Stores Achieve Success by Design

Back in February of this year, Matt Shay, president of the National Retail Federation, said, "2012 is all about the customer."

Mr. Shay’s comments came out of findings from the Benchmarks for 2011, Forecasts for 2012 report by the NRF Foundation and KPMG LLP, which discovered a renewed commitment by merchants to engage shoppers through a variety of customer-centric initiatives.

While much of the report focused on capturing opportunities across a variety of sales channels using digital tools, it is also clear that technology combined with store layout and design can have a profound effect on merchants’ top and bottom lines.

A lot of the credit given to the renewed emphasis on store design has gone to Apple. By now, anyone who has read anything about the late Apple visionary Steve Jobs knows how much emphasis he put on design. The smallest of details mattered.

Diversity of experience and thinking were key to achieving innovative design, according to Mr. Jobs.

"A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences," Mr. Jobs told Wired in the 1990s. "So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have.

A recent piece on Entrepreneur.com, identified "myths" that merchants should question when it came to store design.

"It pays to make an effort to break from the norm," Debi Ward Kennedy, a retail consultant, told Entrepreneur.com. "Take those principles of design and bend, break, configure or camouflage them to serve your business instead of the opposite, where you … are held hostage by rules of interior design."

Among ways to break away from the myths were:

  1. Forego painting walls a neutral color. Instead, use color schemes that reinforce and bring your brand to life in the shopping environment.
  2. Don’t use vendor-supplied fixtures or others developed for a store’s particular channel. Create interiors that don’t look like every other competitor in the market.
  3. Limit the use of flexible fixtures to avoid a store giving off "a temporary, noncommittal" message to shoppers.
  4. Invest in talent. It is particularly helpful for small merchants to pay a professional design firm for an initial consultation to pick proper colors and get other tips before tackling the project themselves. Others pay for help in creating window displays.
  5. Chains don’t know everything. When it comes to store design, replicating a competitor won’t help a store differentiate.

A final piece of advice from Mr. Jobs should be added to any list of store design rules.

"Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes," he once said. "It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations."

BrainTrust

Discussion Questions

What role(s) do you see design playing in retailer brand building and customer engagement? Are there “rules” that you think merchants should throw out when it comes to designing their own stores?

Poll

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Ian Percy
Ian Percy
11 years ago

Thank you George, this may be my favorite piece in RW of all time.

First…DESIGN RULES!

There is just no way around it. Love that sunset? Design. Do you finally relax in certain settings? Design. Lots of us think we know design but we don’t and we need to listen to people who do. And even Steve Jobs had to learn that: he wanted to name the iMac the “MacMan”for goodness sakes and hated the ‘i’ thing. Took months to convince him. Naming is part of design too.

I can’t help but replay an old tape loyal readers have heard from me a thousand times: it isn’t “mechanistic” design where someone runs around with a catalog of paint chips and lighting figures looking for something that “goes” with the place. Anyone with a decent sense of taste can do that.

It’s about “energetic” design. Learning how to read the energy emanating from design. A bold color in one location can have negative energy and the same color in another setting can send off magnetic positive energy. We can demonstrate how a single graphic line in an ad can dramatically change the impression that ad leaves.

Some will think I’m talking about feng shui and that would be a good start. Our understanding of energetics goes far far beyond that ancient art.

On my ‘bucket list’ is a retail enterprise that will turn an entire store over to a comprehensive energetic approach to its design.

Until then just one word of advice: Listen to your branding and marketing agency!

Phil Wells
Phil Wells
11 years ago

There has been an increasing tendency for the big retail chains to look increasingly like each other, for example because they use the same source of data to determine product ranges (Nielsen, IRI, etc).

If a chain with 1,000 stores wants to differentiate itself from the competition via a redesign of the visual appearance of its outlets, that’s going to take serious money.

That may not be forthcoming in the present economic climate.

Ralph Jacobson
Ralph Jacobson
11 years ago

Nice topic. Ever see the 1947 movie, “Miracle on 34th Street”? Take a look at the scenes of the well-known department store. How truly different do the stores of today look? NOT VERY DIFFERENT. That goes for grocery stores, too. The article suggests paint schemes and the like. Ugh. Can someone please blow up the traditional store model and start from scratch?! Let’s use some imagination, for crying out loud.

One of the more prolific conversation threads on LinkedIn in recent memory lasted two months with more than 60 comments: “Brick stores have looked virtually the same for more than 50 years. Where’s a truly ground breaking Store of the Future?!” (You may have to join this group in order to view comments.)

Martin Mehalchin
Martin Mehalchin
11 years ago

Store design can make a huge difference. For a large chain, seemingly small changes in design and layout can drop tens of millions of dollars to the bottom line. The path to that kind of impact is to start with intense field observation in a large sampling of stores, combine those results with store performance data and base your design changes off of the resulting insights.

Matt Schmitt
Matt Schmitt
11 years ago

The activity level of customer-centric store design projects has definitely picked up more steam over the last two years. Shopper Marketing programs and retailers’ focus on same-store results and a differentiated experience are driving a lot of action. It’s great to see some of the efforts in development and will be even better to experience wide-spread activation of these design initiatives.

Craig Sundstrom
Craig Sundstrom
11 years ago

I suppose I could dismiss this — a consultant opining on the value of using a consultant — as blatant self-promotion, but I happen to think much of what she says is true. Who doesn’t agree that a store’s design/image is a key part of its brand? OTOH, though I’ve long been bothered by Nordstrom’s fondness for inexpensive drop ceilings, and feel they’re at odds with the tony reputation, I’m hard pressed to make the case that this is holding down sales; and when some trust-fund brat is shopping at upscale retailer XXX, are they really bothered by the use of those rolling display racks? (Probably only if they roll one over their flip-flops.)

Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.
Herb Sorensen, Ph.D.
11 years ago

I appreciate the zen approach to design, but I’m one whose taste is pretty much in my mouth, and that is attenuating with age. Clearly, Steve jobs was a master of this type of design, and he rejected consumer research since, as he said, people wouldn’t know what to like until he showed it to them. And I respect that.

But there is still an element of design that is greatly facilitated by knowing and understanding people. My own knowledge and understanding of shoppers is less driven by intuition than massive hard data on how shoppers behave. For example, more than 10 years ago we showed, with a study of 100 stores across America, that right entry stores outperform left entry stores.

Lots of left entry stores have been built since then. Conclusion: hard data has a weak influence on this industry.

Roy White
Roy White
11 years ago

Store design is indeed very important and certainly one way for a merchant to differential himself from his competitors. However, for the supermarket industry, the issue of store design — or changing from the current footprint — is a very difficult one. It’s true that supermarkets have changed over the past several years. They’re larger and the perimeter is considerably developed and in many cases actually exciting. But except for the specialists, like Aldi and Trader Joe’s, stores remain pretty much the same. Although the article suggests not using manufacturer fixtures, the supplier community may very well be the source of innovation in that it has the resources, both human and financial, to investigate design and determine what design features may work best in a given environment.

Adrian Weidmann
Adrian Weidmann
11 years ago

If it looks and feels like somewhere or someone else to you, then it will certainly leave that same impression to your shoppers. Benchmarking your competition is useful only to the extent that it will inspire and motivate you and your team to create something better and more innovative. The physical store is the only channel where you can leverage and connect to, and through, all of the human senses. Take advantage of this when you create and design your brand experience.

Matthew Keylock
Matthew Keylock
11 years ago

Good article. A few thoughts…

1. There are still a lot of retailers for whom brand-building is a new concept. They have been more about the brands within them than their own brand. Instead, they have focused their efforts on more easily quantifiable operational initiatives on the supply-side that look at the cost of fixtures or ease of filling shelves.

2. Different customer segments will have different expectations. A low price/dollar store may need to appear low price inside for customers to believe it. Contractors at a home improvement store will want the store to look and feel different to the interior furnishing “frill-seeker.”

3. A clear brand positioning and great design is really important in all these cases. For retailers that have a broad customer appeal and broad product set there is a fine balancing act too.

4. We can transfer learning from online to benefit bricks and mortar stores. The concept of personalizing the store for a customer online is already achievable. We can apply these ideas as well as how customers make choices online to bring greater relevance the bricks and mortar world.

Mike Osorio
Mike Osorio
11 years ago

Design is, of course, crucial to in-store and virtual customer experiences with your brand. The best design sits atop a well understood core DNA which inspires the design team to use iconic elements that may include color, shapes, textures, etc. Where design goes off-track is when the brand relies on external ‘experts’ focused more on efficiency than on true design, to define their design scheme — unless that external expert takes the time to truly understand the brand DNA before making their recommendations.

Stay to your core and make design decisions that are true to how the customer wants to interact with your brand. It is as simple and as complex as that.

Jerry Gelsomino
Jerry Gelsomino
11 years ago

There is a group of professionals everyone in the BrainTrust and retailers around the world should know. They are members of the Retail Design Institute, formally known as the Institute Store Planners. The individuals and firms as members are dedicated to enticing, engaging, and thrilling customers with designs that enhance the product or service. What makes a great design? The answer is the team of a visionary retailer or merchant, and a designer who can make magic happen, turning browsers into buyers.