Invest in the Extras

There is a free outdoor skating rink located directly beside my office. The rink is nothing to write home about, but I see people happily doing laps every day as they enjoy this otherwise random extra.

Did The Well (where my office is located) need an outdoor skating pad? No. If it didn’t have one, no one would think, “Where’s the rink?” Having a sizeable icey surface, complete with boards and rentals, is more surprising than common-place. But that’s the point.

Do extras always work? No. Sometimes, a business will invest in something unnecessary, which will backfire. But often, those extras backfire for two reasons:

1. It didn’t make sense in the first place
2. The goals were misaligned.

If RioCan (a primary developer) had built a small car repair shop in the space of the skating rink, they would have made slightly more money, but far fewer people would be enjoying the space, and the liability would have been sky-high.

Is the skating rink perfect? No. And I’m not sure what they plan to do in the summer. But for now, it’s a low-cost way of getting people to a space they may have otherwise avoided.

Investing in the extras, when done well, can be a fantastic way to create a little unexpected magic.