Back to the Future: Takeaways from Retail’s Big Show 2015
Remember that 80’s movie “Back to the Future”? Marty McFly drove his Delorean time-machine to a future filled with food hydrators, phone glasses, self-tying shoes and hover-boards. The year – 2015.
Feel old yet? While we don’t have flying cars, we do have some pretty neat technology – some of which appeared at this year’s National Retail Federation event – Retail’s Big Show (NRF15) in New York City. As shows go, CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in Las Vegas remains the Goliath in technology with a whopping 200,000 attendees compared to the modest 27,000 who attended NRF15 this year. Regardless, retail is all about technology. Couldn’t make the show? Here are a couple of my layman’s takeaways to share...
Fitness and Wearables Trends to Grow
In a small corner of the lower level, exhibit hall, there was a curious collection of new technology products that epitomized innovation and “Back to the Future” thinking. It is the NRF iLab. Although the focus of NRF15 is NOT products, I was impressed by the latest “Kickstarter” elites featured here. What was apparent is that the fitness and wearables trends are the fastest growing trends and have lots of growth opportunity for retailers.
With obesity rates finally hitting a plateau in this country, health and fitness trend products continue to have huge market success. The closest thing to a “Back to the Future” hover-board was a workout surf board from Surfset Fitness (http://www.surfsetfitness.com/) – the world’s first total body surf trainer. No need for a wetsuit when you can hang 10 at home.
In wearables and fashion, CuteCircuit (http://cutecircuit.com/) offers an interactive fabric that creates a variety of color lighting options within the fabric that can be controlled remotely via an app. Katy Perry is a big fan. Dance clubs will never be the same.
Online has created greater transparency to pricing and more options for consumers to choose from. Mobility enables comparison shopping, opportunities for customer engagement and socialization. Thanks to competition, shippers can get you products faster than ever before – same day even.
A handful of e-tailers have been taking their proven, online businesses to bricks-and-mortar locations. Others are taking cues from e-tailers to run their bricks-and-mortar operations.
Maybe it started with Dell years ago, but many successful online brands are venturing to bricks-and-mortar to increase market share. Amazon tested a kiosk model in California over the holidays. eBay has been doing this successfully for years. NRF15 highlighted a couple of newer companies that represent this virtual meets physical conversion.
Birch Box (https://www.birchbox.com/) has been wildly successful with its online subscription model that creates a better way for men and women to get beauty products. They source hard-to-find, quality products and provide monthly deliveries of personalized samples for as little as $15 a month. With an easy-to-use process, they continue to delight and surprise customers except now, in the trendy, up-scale neighborhood of Soho.
Birch Box has shipped millions of boxes since they first started four years ago. In July of 2014, they opened their first and only physical store in New York. With the physical store, they showcase their best-sellers available to buy – something you can’t do online.
Not sure where to start? Birch Box features walk-up kiosk to get the same personalization they offer online. You can pick your skin type, complexion, hair type and age to more effectively match you to the products in the store.
You get to surprise and delight others with gift boxes you can build on your own priced just like online - $15 for her / $25 for him.
Another example of convergence is AYG Guideshop (https://ayr.com/guideshop). They opened on 45 West 25th in New York taking a lesson from online to task – give the consumer choice. AYG Guideshop offers only one of each of their products in their physical store. You get to try it before you buy it. If you want to buy it, go ahead, but you won’t be leaving the store with a bag. They will ship it to you. Is it showrooming or webrooming or a mix of both?
I could go on...Great experience. I hope to return to next year's show.
