the future of shopping

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User Experience and the Power of Retail - Blue Moon Digital

So, we had a few friends out to colorful Colorado for our first official Brand Summit this past June. There, we discussed how the Shopping Journey is changing and what is next. Well, Google loved it and invited us out to their NYC Headquarters to continue (and expand on) the conversation. Naturally, we jumped at …

The leveraging of data has changed the way brands think about the shopping journey. No longer do marketers look at data as simply numbers. We marketers now know that these numbers are actionable insights! Powerful insights with multiple touch-points across a variety of interactions. Things such as search intent, time spent onsite, videos viewed and content consumed (to name a few).

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Top 10 Stores to Visit in NYC

Tour the top 10 stores changing retail and customer experience in New York City

listicle for shopping in new york city

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5 Creative Ways Stores Are Experimenting With Immersive Retail Experiences – Shopify

Since the dawn of ecommerce, experts have predicted the death of physical retail.Bombarded by a revolving door of platforms and providers, today’s consumers expect big things from their favorite brands. But even in a world that demands a digital presence, a report from brand intelligence firm L2 suggests 72% of online shoppers worldwide consider the brick-and-mortar experience most important when making a purchase.Despite this, the physical and digital experience retailers offers is often dis...

Bombarded by a revolving door of platforms and providers, today’s consumers expect big things from their favorite brands. But even in a world that demands a digital presence, a report from brand intelligence firm L2 suggests 72% of online shoppers worldwide consider the brick-and-mortar experience most important when making a purchase.

Now more than ever, forward-thinking retailers are seeing value in looking beyond price and service to create an immersive shopping experience meant to tug at heartstrings and capture customer loyalty, even for a short while.

If you're interested in trying out an immersive retail display, you can jumpstart your planning process with the following questions:

What's your story? What story would you like to tell through your immersive retail experience? And how does that tie into your brand's overall story?

Who is your target customer? Describe them, their habits, and any barriers that stand between them and becoming a customer of your brand.

What actions do you want shoppers to take? Through the course of the immersive experience, do you want customers to interact with specific products? Make a purchase from your recent stock? Subscribe to your mailing list, or share info about your brand on social media? The desired action is integral to planning the look and feel of your immersive experience.

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When it opened its doors, Barneys became the first luxury retailer department store in the US to launch iBeacon technology within a bricks-and-mortar space. Teaming up with RichRelevance, the Barneys flagship has integrated the company’s Relevance Cloud personalization platform to power a first-of-its-kind digital experience for its in-store customers. 

The aim – and indeed the outcome – is that shoppers are engaged across all customer touchpoints, be they online, on mobile, or in the store itself.  

“The most important touchpoint is the phone,” Barneys Vice President of Digital, Matthew Woolsey, told Digiday.“We’re proud of the way we’ve used our customer data online and offline to be fluidly connected — it allows for a personalized, consistent experience in store and online.

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Take a shower, cook a meal in this store

Pirch is rewriting the rules for shopping for home appliances.

"Experiences period … are what it's going to take in the future for brick-and-mortar guys to survive." -Robin Lewis, CEO of The Robin Report Pirch, which plans to roll out three locations a year, is not limiting itself to malls. In 2016, it will open a three-level, 32,000-square-foot store in Manhattan's SoHo neighborhood, in a vacant space that once served as a metal foundry. "We know that when people walk through the space they're just stunned and they start to dream," Sears said. "Water runs, the chefs are cooking and people are learning. Pretty soon you just simply say, 'My house sucks.'" Not only can shoppers reserve Pirch's "Sanctuary" room—which includes more than a dozen shower heads, a steam room and a sauna—but whenever the store is open, a chef is always cooking, sending the aroma of bacon or other savory treats through the air. 

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How Nike, Adidas are leading the future of retail

Brands debut new, swanky concept stores in New York City.

The future of retail features a basketball court.

This fall, the world’s two largest athletic-gear makers—Nike   (NKE, -0.81%) and Adidas—opened massive multi-floor stores in Manhattan as a way to champion a more immersive retail experience to promote the sports brands in a way that cannot be delivered by department stores and specialty sports retailers. Those features include customization of jerseys and shoes, athletic consultation services, and same-day delivery service in New York City.

“Consumers just expect more,” Heidi O’Neill, Nike’s president of global direct to consumer, told Fortune at the company’s new 55,000-square foot store in SoHo. “They expect more immersive experiences at retail like you are seeing here.”

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Nike’s new store in New York is like Legoland for people who love sports

It's even got a mini basketball court where you can run drills to test out sneakers.

The store, originally scheduled to open on Nov. 11 but delayed because of a permit issue (the new opening date is Nov. 18 at noon) contains: a mini basketball court; a treadmill in front of screens simulating different outdoor runs; a small, enclosed soccer area; a customization shoe bar where shoppers can personalize a pair of Nike Air Force 1s; and dedicated coaches on staff who can put customers through drills to test out sneakers. Cameras are set up all around the basketball court to capture the action from different angles. A camera beside the treadmill records a customer’s gait during a run, allowing a Nike staff member to analyze the results and recommend the best sneaker. And that customer can later access the footage through his online Nike account and share it on social media.

Nike spent years designing the store, according to Sean Madden, Nike’s senior director of service and experience for its direct-to-consumer business. “We’ve got a lab back on campus,” he says, referring to the company’s Oregon headquarters. “We’re trying things. We’re piloting in other stores quietly in the marketplace. And we’re finally bringing this to the consumer.” Nike plans to roll out successful elements of the Soho store through the rest of its retail fleet, which includes about 1,000 locations worldwide

A large brick-and-mortar store in New York is a costly investment when e-commerce sales are growing. But physical stores are still critical for brands, and the most forward-thinking companies recognize that for those stores to pay off they need to offer experiences that e-commerce can’t.

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Nike now builds custom shoes in under 90 minutes at its Makers’ Studio in NYC

It’s been years since Nike first introduced its NikeID online custom design studio. And while others have tried to replicate this service, the response simply hasn’t been the same. Nike…

Obviously the coolest part of today’s announcement is that once you’ve gone through each step, your custom shoes will be done within the hour. That’s pretty incredible when you really think about it as each order must be made by hand on-site. For decades, Nike has worked directly with athletes to create cutting-edge and highly personalized products. Over time, this relationship between designers and athletes delineated a harmonization of form, function and emotion that defines Nike shoes and apparel.This month, with the opening of the Nike Makers’ Experience at Nike By You Studio @ 45 Grand in New York, Nike’s Advanced Innovation team brings elements of this process to the consumer by merging digital design with traditional footwear making.

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At World of Niche, we place equal value in the store experience we create for customers as we do in the product itself. This idea is one of the many reasons why we do not currently sell our product online. 

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This New York City Sneaker Store Only Lets One Person Shop at a Time

A secret society of sneakers.

What happens next is also unlike anything you've seen in a sneaker store before. After the customer chooses a shoe, a sharp-dressed sales associate brings the sneakers out on a platter. Yes, you read that correctly, a platter. GQ tried out the $300 veg-tanned leather runners and, although the writer was impressed, he wasn't fully convinced.

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The Store Of The Future: 150+ Startups Transforming Brick-And-Mortar Retail In One Infographic

Startups are outfitting retailers with augmented reality, beacons, wearables, and more to bridge the gap between digital and physical shopping.

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The myth of the 'store of the future' - Digiday

Everyone loves to talk about the 'store of the future' and how we could someday be living in a world where there are no checkout lines at retail stores and robots fulfill online orders. Companies who spend too much time talking about the subject, however, are the ones making the least amount of progress.

Now that industry analysts have proclaimed that brick-and-mortar isn’t dead, it’s just evolving, retailers — particularly those with a large fleet of traditional format stores like Target — are tasked with overhauling, tweaking and improving the physical shopping experience.

Tech vendors feed off of that hype by promising big fixes with buzzy trends like smart fitting room mirrors, VR experiences, endless aisles, scan-from-your-phone checkout, Google Analytics for physical traffic, heat mapping, beacon notifications and body scanners that can identify each person that walks into a retail store by phone number and history of purchase.

Actual progress, when it comes to digital evolutions in store, boils down to how well a company has integrated its approach to innovation internally, from its technology team down to its in-store associates.

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Farfetch is set to unveil a beta version of its Store of the Future, an ‘operating system’ for physical retail. BoF gets an exclusive sneak peek.

The company, which connects consumers with a curated network of boutiques and brands, is now the world’s top luxury e-commerce destination measured by traffic, outperforming competitors including Yoox Net-a Porter and Neiman Marcus. From fitting rooms equipped with photo booths to mannequins with screens on their foreheads, most in-store technology has been gimmicky stuff that’s more likely to drive short-term PR than actual sales. By contrast, Farfetch’s Store of the Future aims to dramatically improve retail productivity by capturing invaluable customer data and enhancing human interactions between shoppers and sales associates.

For the time being, Farfetch has developed a few key applications to demonstrate the power of the platform: a universal login that recognises a customer as she checks into the store; an RFID-enabled clothing rack that detects which products she is browsing and auto-populates her wishlist; a digital mirror that allows her to view her wishlist and summon items in different sizes and colours; a mobile payment experience similar to what exists in Apple Stores; and, of course, the underlying data layer that connects these services with each other and the Farfetch platform.

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5 Examples of Innovative Uses for RFID Technology in Retail – Shopify

Retailers are always on the lookout for ways to test and implement technology to operate more efficiently, set themselves apart from the competition and improve the shopping experience.Radio frequency identification (RFID) isn’t a new technology, but retailers are beginning to see how this tech can directly benefit their bottom line in unexpected ways. RFID is a tracking technology that uses small tags or chips to transmit a signal to remote scanners. In 2016, research showed 73% of retailers...

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Target taps Avery Dennison for massive RFID project

The retailer is deploying the technology for a variety of inventory management and customer experience needs, with an emphasis on apparel and home products.

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Retail “smart stores” will feature robots, interactive shelves

Tomorrow’s retail stores want to take a page from their online rivals by embracing advanced technology — everything from helpful robots to interactive mirrors to shelves embedded with sensors…

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GameStop to close 150 stores

Brick-and-mortar retailers are impacted by consumers' rush to purchase products online.