Store experience is part of the retail new normal.

One of our clients, international fashion brand, shared with us their drive to keep the store experience in that new normal we experience.

Before COVID days, they built their brand on human interface, what we call the store experience. Their sales assistants have never been considered as ‘just sales assistants’. They were trained and helped to become client advisors or even style advisors. No fake approach, just normal and natural way of communication. All was not based on the ‘action of buying’ but on the client experience. Happy people leaving the store even without any purchases were considered as clients. And the fact that the teams are happy with their roles, happy to help, happy to see a client leaving the store with a smile, all that makes the difference and the value of the store experience.

Of course, all is about business, but the roots of the business are people.?

And this motivated our client to make the move to e-commerce but keeping the store experience as the core of their retail strategy.?

It is not about the action of one click which will replace the experience you can have visiting a store. The story telling made by the sales advisors, the passion they can share about the products. The touch, the smell, all your senses are in motion when you experience the store: this is retail, and the drive our client wants to keep.

In this new normal, a store becomes a retail platform offering more than its original concept.

It will be:

• A complement to e-sales and e-services, comforting the clients when doing online purchases, by showing the brand proximity in terms of product consulting, product delivery, trial of the goods or simply returns /after-sales services.
• A way to optimise the retail concept. More and more we can see new retail concepts based on the partnership between brands offering complementary lines of goods or services.
• A way to increase human interaction, offering the experience clients expect to have: it’s about discovery & desire.?
• About connected technologies which help retailers to create an increased experience, a better accuracy and personalisation. A live retail eco-system which will satisfy our needs of being online and physically present.

The new normal has just accelerated the transformation retail had to take. On one hand it gives an opportunity for retailers to rethink their concepts. On the other hands it is a true challenging transformation, with a demanding change management. But worth to make!