Enter The Mega-Multi Use Universe

In an era of more expansive corporate mergers and consolidations, from media companies to pharmaceuticals and airlines, companies still need to think more broadly about how to better satiate evolving consumer needs.

We have taken baby steps with more multi-use living: apartments created above storefronts, but that has had limited appeal.

We began timidly with bakeries turning into cafes. So, customers can chew and schmooze without leaving the premises.

I’m talking about a more radical approach to the prevailing corporate vision.

And I’m happy to provide a few suggestions:

Take, for instance, Target.

While they meet many of our retail therapy inclinations and short-term “Target Runs,” are they missing another great opportunity?

Imagine, if you will, an adjunct “Target Hotel.”

Juxtaposed to a flagship store, Target Hotel guests can roll right out of bed and into a store for replacement shaving cream, snack bags, and batteries.

Instead of waiting until they get home and dragging themselves out to restock their home, shoppers can do the re-stock shopping before they finally check out of their hotel room.

What a time and chore-saving strategy this would provide!

Let’s take another example: CVS.

Although it provides a wide assortment of prescriptive and over-the-counter items, what could make it even better?

Why, a “CVS Bank” next door, of course!

Maybe you’d rather pay cash and there’s no convenient ATM nearby.

Make a handy withdrawal at your 24-hour CVS Bank and Trust.

Thinking of taking out a loan for a new house or car, but can’t find the time? Talk to a friendly CVS Banker on Sunday. They’ll start the paperwork before the other banks re-open.

How nifty!

No reason to stop there.

Like many, I tend to visit my local Home Depot on a weekend. From my observations, Sunday seems the most heavily trafficked time of the week.

With no intention of being sacrilegious or blasphemous, why doesn’t Home Depot open a place of worship next door?

It could be ecumenical in its observance?—?more along the lines of an airport chapel.

You know you need to go to Home Depot anyway.

Why not assuage your guilt about missing Sunday Services and feed your soul before picking up that new power drill or those lawn care products?

In case you haven’t noticed, as we get busier and busier in our already bustling lives, our time management skills demand more options.

We already have delivery services to collapse the time we used to spend picking up dinner or picking up items from the local drugstore.

Our longer workdays don’t allow us the luxury to combine all our necessary errands into even one or two trips.

Listen up, corporate!

Your customers’ lives are rapidly changing, and you need to think (I can’t say “the box” metaphor, sorry).

We need more and more necessities squeezed together so we have more time to either binge a new streaming series or take up a new online skill.

Start knocking on your Planning Department’s doors.

Tell them to rethink underused retail real estate.

Get out those T-squares and start figuring out how to provide more under the corporate umbrella.

So we can meet the future head-on with our lives on the move and our credit cards unfurled.