Retail Design Trends: From Transactional to Relational Experiences

[00:00:00][Applause] hello everyone I know that this presentation is called the future of design in retail and I've got a different title illness slide I hope that by the end of the presentation that will become a little bit clearer so first off design design has changed massively my company I do is a company that used to do product design moved into experience and service design and now we basically design change we design change for companies we design system change the design change for sectors so a lot of what I'm talking about today is what we've seen in terms of changes that have happened or changes that we anticipate and are helping companies with in the retail sector so I'm gonna start with some shifts specifically that we're seeing so these are things that as we tell entities outlets partners you may already be thinking about the first one is from ownership to access classic examples Boober I think Florence mentioned it earlier uber clearly moving from owning cars to utilising cars and thinking about the gig economy Spotify another example in the u.s. more and more we see this with tool sharing interestingly it hasn't come to fashion so much although examples like Rent the Runway and other ones are starting to move in this direction so something that is probably a shift that either you're thinking about or are experiencing the second shift is around the circular economy so I talked to a lot of retailers that are thinking about sustainability in one of two ways either they're incredibly daunted because it's very very disruptive for something that's been working or they're still thinking about it from the standpoint of the environment or the materials of that where the materials are coming from to build fabrics all thinking about recycling very few people are thinking about what we call the circular economy which is essentially an ecosystem of creating new value the best analogy is nature in nature everything is created goes back down and cycles back to create new value in a new this is an absolute essential it will be a checkbox expectation for consumers in times to come and I think Helen mentioned this a little bit too the third shift before I start moving to kind of some of the opportunity areas is actually one that only occurred to me a couple of weeks ago and talking to a retail client it was it was really interesting discussion because he described himself as not a shopper which was kind of the first weird thing to say when he works in retail and the second thing was that he started to make shopping an experience that happens at home that starts to complete compete with his Netflix time or going out for dinner what he was referring to was a service called Chapa which is a personal styling service for men where they've taken all your measurements you have several conversations on the phone with a stylist and then you receive a box with a number of items to try on at home the Box to try on at home becoming more and more popular but he said then we make a night of it so he and his wife or then have drinks and he goes and does a fashion show for her with all of the different outfits and it just really clicked for me that actually retailers used to compete for share of wallet and are probably now competing for share of mind and that starts to move into the entertainment space so I think there's something really interesting here from a shift to standpoint in terms of what this means for opportunities these are the types of things that were helping a lot of our clients with future retail we strongly believe is moving from transactional to relational and I'm going to dissect that a little bit starting with the transactional piece transactional happens brilliantly online there is no need to think about every channel serving every same function and I think kind of cliff emphasized this a little bit to where we don't need to emulate what is happening from a convenience and an efficiency standpoint in-store that experiential we'll talk a little bit more about that is really critical for distinguishing channels really good example Amazon it's a classic example but I want to serve it in a slightly different way so you may have seen a couple weeks ago Amazon announced full star it's one of its physical presents in the same way as it's been experimenting with Amazon go what to me was particularly interesting about this besides the fact that more and more primarily digital retailers are moving into the physical space is that it's the elements of digital that are starting to appear in physical in this Turin in New York you have localization personalization peer reviews things that traditionally have been online and that now have a role in the physical space so this blending the kind of I really liked the kind of dissection of buying and shopping but this blending of a holistic online offline experience is very much what is starting to move us towards relational a couple of other examples here this is moving more into the experiential phase Sonos the showroom and Covent Garden just closed but the idea was brilliant in the Soho store is doing incredibly well how do you experience products in context so we have some fabulous technologies in terms of understanding materials and weight and dimensions and you can put photographs of your home so you can see how things fit in context but it's not the same as trying before you buy and so NOS have done a brilliant job of allowing you to sit somewhere experience the sound with different materials around you as if it was your living room the dreamer ii by casper is one of my favorites as well so you can book a 45-minute nap try out the mattress they have partnerships with headspace so you get to meditate at the same time what an amazing concept that's still an online brand but they're using offline to start creating more opportunities for people to connect with the product and connect with the brand and that's an interesting transition as well so as we start to move using physical into this relational territory what does it actually start to look like when you introduce people into the mix bonobos really interesting idea here these are guide stores what you're seeing behind us so bonobos for some of you who may not know is a retail brand for men primarily online but they have these guide shops that are an opportunity to go and try on the clothes and it's not like I won't I won't say the name it's not like another high street retailer where you go in you may try on a shop and perhaps the colors a little frayed and you're a little bit kind of want to try it on top of your t-shirt this is a really really nice experience with someone who helps you feel like you're special gives you feedback maybe it's a little bit like the experience I described earlier where the client talked about having a drink at home with his wife and trying on clothes but you start to build confidence in the brand the person serves a very distinct purpose in helping you connect with the specific products and it means that you actually know what you want to buy this is another example and I'm using this as a bad example which is a little bit of an awkward thing to do but I think we have to be democratic purged purchaser again in the US and I think they've done some very very good things and then I can talk a little bit about where the opportunities are for whether it's them or others to do things differently perché you can buy let's let's use kitchens seeing buy kitchens but you don't just buy the appliances you don't just walk into the store and see what the materials are you don't see the dimensions you get to cook in the kitchen and so the people are there to help you understand the spatial relationship you have with the product the way in which you may want to interact and think about like whether you bump your head when you bend down on this etc so you start to get a really good sense of what this looks like this is a brilliant idea executed poorly because of the lack of kind of holistic view of how somebody shops before they become a buyer and afterwards so the presale and the post sale we're kind of missing from this concept but it's still a really interesting idea in terms of how do you build on your products to create an experience that people can use to contextualize how they might buy something so this is about using people to help us engage with products and moving on from products to engaging with the brand the people piece so one of the things we say I do is that we are really driven by purpose by people and by design and design is a tool that we use to bring those things to life a couple of clients here that I wanted to mention doing some really interesting things as we look at technology and I'll talk about some of the challenges that we see around technology we often forget that the roles that people take on are going to have to change it doesn't mean that we don't need people we just need different people doing different things nespresso they hire X fast off cocktail staff why because they can build a rapport they know how to hold the conversation they know how to engage you with the product without the product being the central focus goochy goochy hire x curators why because you're curating a look you're curating a feeling things that last with you afterwards so it's really interesting to start thinking about the type of people you might hire and how that actually impacts your product your brand and the opportunity to engage with your consumers so how do businesses need to adapt this is my scary slide it almost looks like a joke slide it's not a joke this is a company called provision doing exceptional things in the 3d holographic display advertising space it's almost a mouthful what is fascinating about this is the concept of using technology again to contextualize the real downside for this is the fact that it's the system's thinking that's missing this is Technol a pure example of technology for technology's sake think there are a couple of examples around kind of frivolity and novelty around using technology it dies out really quickly it doesn't drive loyalty it really in fact can put people off your brand prior to working an idea I worked for the world's largest education company and the story of One Laptop Per child again amazing technology that sits stacked hundreds and hundreds of laptops sitting stacked in cupboards in classrooms in sub-saharan Africa because of thinking about the technology and not thinking about the full system so the opportunity here is to shift from product to purpose a few brands doing this really really well Rapha exceptional brand UK brand in this case Rafa talks about selling experiences not selling products they do it through their storytelling they do it through the quality of the products they have they do it through the physical space which only came after they had sufficient funds to do that having started off online and the offline cyber won't call them cyber cafes but I'd they're cyber something's excuse me cycling stores they they're places where cyclists men cyclists can come and they can watch right there not necessarily places to flog product this is really about being true to the purpose and often as you start to think about purpose and how it can be a differentiated it also has to start from the inside out another online fashion retailer modeled off of Zappos we work with called zalando Zalando has a lab a lot of its employees cycle through that lab where it drives innovation R&D and then those employees come back into the company and spread the behaviors and the values that they've established through that lab so the purpose that they're driving in the lab starts to become the purpose of the culture as a whole so really interesting ways in which you can start to have purpose kind of permeate the company as a whole so purpose is about understanding humans this is how brands get soul and this is how the most sustainable brands stay alive and stay ahead of the competition and we've seen this over and over again so I'm gonna do a really really quick recap just because if there are three things that you can remember it's these three things the first one is that to move from transactional to relational is something that you've probably been focused on in the past and are probably still thinking about today how do you build experiences that extend your brand and help people engage with your product pre sale sale post sale today the thing that I believe you should be most focused on is people reinvent where people come from and what their roles are and the third thing is move to authentic relationships relationships that are driven and based off of purpose this is the only way to continue to make smart decisions strong differentiated decisions that give you a brand that's worth fighting for and worth promoting in retail these days and I hope that those things have aligned a little bit with what Helen was saying so I think I just tried to put some tangible examples on that so thank you very much I hope that this has been somewhat useful for you [Applause]