Shopping used to be social commerce in which buyers transacted not just cash, but cachet.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the earliest department stores, whose architects designed them to be destinations. London’s Harrods, established in 1849, has seven floors, comprising more than 1 million square feet across more than 330 departments. The store installed one of the world’s first escalators in 1898, opened a world-famous food hall in 1902, and sold exotic pets such as lion cubs until the 1970s.
“Through displays, demonstrations, lectures, and entertainment spectacles, the stores defined a way of life while furnishing the necessities and luxuries that it entailed.” writes Jan Whitaker, author of Service and Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class.
Today, retail stores aren’t palaces; they’re relics. Thanks to the convenience of online shopping, browsing in-store no longer feels like a privilege; instead, it feels like a pain.
But don’t count brick-and-mortar stores out just yet. A 2014 study by A.T. Kearney found that 90% of shoppers prefer buying products in person. Furthermore, 94% of total retail sales are still generated in brick-and-mortar stores—despite the e-commerce explosion.
To ensure that in-store shopping remains relevant, brands aren’t trying to compete with technology; rather, they’re leveraging it. If store designers and technologists collaborate successfully, the result could be a new golden age of retail.
Technology will permeate future stores on at least two planes. The first—in stores’ infrastructure—will be invisible to customers but invaluable to retailers, according to George Shaw, vice president of research and development at RetailNext, a San Francisco–based company that helps retailers collect and analyze in-store customer data.
“The entire world is increasingly data driven, and retail is no exception,” explains Shaw, who says retailers of the future will use in-store sensors to collect a wealth of customer information and big data. Among the sensors already deployable within stores, for example, are:
From beacons to touch screens, in-store technology will fundamentally change how stores are designed.
“I don’t know what the store of the future will look like exactly, but sensors will be part of every store build-out,” Shaw says. “We’ll be able to use the data from those sensors to figure out what a store footprint should look like and to optimize design iteratively—possibly on the fly.”
Store designers will have to think not only about the requirements of hardware—where to put beacons, for instance—but also how to leverage the intelligence it yields. If data shows that shoppers only shop stores’ centers, for instance, designers will have to develop solutions—new fixtures, signage, visual merchandising, and so forth—to drive them to stores’ perimeters.
“Designers need to change their thinking,” Shaw continues. “It’s no longer about your instincts, what you learned in design school, or even your experience in the field; it’s about what the data is telling you.”
What the data says is that shoppers want to move forward by going back: Like their forebears who visited Harrods, they crave emporiums that are experiential, not transactional, in nature.
“If broad selection and price comparison are the most important drivers for a consumer, then shopping online may be the best vehicle,” Shapleigh says. “In retail stores, we’re seeing the reemergence of spaces that try to connect on an emotional level with consumers. … Brands want to generate a fan base, not just a customer base; you need to create immersive and relevant experiences to achieve this.”
Because it combines customer data with experiential architecture, Watches of Switzerland’s flagship store on Regent Street in London—less than 2 miles from Harrods—illustrates perfectly the newly forged intersection of technology, branding, and design. Designed by CallisonRTKL with the use of Autodesk AutoCAD, the three-story, 17,000-square-foot store opened in 2014 and boasts three different retail environments under one roof, each designed to appeal to a different buyer: watch enthusiasts, connoisseurs, and collectors. Large display panels and interactive touch screens let customers explore the history of individual watch brands. The high-tech space also doubles as a private venue for special events.
“The Watches of Switzerland flagship … is more than a watch store,” says Gerald Allbury, principal in CallisonRTKL’s London office . “It is a store as precisely engineered as the Swiss timepieces it represents.”
The stores of yore owed their grandeur as much to design as to merchandise. To survive, it seems, tomorrow’s stores must do the same.
This article has been updated. It originally published November 2015.
Matt Alderton is a Chicago-based freelance writer specializing in business, design, food, travel, and technology. A graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, his past subjects have included everything from Beanie Babies and mega bridges to robots and chicken sandwiches. He may be reached via his website, MattAlderton.com.
AECO
AECO
AECO
