That’s especially true of toys, where fun and magic are part of the formula. Toys R Us was known for offering a full variety of toys, but the experiences people tended to remember were the fruitless search for the last unicorn Fingerling.

Brand stores like LEGO, American Girl, and Disney successfully employ retail experiential design to create a destination and positive memories. Even FAO Schwarz, the venerable experiential toy store, is set to make a comeback. FAO Schwarz piloted a shop-in-shop concept last year in Bon-Ton stores, featuring iconic experiences like the 8-foot piano keyboard. They have since partnered with Hudson Group to bring their brand stores to airports. Hudson’s Michael Levy said, “Hudson Group is committed to delivering exceptional, one-of-a-kind experiences to our guests”. They felt the enduring brand would offer a unique environment for travelers.

Keep Introducing Innovative Design

One of the challenges of Toys R Us in recent years was upkeep and condition of the stores. Customers recognized that store fixtures and layouts had not changed, despite significant changes in customer behaviors and expectations.

The prosperous retailers, on the other hand, regularly re-examine their stores' atmosphere, the functional store layout, and the elements that influence their customers’ decision making process. Retailers that are always tinkering, such as Urban Outfitters, Target, and Ikea, provide perfect examples of adapting to changes in customer behaviors and expectations. Whether through small-format stores opening in urban areas catering to younger shoppers or reimaging the traditional store to emphasize certain product presentations and adding time-saving features. Retailers and brands that continually engage with its customers through retail design innovation are thriving.

Experiment with Personalization

While other stores looked for ways to incorporate personalization, Toys R Us maintained the feel of a warehouse environment with a vast inventory and lots of relatively un-curated choices. Particularly for a children’s retailer, the opportunity to create personalized experiences and products was lost amid the sea of products.

On the other end of the spectrum, M&M World provides a great example of how a brand store can incorporate personalization. By offering customers the chance to create candy with their own personalized colors, lettering, and even images, M&M World individualizes the experience. M&M World has hit upon way for a brand store to add value and meaning to a mass produced product.

At Quater20, we have helped brands like TaylorMade push personilzation with improved in-store brand spaces. By creating an immersive club fitting experience in TaylorMade’s new Performance Centers, customers can work with a specialist and find the right club for their needs, away from the bustle of the sales floor.

Find Ways to Stay Relevant

Where Toys R Us suffered setbacks in staying up with the times, other retailers have found ways to create authenticity. Millennials grew up on Build-a-Bear – the oldest were 16 and the youngest had just taken their first steps when the store launched its retail strategy in 1997. Build-a-Bear has maintained consumer interest over the years which has lead a 12% growth over the past 5 years in malls and other retailers. This is thanks in large part to developing partnerships with beloved brands like Star Wars, Super Mario, and My Little Pony. Now Millennials can purchase relevant, nostalgic stuffed animal for them while still appealing to their children. This arrangement creates multi-generational experiences that go beyond the youngest consumers.

There is a lot to learn from Toys R Us’s history. At Quarter20, we specialize in customized experiential retail design that touch on all of these aspects. If you are looking to refresh your retail experience or rethink your customer’s journey, reach out to the team at Quarter20 to learn more.

5 Ways Retailers Adapt for an Urban Environment

Thu, 22 Mar 2018 17:22:29 GMT

As more people are attracted to metropolitan living, retailers that made their name in the suburbs are now looking for ways to adapt their brand for an urban environment. Stores are increasingly experimenting with ways to modify their concepts for smaller store footprints and urban needs. And adapting involves more than just shrinking the store to function as a scaled-down version of the suburban store. The strategies are as diverse as retail itself.

A recent article in Shopper Marketing Magazine summarizes the approaches various retailers have taken to entering downtown markets. Retail environment design strategies for these urban stores fall into several categories.

Flexible design. For Target, flexibility is key to the success of their existing 59 urban locations, as well as the 71 locations that are slated to open in 2018. Target’s product mix varies for each of these locations, and is adjusted based on customer feedback. Target stocks items that sell at greater volume depending on the characteristics of the neighborhood – such as whether it is near a university or public transportation.
Service focused offerings . PetSmart launched The Groomery primarily as a pet salon, with a few upscale product offerings. These urban stores are intended to compete with local pet grooming establishments. They feature at least eight wide, adaptable grooming tabletops. CVS is also incorporating more services into its urban format stores, including an optical center and walk-in health clinic, along with its traditional pharmacy.
Multiple urban formats . In addition to its online presence, Amazon operates multiple urban bookstores, as well as two grocery pickup stores in Seattle. In January, Amazon famously launched its first cashier-less Go convenience store in Seattle. Go has provided Amazon an opportunity for gathering and analyzing data from Go customers’ behavior. It remains to be seen what Amazon will do with this data to tweak or expand the grab-and-go model.
Urban product mix . CVS debuted a 2-story format in 2017 that offers healthy food and an expanded line of beauty products. Products are offered in “discovery zones” based on interest, such as advanced skin care. At 15,000 square feet, the store is no smaller than a suburban CVS, but the layout is clearly tailored for city tastes and city real estate.
Scaled down and reconfigured store designs . To fit more limited urban real estate, many retailers completely rethink their store design. Lowe’s locations in cities like Chicago and New York offer home improvement products tailored to the area. With urban stores that occupy less than half the traditional Lowe’s footprint, Lowe’s employs slimmer endcaps, shorter aisles, and digital touchscreens wherever possible. These stores carry a more limited inventory, particularly with larger items like appliances, and allow quick fulfillment from nearby stores.

It’s clear that when large retailers enter urban markets, some aspects of the retail environment design need to change. Working with an agile design company can help retailers shape their urban concept – whether that means expanding, reducing, adjusting, or molding to the needs of the changing market and trends. Overall, innovative designs all have one thing in common: a willingness to experiment with a new retail format designed specifically for an urban location.

5 Big Retail Design Myths Debunked

Fri, 09 Mar 2018 00:00:00 GMT

Myths are beliefs that are widely held, but nonetheless false. Even in the ever-changing field of retail design, long-standing myths continue to exist – ideas that are at least partially false. Below are just a few widely held beliefs about retail design.

More square footage equates to more display space. Any store’s needs for space will expand and contract over time, as new products and lines are added and others are phased out. When increasing floor space, careful planning can ensure the maximum use of the space. Even the shape of the store footprint affects the amount of display space available. If the front wall of the store is taken up with windows, a rectangular space will have more wall display area than a square space.
The success of a retail design will be readily apparent. Customers generally respond positively to novelty, so store sales will often receive a bump with any redo of a store interior. Also, other variables like merchandise offerings usually change along with store interiors, so it’s hard to isolate the effect of any particular change on sales. These are just a couple of the variables that complicate attempts to calculate return on investment.
Natural light is the best illumination for a store environment. In photography or real estate, natural light is paramount. Many assume the same would be true for retail spaces – that natural light should provide the best view of the products and the store environment. The truth is that natural light is much more problematic than artificial light. Natural light is not reliable. It can at times be harsh, muting or eliminating the intended effects of accent lighting, and actually making the store appear darker. At least artificial light doesn’t fade the products on the shelf at a greatly accelerated pace. Artificial light allows the retailer to better manage the store experience, to draw customers towards the light towards the back of the store, and to help customers forget what is going on outside the store.
The checkout area is the least important. Most store checkouts have similar features, so it can be tempting to assume that once the customer reaches the checkout, the sale is “in the bag.” However, it’s particularly important to make sure the cash wrap counter is efficiently designed, uncluttered, and allows sales associates space to move around. There has been a trend in cashwrap-less type stores, ala Apple and Amazon, where store associates walk around to assist customers with a tablet, or items are automatically scanned. In these new stores, the transaction area is indicative of the technology that is used for the exchange, so the space becomes a smaller, more consultative space. Regardless of how checkout occurs, the checkout process is the end of a transaction, and it also helps set up the ongoing customer relationship, so it needs to leave a positive impression.
Mirrors create space and light. To a degree, mirrors can make a space seem larger. However, the effect of a wall of mirrors is more often confusion, because it can make paths through the store appear duplicated. Also, mirrors can only reflect whatever light or darkness is already in the store, so they don’t actually create light. Thoughtfully placing mirrors for function and for style makes sense, rather than putting up mirrors for the sake of it. Mirrors certainly have their function and their place in design, but not as a means to make a space appear larger.

These myths are only a few of the long-standing ideas that should be challenged whenever redesigning a retail environment. By setting aside myths, we can improve design thinking and develop the truly creative and effective retail environments of the future.

3 Ways Retailers Are Incorporating Personalization

Tue, 20 Feb 2018 22:20:54 GMT

One of the hot topics in retail environments these days is personalization, with lots of creative approaches to meeting the customer’s need for more personal interactions. We can expect to see a lot more investment in personalization in 2018, as retailers look to incorporate a more personalized approach across channels.

Up to now, a lot of the focus on personalization has been online. Retailers have been using personalization in a wide variety of online and offline media, including things like web site optimization, segmentation, email marketing, merchandising, and promoted messages. Most promising for consumers in 2018 is that personalization is no longer just about the online experience – retailers are investing in personalizing retail experience in the physical store, or integrating data for a personalized experience across channels.

When we look at the brick and mortar environment, the greatest recent examples of personalization involve customized products, experiences, and interactions for customers. When personalization is done right, customers are delighted with the retail environment and the ability to get exactly what they want tailored for them.

Traditional Shopkeeper Personalization

Much of customers’ delight with personalization comes from an urge to be recognized for who they are. Some clothing stores like Lululemon and Rag & Bone are bringing back perks like free alterations. In other cases, clothing retailers are once again training staff to use changing rooms to foster better conversion. Well trained, knowledgeable staff can ask if customer liked or didn’t like a product, and perhaps recommend another.

Personalized Products

Some retailers have been offering the ability to create custom products through online channels for a while. More recently, some have incorporated in-store personalization stations to provide experiences, and at the same time allow customers a hand in creating exactly what they want. An example of this is the Converse Blank Canvas personalization workshop space, which is a feature in Converse’s Boston and New York Soho stores. There customers can work with a designer to design their own shoe, which is then created on site the same day. The online version of Blank Canvas allows similar flexibility, which extends the personalized option across channels.

Technology Enabled In Store Marketing and Assistance

New technologies can unobtrusively assist customers in the store to find the products and solutions they seek. According to Oracle, 52% of shoppers want personalized offers based on personal data from their store loyalty account.

Rebecca Minkoff was one of the first to use interactive mirrors from Oak Labs. These mirrors enable customers to request a different size through a touchscreen on the mirror, or to save the item to their shopping list if they prefer to order later.
Similarly, fashion retailers like Reformation are using augmented reality by positioning touch screens around the store. Customers select a product and then use touch screens to select their size, while an associate assembles their items into a fitting room curated just for them.
Grocery store chains like Kroger are testing smart shelves that interact with a customer who has their loyalty application open on a mobile device. In this way, the grocer can alert customers that an item on their list is on a nearby shelf, or offer tailored promotions based on their purchasing habits. The possibility to use location-based technology such as beacons to push personalized offers to customers’ mobile devices extends far beyond grocery store shelves.
According to Newstore, 19% of brands make their online and offline customer data available to sales associates on a hand held device. Guess is one store that has been arming sales associates with customer preference data to help them engage with customers. This type of information can help employees personalize their service to suggest or upsell products.

Personalization in retail has come to mean tailored communications and promotions in customer service, sales, and marketing. These interactions are designed to give the customer the feeling that you know them and remember their preferences. As more and more shoppers prefer these personalized interactions and products, successful retail stores will continue trying out new ways to meet their needs.

How the New Breed of Retail Uses Experimentation - and Everyone Should Be

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 00:00:00 GMT

If trends in 2017 are any indication, we can expect to see a lot more retail experimentation in 2018. Retailers large and small are finding this the path to success in a rapidly evolving marketplace. Risk is low when you consider that even small failures can yield important insights.

Evolution has long been the story for retail. The new trend towards experimentation encompasses many concepts, including ways of collecting and using data, ways to offer experiences through events and installations, and more. In particular, stores are piloting new and varied store formats, including:

Showroom-style storefronts
Stores without merchandise like Nordstrom local
Temporary retail shops like holiday pop-ups

This wide assortment of store formats comes from many directions – sometimes from established retailers, sometimes from new retailers or online brands working towards an omnichannel presence.

The one thing these experiments have in common is a spirit of trial and error. Rather than testing a concept for a certain outcome and gathering data to determine success or failure, experimentation is done with the expectation of learning something, and without fear of failure. In the grand scheme, if it doesn’t work, the plan is to change it, or get rid of it. And do it quickly.

Even established retailers are testing out new concepts, without attempting to go out and completely revamp every store from top to bottom. Beauty in particular is testing out experiential retail concepts and showing great success, with things like Sephora’s personalized beauty classes and small format boutique stores. The goal is to become a part of a customer’s life by becoming a new experience and a resource for shoppers. As they learn more about what works, Sephora is planning to launch more boutique type stores in other locations.

Nike provides another example how retailers are experimenting with the new retail experience. In Nike’s New York store, customers can try shoes on a mini basketball court, a soccer enclosure, or a treadmill that simulates different environments. Nike’s investment in this type of experiences is as a new way of bringing customers to the store to engage with the brand, in a way that is not necessarily measurable by traditional KPIs like sales per square foot.

What these forward thinking stores have proven is that experimentation is for everyone. For sure, this new type of retail requires both flexibility and agility. This mindset is infusing the marketplace with new ideas, and making brick and mortar lively, fresh, and interesting for a new type of customer.

Experimentation can be beneficial – and even necessary – for everyone in retail today, due to two main factors:

Stores that are experimenting are also raising the bar on the in-store experience. Customers are being conditioned to expect more.
More online retailers are becoming omni-channel through these strategies, creating more competition in the retail marketplace.

Do we know where the future lies for retail? Perhaps not. But we do know that a new breed of retailers is charting the future through exploration and experimentation. And we all can be a part of it.

Creating Experience Strategy for Retail Environments

Mon, 29 Jan 2018 20:41:17 GMT

Experience strategy is much more than a buzzword. It’s a concept that can be approached from a number of disciplines: user experience (UX), usability, or customer experience to name a few. In retail, customer experience strategy could be seen as the impressions you want your customers to have as they travel through your store – from interest, to engagement, to purchase and beyond. Strategy refers to the fact that these experiences should be curated and aligned, and that all channels should be part of the same design. Retailers that have a defined experience strategy do so to improve customer satisfaction rates, increase revenues, and reduce customer churn.

How Experience Strategy Is Created

Perhaps your business already has an experience strategy, or maybe you’re creating or refining it. When creating an experience strategy, it always best to start with what you know – your detailed customer persona, a well-defined brand story, and existing pain points. Define your goals for how to create memorable experiences for customers and engage employees in telling the brand story. Among the goals of experience strategy are to enable responsive customer service, brand accessibility, and personalized interactions. Then make sure the customer experiences align throughout the business.

Some retailers bring in outside experts to spark this creative process, and others arrive at their strategy organically or through long study of the methodology. Usually it helps to have people with different perspectives on the business involved in shaping the strategy. Regardless, an overall strategy can be the difference between successfully incorporating experiences (think Apple or Warby Parker) and efforts that fall flat.

Aligning Your Retail Space with Your Experience Strategy

When the overall experience strategy is known and shared, all decisions can be guided by that vision, and the store can be designed to reflect and enable it. With each decision, from big to small, you can always refer to the overall experience strategy to apply creative thought to the solution. As the store, product offerings, and customer needs continue to evolve, you can respond in a way that creates a seamless and desirable experience for your customers and potential customers.

Retailers refer to their experience strategy when reinventing processes or solving issues. For example:

Ulta is using experience strategy to differentiate itself from competitors in beauty products by incorporating complementary services into their stores, including hair salons, facial stations, and “brow bars.”
Nike is focusing on brand specific stores and enticing online customers in with training sessions and running clubs.
The Workroom, a Toronto craft store, builds community by offering classes, gathering information, and communicating through multiple channels to create a stronger customer relationship.
Other brands successfully incorporate ways to allow customers to personalize their merchandise. When executed well, personalized products enhance customer satisfaction and reduce the chance of returns.

When a potential customer walks into a given shop, they may not be aware of the thought that went into their experience. When experience strategy is well defined, a customer should walk away with an awareness of the brand, engagement with the brand, and the feeling of having experienced something positive. That is the true value of experience strategy.

Shinola Brand Stores Bring Detroit to the Neighborhood

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 11:22:06 GMT

If you’re looking for a digital-first brand that has successfully branched into to brick and mortar stores, it’s hard to miss Shinola Detroit. Through carefully crafted retail environments and event marketing, Shinola is one brand that has managed to connect with the neighborhoods where their stores are located, all while maintaining the brand's (mostly) Detroit narrative.

Shinola, known initially for high-quality watches assembled in Detroit, has gradually added a number of complementary products over the years. These products – bicycles, journals, writing utensils, tools, and audio equipment – all are primarily assembled in Detroit or elsewhere in the U.S., and align with the brand’s craftsman image.

Company president Jacques Panis noted that many consumers who learn about the brand’s products online want to come into a physical store to make a purchase. After launching originally as an online-only brand in 2011, the company began with a store in Detroit, and has gradually added to that number. At the beginning of 2017 there were 22 Shinola shops, and the year should end with 31.

Shinola stores incorporate retail experiential design to engage and delight their customers. Experiences include things like:

· Facilities to take bikes for a test drive

· Free embossing stations on site for leather goods and their ever-popular journals. The embossing station, run by employees, creates an industrialized vibe and also allows customers to walk out of the store with a customized item.

· Build-your-own pieces. Some Shinola stores incorporate a Willard Bar where shoppers can customize their watch by selecting a watch strap and case style.

· Complimentary Shinola-branded cola. Some stores offer customers a custom cola in a glass bottle, in an effort to further differentiate the brand.

· Events. Shinola stores in Los Angeles and New York have included letterpress workshops and wreath decorating parties led by local florists.

The idea behind these experiences is a focused effort to build word of mouth and increase brand engagement. By delighting customers with engaging or unique retail experiential design, the intent is to bring them back. With friends. And it seems to be working.

One challenge that comes along with having a brand mythology based in a particular city like Detroit is how to keep that relevant in each brick and mortar location. Shinola stores tend to be located in neighborhoods rather than malls. The retailer employs event marketing and unique store features that not only support other causes and products that fit the brand’s image, but also help create that vital link to the local community. These event marketing efforts draw customers from the local neighborhood, and also to create a different experience in each store for travelers.

Case in point are features like:

· Surprises like a free mini bouquet of flowers from the van outside with purchase

· A Scott Campbell tattoo shop inside LA Shinola store

· A hidden room to test turntables in the Venice store

· A weekend event in Detroit selling items like t shirts, sweatshirts and hats for York Project, a project that contributes a tote bag of essentials to homeless Detroiters for each item sold.

Since its recreation in 2011, the Shinola brand has always been about the “story.” Through careful crafting of retail experience and event marketing, they continue that story successfully in spaces that are unique to the neighborhoods they serve. Shinola has definitely become a brand to watch as they navigate their way into more retail stores.

Three Ways Your Retail Environment Can Help Brick and Mortar Product Sales Surpass Online Channels

Tue, 09 Jan 2018 11:16:45 GMT

Much has been said about the effect of e-commerce success on retail environments. Online sales accounted for almost 12% of sales last year, but the real news is that retail remains strong and stores that can create a successful retail environment will still thrive. In many ways, a carefully crafted environment can help boost in store sales beyond those of online channels. The question is how?

Deliver a Satisfying Experience to Create Retail Success

Crafting a retail experience that successfully attracts shoppers requires thoughtful creativity. The danger that some stores fall into is creating irrelevant experiences like opening a coffee shop in every store, which may or may not drive foot traffic. To attract purchasers, the experience should be relevant to the brand, and ideally it should solve a customer problem – to offer needed information, to entertain and engage, or to create community.

One advantage of brick and mortar is that many shoppers associate brick and mortar stores with easier returns. Online retailers are also recognizing the need to offer returns in store. By offering returns, stores have an opportunity to make additional sales with products that the customer either needs or discovers during their visit. The key is to consider the path the consumer will travel when they come to make returns, and what products should be placed nearby, as well as other ways to capitalize on the visit. Then make the return process as simple as possible.

Even retailers that made their name online recognize that brick and mortar stores are key to growth. Warby Parker is a good example, with their introduction of retail locations for customers who need to try their options. Part of Warby Parker’s strategy for success has been the decision to test some new locations with pop up shops before investing in extensive infrastructure and leases. As customers are drawn to these stores, Warby Parker has been able to gather data to determine which are suitable for a brick and mortar presence.

Capitalize on Touch and Feel

The ability to see, smell even touch and feel the products ranks as one of the main reasons that most purchases still take place in physical stores. That’s one reason online mattress company Casper partnered with Target to bring mattresses to stores. Many customers like to try products before making a decision, and they end up happier with the decision they made (and less likely to return the product). Retail experiences that are creatively designed to allow customers to test out the merchandise can boost overall sales.

Create a Store Environment That Incorporates Online

Customers may value some aspect of the store experience – like trying on clothes or smelling perfumes – but ultimately buy online. The retail location still brings value, although traditional measures like sales per square foot may not measure it.

Take advantage of the benefits of both channels to strengthen overall customer engagement and brand affinity. Retail locations can be used to gather data about why customers do or don’t buy a particular product, and the environment can be subtly designed to assist in this data gathering.

Home Depot has adopted a blended multichannel strategy, maintaining revenues and keeping stores open while developing a viable online sales channel. Home Depot gathers data about what sells well in store, and has capitalized on that knowledge by expanding those categories in store. The result is that they are able to capitalize on online sales, and their existing stores are profitable as well.

For brick and mortar stores that hope to surpass the sales of their online competitors, the key is to focus on motivators like choice, immediate gratification, and personal service. Pairing online and brick and mortar helps successful retailers deliver rewarding purchase experiences along with the product itself.

Sustainable Materials in Retail Fixture Design

Fri, 01 Dec 2017 19:01:02 GMT

Sustainability is more than just a buzzword in retail environments, as evidenced by reclaimed wood retail counters, rustic displays, and cork lined shelving units. Industry experience over the last several years has revealed a lot about the ways and reasons to incorporate sustainable materials in retail fixture design.

Retailers choose sustainable materials for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes they are acting on a commitment to environmental stewardship, or working towards a goal in a corporate social responsibility program. Other times, sustainable materials fit with the brand image and help form a connection with customers who share that interest.

Sustainable Fixture Materials

In retail environment design, what does sustainable even mean? Store fixtures are usually considered sustainable for a combination of reasons, including:

· Origin of materials

· Reusable and recycled content

· Low VOC paint or adhesive

· Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-certified wood

If you can imagine a retail fixture, there is probably a way to design and source it in a sustainable material. Manufacturers offer T-stands, shelving, nested table sets, ballet bars, earring stands, wood and chrome merchandise displays, and more – all made from sustainable materials. Some manufacturers specialize in custom fabricating store fixtures from sustainable materials like cork or reclaimed wood.

When choosing a supplier for any given fixture, several key questions can help determine whether it fits into a sustainable fixture plan.

1. Find out whether the materials used in the fixture were recycled, and if so, whether those recycled materials are pre-consumer, post-consumer, or both.

2. Determine much of the fixture is made from renewable materials.

3. If the product contains new wood, look for sustainable harvesting, which can be verified through chain of custody certification.

4. If the fixture contains composite materials, find out if it contains formaldehyde and if it complies with CARB’s Composite Wood Air Toxic Control Measure.

5. Look for VOC information about any paint, sealants, coatings, carpet, and adhesives used in the product.

Other Ways a Fixture Program Can Be Sustainable

Beyond materials, some retailers take a holistic view of sustainability, and source from suppliers that incorporate sustainability into their production process. These suppliers may use renewable energy, co-generation, or waste-to-energy strategies. Or they may use other measures like reusing scrap, reducing waste, or saving water.

Some fixture roll out programs are incorporating fresh ideas about shipping and packing. Sustainable programs include ideas like using glue-less biodegradable paper or choosing options that greatly reducing packaging materials.

Finally, the lifecycle of the store fixtures can also be considered when analyzing sustainability. Because of the focus on keeping retail environments fresh, fixtures are often swapped out long before they are worn out. For sustainability, fixtures can be designed to lend themselves well to future refurbishment or rebuilding, depending on the material chosen.

When planning a fixture rollout program, it takes some effort to identify what is sustainable, choose materials, and source from reliable manufacturers. The effort pays off when retailers create retail environments that showcase their brand and meet their sustainability goals at the same time.

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QUARTER20, Inc., provides full-service experience design, production, and manufacturing. Based in Chicago, our offices around the world serve a vibrant client community.

Inspired by our clients’ passion, we are invested in their success. Quarter20 thinks hard and works harder towards smart solutions in meaningful ways. We bring beautiful brand experiences to both defined and desired audiences.

Through omni-channel strategy, retail experiences, event marketing, premium branded environments, and fixture programs, we specialize in bringing global brands further and farther than ever before. Contact us to discuss your retail design project requirements today.

5 Components of a Successful Retail Fixture Roll Out Program

Tue, 07 Nov 2017 15:33:42 GMT

A successful retail fixture roll out program results in a well executed and consistent look in every store, on the schedule you planned. Given the logistics and complexity of any fixture roll out, large or small, customers may wonder how to identify a program that will lead to success. Over time, we have seen that these five components lead to the most successful fixture roll out programs:

1. Careful and detailed planning. The foundation of a successful roll out program is a complete plan based on the goals defined by the customer. It should include detailed routing schedules, and it should also be adaptable. Planning should actually continue throughout the program, to accommodate changes.

2. Proactive communication throughout the supply chain. Clear communication channels throughout the organization are essential to alleviate any confusion and deliver the program on time. From the account manager to the installation teams, proactive communication is the best way to ensure that any individual store location issues are addressed and resolved.

3. Disciplined application of proven processes. Well executed processes, based on previous experience, ensure a successful outcome. Although every fixture roll out has its own unique challenges, a skillful team can call on a well developed process for every stage of the program.

4. An experienced and well connected team. You should have a sense of the team’s reputation for successful projects and ability to deliver from the very beginning. The team should be structured to deliver a seamless experience through all phases of the fixture roll out program, which ma include design, build, ship, and install, or a subset of those. Whether the program is a single store roll-out or a large global roll out, a well connected team is able to anticipate and resolve challenges that arise. Experience is as important as commitment to quality and service.

5. Documentation. All important information must be organized so you can be sure that your project is complete, on time, and successful. From store surveys to final approval forms, documentation is a great way to show completion and in store compliance.

In order for a fixture roll out program to succeed, the vendor needs to be able to identify potential hurdles, and plan to handle them. Hurdles can include the execution timeline, freight and delivery plans, receiving and storage, or store communication. With established processes and good communication, a professional team should be able to resolve issues that arise.

At Quarter 20, we have a firm commitment to the success of your fixture roll out, and your vision of success. Our team strives to be the best of the best – nimble, responsive, unified, service oriented, and efficient – to ensure your success. We invite you to contact us today to begin planning your next retail fixture roll out program.

Why Consumers Seek Experiential Retail Environments

Mon, 16 Oct 2017 21:24:16 GMT

Retail environments have changed rapidly over the past 10 years, and retail experiential design has taken hold as the way to remain competitive. Before launching a whole new retail experiential design for a store, it’s important to look at why consumers are motived by experiential retail. The main reasons fall into three categories: time, craving for personal touch, and valuing experiences over things.

Guarding limited time

With more work and family demands, customers have less time to shop. Millennials, who make up the largest living generation and have a lot of buying power, have also grown up with technology literally at their fingertips. They have high expectations for speed and convenience.

It’s not just about speedier transactions, though. With busy schedules, customers are drawn to stores where they can exhale and feel relief, comfort, and inspiration through experiential retail design.

Seeking more personalized experience

Some customers find that searching through endless choices online can be overwhelming. That may be one of the reasons that consumers are seeking a more personal approach – one that is more emotionally engaging and less product centric.

People continue to value great service, but even there, expectations have changed. For many products, customers begin with extensive research online, which eliminates the need for purchasing assistance in the store. Instead, consumers value personalized service.

One of the best ways to personalize an experience is to engage the senses. Customers are drawn into a retail store because they want to touch/feel, or taste something before buying, even if the experience is somewhat tangential to the purchase. That’s why grocery stores are offering wine bars and coffee tasting, and many stores offer refreshments, free samples of lotions and perfumes.

Some consumers are also going to stores to validate a product and then purchase online – but when they are in the store they want a destination as well.

Valuing experiences over things

All consumer segments report placing a higher value on experiences than things. According to recent data from Price Waterhouse Coopers, millennials planned to spend 52% of their holiday budget last year on experiences. One can imagine the trend will only accelerate as millennials develop more spending power, and as the marketplace responds to the shift in behavior.

Shopping trips are more likely to function as a social outlet with friends. Millennials in particular value authenticity and unique moments. If their retail outing includes snapchat worthy experiences and Instagram worthy backdrops, their friends will also be drawn to the location.

Stores that can capitalize on the trend towards experiential retail design will have the greatest success in the long run. To understand the best way to engage customers, look at how customer behaviors have changed, and what has caused the global shift in shopping habits. At Quarter20, we are uniquely positioned to help retail experiential design efforts. As retail designers, fixture creators, and fixture providers for major brands to funded startups, we have had the pleasure of developing a long list of experiential retail environments. Let us help you get inside the mind of your retail customer! Contact us today.

5 Key Considerations for Designing a New Retail Experience

Thu, 28 Sep 2017 01:45:59 GMT

When we look at how retail strategy has changed in the last 20 years, the transition has been remarkable. Customers order from their phones, quickly compare prices and features online, and are constantly barraged with targeted marketing based on the choices they make online. No one can deny the success of online selling, yet retail remains a constant. In order to capture this ever changing market, retail environments are reinventing themselves and redesigning for the new retail experience.

This new retail experience acknowledges and blends elements of online shopping and digital marketing to draw people into the store. At the same time, it makes shopping in a retail space a necessary and enjoyable experience.

When designing a retail space that leverages consumer expectations for online shopping, consider these important caveats:

1. Engage the five senses. Play on the advantages shoppers recognize for shopping in person. Only retail stores can fully engage all 5 of the customer’s senses, particularly touch, smell, and taste. Retailers can take advantage of interactive displays to allow customers to actually pick up items and engage their senses. When evaluating a fixture program, make sure to account for ways store fixtures can help customers to immerse themselves in the retail experience.

2. Allow immediate gratification. Customers have been conditioned to want things faster and faster, and they choose retail for immediate gratification of purchase. If you have an opportunity to take immediate gratification a step further – say, by providing in store monogramming service – you can delight your customers.

3. Make it fun. Experiences make people happier than material objects. Some retailers like Nike draw customers by allowing them to try shoes in lighting and virtual displays that simulate running through Central Park. The key is to make the brick and mortar store an experiential, living showcase through retail experiential design.

4. Streamline procedures. Millennials grew up in the digital age of immediate gratification, and people become quickly frustrated by slow or cumbersome procedures. Use technology to engage the customer and make your processes more efficient. For customers frustrated with checkout procedures, companies like Walmart are incorporating applications that allow self-checkout through a mobile app.

5. Incorporate digital. Experiment with ways to cross market, such as an Instagram contest that for customers who post pictures from the store. Find partners that can help you use digital in your event marketing strategy. Or offer an option to buy online and pick up in store, which has two advantages: the customer gets quick gratification, and is exposed to more products near the point of sale.

When designing a new retail experience, the key is to maximize the advantages of retail while incorporating links to digital. It requires an ongoing evaluation of technology, shopping habits, and ways to keep the store experience fresh. But Businesses that can do this effectively can maintain the best of both worlds – a successful brick and mortar presence with complementary online revenue streams.

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QUARTER20 , Inc., provides full-service experience design, production, and manufacturing. Based in Chicago, our offices around the world serve a vibrant client community.

Retail Environment Design: Upcoming Trends

Thu, 07 Sep 2017 21:50:57 GMT

It’s no secret that the last few years have challenged brick and mortar stores to compete in a way that makes them more compelling or at least increasingly integrated into their online retailer competition and counterparts. In this way, we see traditional retail store environments looking for creative, highly experiential retail design environments that make visiting in person a worthwhile experience for consumers.

Brick and mortar retailers may see this shift as a growth opportunity, which focusses on the establishment of a more experiential retail environment design. In this way, the store interior (and sometimes exterior) can now serve as a marketing tool that both tells the brand story and elevates the customer experience to increase sales and repeat visits. This year, there have been notable retail industry events exemplifying these trends. Among them: The Global Shop, NRF Big Show, and the Euro shop.

Further supporting the experiential focus for retail environment design, Design Retail Magazine has been able to survey retail industry executives’ e.g. visual merchandisers, store planners, and designers on visual merchandising, store planning, and design activities. The survey was for the State of the Industry report published each year.

From the survey, a number of significant statistics pertaining to retail design became apparent:

47% of store executives have realized that the store planning/visual component in the current retail industry is much more significant than was the case about five to ten years ago.
57.2% of the store executives have the belief that the job importance of the average retail designer will continue to increase in the next five years.
75% of all interviewed retailers had set in motion plans to renovate either a similar or increased amount of stores than they did in the years past.
54% of the retail firms indicated that they had increased the number of stores by between 1-25 in the previous year. 47% of the firms had intentions to open a similar number of stores this year.

The data show that there is a need for retail environment designers to design for customers who are increasingly looking to the most convenient form of shopping, unless that is, a worthwhile experience awaits by physically going to a store instead. Designers will want to ensure that they can create retail environments that are compelling, acknowledging the choice to shop in-person may be highly correlated to the retail environment itself.

Some of the components typical of these more alluring retail environments are listed below. Please contact us for more information regarding current retail design trends, or to discuss component options for specific retail environment applications.

Trends in Retail Design Components

Disruptive stand out from surrounding clutter
Eclectic—the use of broad ranging scales and styles
Creation of immersive and highly interactive customer experiences
Repetition—vital in retention creation

Material and Retail Finish Design Trends

Plant life to assist in defining space and creating texture
Using lighting as an art form to assist in creating ambiance
Use of chalkboard finishes that have been painted on store and wall fixtures
Raw, and unfinished materials that are utilized for store fixtures e.g. pallets, cardboards, and an OSB particle board.

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QUARTER20, Inc., provides full-service experience design, production, and manufacturing. Based in Chicago, our offices around the world serve a vibrant client community.

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