What if the future of stores is to be MORE than a store?

Retailers are increasingly present across all distribution channels, but they are focusing their innovation on virtual modes. While stores may benefit from the latest digital tools, they receive only a small slice of the creativity pie. Fortunately, a few counter-examples demonstrate that things are changing.

Not a day goes by without the launch of some new avatar of connected retail to sustain the impression of continuous innovation. At least that’s how things look online but, in what we still call “real life,” in the streets and shopping centres, the impression is rather more bleak.

This is a bit disturbing because, after all, digital technology is no more than a new standard for trade. It is only natural that the digital transformation should expand in the world of retail, as it has in the media, culture and administration.

But once this new standard has lost its ability to amaze us, once all brands have been transformed, the only thing to distinguish them will be precisely the thing that digital technology can’t offer: human contact, the experience of the senses, local attachment. All of these demand a physical place to occur.

And yet the actual place of sale is changing very little.

As far as the consumer is concerned, the omni-channel strategy of retailers is just another update of their sales arsenal and service policy. From that perspective, stores left to “gather dust” can only mean one thing: retailers have lost interest. But that’s certainly no way to incite consumers to make the trip.

Imagine the day when retailers, to maximise multi-channel distribution, will focus the same attention on stores that they do on their digital transformation.

Will they make a creative leap forward or retreat to the antiquated basics of retail? Brace yourselves – it could be both. Here are a few interesting initiatives worth noting.

• Eataly, temples of Italian food that are a combination of gourmet supermarket, production site and cultural centre (coming to Paris in 2018).
• La T Fondaco dei Tedeschi, a luxury department store of global brands, surrounded by the city’s very best in gastronomy and craftsmanship, located in an iconic building in Venice.
• L’appart by Leroy Merlin , a blend of boutique, decorated apartment and workshop. A pilot store has just opened at the Rivetoile shopping centre in Strasbourg, with 200 square metres and top-notch service.

In these three examples, the point of sale breaks away from the usual definition of a store to offer more. It’s all about staging, awakening the senses, and a new level of service focused on human interaction – something that can’t be experienced anywhere else.

October 2016