What Happened
With physical retail struggling to keep up with the growth of ecommerce, a number of brands have been experimenting with new ways to draw customers to their stores. In New York City, for example, retailers such as Molasses Books and menswear store Community 54 enhanced their in-store experiences with beers and video games, respectively, to engage customers with some added fun and diversify their revenue streams.
Now, Bandier, an upscale activewear boutique, is also taking an experience-based approach for its new flagship store on Fifth Avenue. Besides the regular sales floor, the store also features a lounge space for customers to hang out or attend events the brand occasionally hosts there, as well as a fitness studio upstairs where customers can take yoga, barre, and dance classes for a fee.
What Retailers Need To Do
For all the advantages ecommerce has over brick-and-mortar retailers, physical stores can still provide customers with unique experiences that are irreplicable online. By adding the lounge area and the fitness studio to its retail space, Bandier is effectively turning its store into a destination for like-minded fitness lovers, which is exactly the target audience that the activewear brand is going after. For other retailers, these examples of experiential retail should serve as inspiration to figure out how to craft an engaging in-store experience that attracts shoppers.
The Lab has extensive experience working with retail and CPG clients to create and implement digitally-enhanced experiences for their stores. Our recent work with NYX Cosmetics incorporated the brand’s social assets into its in-store experience and offered an innovative take on in-store sampling with a digital beauty bar powered by tablet apps. If you’d like to learn more about how to modernize your in-store experiences, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.
Source: Fast Company
