The Death of Retail
Best Buy is a storage facility, not a store. The fluorescent bulbs are as tired as the salespeople. There is a lot of stuff and yet, it is cavernously empty. A labyrinth of boxes towers in one corner, next to it is a vacant lot with dust bunnies swaying under the air vent. The TVs are in full competition with one another, muscling their volume capacity. The appliances are orphaned against the wall. The tech section is a tangled mess of phones, iPads, and laptops tethered to shiny white tables. Printers are exiled to where the carpet is patched with duct tape.
Home Depot isn’t much better. Everything is beige and dingy—an apocalyptic idea of decor. Although the store has some dioramas of kitchens and bathrooms, the imagination, craft, and styling are remnants of an Eisenhower-era aesthetic without the irony. Everything is beige, and not the trendy millennial beige, this is the decomposition of something that was once white.
When did retail shopping become this depressing? Why should stores selling budget appliances make the customer feel like they’re in a gulag? Ikea made a successful business by inviting their customers to imagine how their products not only fit into their lives but enhance them. Ikea showrooms are full of possibilities, and delicious meatballs—now available in vegan. That’s customer experience, enhanced by UX and UI. It results in loyalty and sales.
My husband and I renovated and designed many spaces from spas and restaurants to conventions, and even dog grooming chains, but renovating our home is personal. We are susceptible to pretty shiny things that we can’t afford but will buy anyway, because we are designers and eye candy is our Achilles heel. But going into these stodgy warehouses is a dream crusher.
The retailers we visited, Best Buy, Home Depot, PC Richards (and so many more!), crushed our expectations with price tags that made no sense, wayfinding that confounded logic, and sales staff that was either nowhere to be found, or was too aggressive or needy, unknowledgeable, or aloof.
For any brand, an experience is an indispensable opportunity to create an environment for a customer to fall in love with a product. It is a deeply human and personal interaction. It is a way for you to influence and connect with your customers with a product that they can touch, feel, even smell, and hear before the purchase. No Instagram ad will do that. No website can do that.
To buy a fridge, I need to know its functional fundamentals, but I also need to see if I can reach the top shelf, open the door easily, and most importantly, will my 6’4” husband have to lie on the floor of the kitchen to get to the bottom shelf?
But this isn’t just about the actual thing, it’s about the sales staff, the decor of the showroom (fluorescent lights are a mood killer, nothing looks good under them) and the way that thing is presented on the floor.
What we see a lot in our work, is that the people behind the brands stop being customers. They don’t use empathy, or reflect on their own experiences, which are indispensable marketing gauges.
Ultimately, the shopper should be transported into world of imagination, which can be made possible with your product. Retail stores are missing out on a key concept: the real world can never be replaced by a 360 view online or even augmented reality. That’s why successful e-commerce brands like On Running, Away, Warby Parker create in-store experiences for their brands. The interaction with their experienced sales staff is a major component.
A hard sell is a turn-off. A good salesperson knows how to leave you alone and be there even before you have a question. That staff is the embodiment of your brand: the way they speak, dress and interact with a customer. They facilitate something AI can’t do: human-to-human interaction, a real-time conversation based on the customer’s wants and needs.
We experienced this at AJ Madison. Not only was the sales representative informative, he showed us a few items that are out of our budget, but he got us on the path to aspiring, dreaming of “the next time.” This is also true of reps to HCP contact, congresses, department stores, or furniture showrooms. Don’t sell. Connect and have a conversation, not as a salesperson, but as a person.
Customer Experience isn’t a one-off: It’s not a website, a logo, an ad, or a store. It’s a commitment to creating a consistent experience and a dialogue. It’s the language, both visual and verbal, not only in your materials, but through an interpersonal connection. Building that relationship is extremely human; it requires empathy and putting yourself into your customer’s shoes. It is a person-to-brand interaction where sight, taste, hearing, smell, and touch all work together to create a very human experience that is a destination, not drudgery.
A brand experience has the power to make the customer not only dream and see possibilities, but it also makes them feel respected. And this goes double for conference booths! Stop relying on touch screens—edutainment and gamification get much better information retention results.
Brick and mortar is an opportunity to create a brand world, a destination, not drudgery. And please do invite me to any retail stores that sell appliances specializing in miniature NYC apartment kitchens!
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