Nothing can beat the physical experience of bricksand mortar retail.
And nothing can match the digitalefficiency of clicking (or touching) on a screen toresearch and buy.
It’s now clearer than ever that 21stcentury retail must be about blending the two: a“clicks and mortar” collaboration, to quote SabrinaLin, VP marketing, Cisco Systems.
Lin spoke to the Westfield World Retail Study TourGroup in Shanghai last week, and her words stuckwith me as our group of 40 set out on a five-city tourof the globe.
“Experience and efficiency are the newwinning positions,” said Lin.
Too true, and whenthey work together to the benefit of shoppers, it’s anawesome combination.
Physical retailers need to be transformed digitally, and sellers who started out online need to becomemore physical. Somewhere in the middle is actually what the shopper wants.
For the bricks and mortar guys, it is about living up to what Jon Stine of Cisco calls “internet-shapedexpectations”; the desire from customers for infinite range, access to information, visibility of productavailability, transparency of pricing, and ease of purchase.Those retailers that embrace this idea are enjoying disproportionate returns.
We saw how UK departmentstore John Lewis does it particularly well, by consistently extending its physical offer with a clearinvitation to check out more online.
Iconic UK department store Selfridges is equally enthusiastic aboutlinking physical to digital, with its major commitment to click and collect communicated everywhere atits Oxford St store in London.
Meanwhile, for digital merchants, it’s all about supplementing high tech with high touch.
E-tailers havediscovered that it’s critically important to (literally) get the product into the hands of customers.
We have seen many examples in our travels on this year’s Study Tour. In New York, we witnessed howboth eyewear brand Warby Parker and men’s apparel seller Bonobos have evolved from selling purelyonline, to having showrooms attached to their head offices, to simply having stand alone stores.
In Los Angeles, I ventured to Venice Beach to see how Toms Shoes, which started online, has launcheda shop and community hangout.
And in London’s SoHo, we saw and heard how luxury cycling brandRapha has gone beyond the web with a hub for bike enthusiasts, by offering the chance to purchaseproduct, have a great coffee, watch big races live, and join regular rides. (Watch this space: Rapha is onits way to Australia soon too.)
The ultimate case study in clicks and mortar is still the Burberry store on London’s Regent St.
TheWestfield group received a guided tour, and we learned how Burberry has modeled the store on itswebsite – fluidly linking the physical and virtual.
Enough has been written about the Burberry space already, but for me walking through the store andhearing the philosophy added a different dimension.
In lots of ways, it’s a bold experiment on where retailneeds to go, with innovations like RFID-embedded garments that trigger useful videos when you holdthem close to a mirror.
So the future of retail is not either/or, it is “and”. Fuse clicks and mortar together successfully, and youend up with the best of both worlds.
* Jon Bird is currently travelling on the Westfield World Retail Study Tour, along with Inside Retail managingeditor, Carla Bridge. When he’s not out visiting stores, Bird is CEO of specialist retail marketing agency,IdeaWorks (www.ideaworks.com.au), and chairman of Inside Retail’s publisher, Octomedia. Email: jon.bird@ideaworks.com.au Blog: www.newretailblog.com Twitter: @thetweetailer
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