design:retail - July 2015 - (Page 34)

perspectives 034 The Story of STORY RACHEL SHECHTMAN Founder, STORY "We measure success by the 'experience per square foot' we provide, as opposed to the traditional 'sales per square foot' model." -RACHEL SHECHTMAN W ITH JUST ONE store location way for brands to tell their stories in a contextualized, focused physical environment. We partner with brands for each concept that add relevance to the STORY we are telling, creating a living advertorial that our visitors can shop. in New York to date, how is STORY-the little brand with a BIG social media presence-so wildly popular? We interviewed the brains behind the operation, Founder Rachel Shechtman, to get the real story behind STORY. d:r: How does social media play in to the success of your brand? Shechtman: Social media has become an important way for us to amplify what we are doing in the space, and share the stories of our featured vendors and partner. However, due to the unique nature of our business, our focus is always on amplifying the message of our partners versus making things about ourselves. Each store is designed to play to a social-media-savvy consumer, with hashtags and Twitter callouts included in our signage and subtle calls for shoppers to share their experience. design:retail: Describe the concept of STORY in a sentence. Rachel Shechtman: STORY is a retail concept that, like a living magazine, changes its identity every four to eight weeks to bring to life a new theme as a way to connect consumers, content and community in a physical space through a mix of contextualized merchandise and event programming. d:r: Where did the idea come from? Shechtman: The idea comes from my background spent as a consultant for companies big and small, where I realized first-hand that brands were struggling to find ways to connect offline with consumers. I believed that by combining strategies of marketing, merchandise and business development, you could use physical retail as a meaningful way to create these connections by addressing the "why" of shopping, as opposed to the "where" and "for what." Simply put, I believe people shop offline primarily for the experience. STORY is all about offering a unique, ever-changing experience. d:r: Why do you feel the store (and concept) has caught on as feverishly as it has? Shechtman: I believe that the buzz around STORY is largely due to the experience we provide our visitors, which begins the moment you set foot in STORY with a greeting from one of our "storytellers." We are giving consumers something that didn't really exist before by addressing the "why" JULY 2015 DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM part of shopping and catering to the social and community-oriented nature of the business, as opposed to just focusing on the sale. We like to say that at STORY we measure success by the "experience per square foot" we provide, as opposed to the traditional "sales per square foot" model. Organically, this gets people talking about the great time they had or the cool thing they found, which is what we're after. d:r: How do your partnership ideas (such as your recent collaboration with Target) come about? Shechtman: Our partnerships are in many ways designed similarly to a magazine, in that we maintain an editorial calendar-a mixture of stories we want to tell and annual concepts, like our holiday concept, that respond to key consumer patterns. On some occasions, partners will come to us with an idea and that will serve as the starting point for our ideation. d:r: Explain your philosophy of the store as media. Shechtman: STORY takes much of its model from publishing. We introduce each concept with a "Letter from the Editor," and weave content throughout the space, because it's important that our visitors learn something from us in the same way that they would if they were flipping through a magazine. On the business side, our model is based on the idea that retail can be a meaningful d:r: What's next for STORY? Shechtman: Continuing to evolve our model and explore the growth strategy that makes the most sense-e-commerce or more stores. Stay tuned. - Alison Embrey Medina HEAR MORE FROM SHECHTMAN AT HER KEYNOTE PRESENTATION AT THE DESIGN:RETAIL FORUM IN PORTLAND, ORE., SEPT. 24-26. REGISTER AT DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM/FORUM. http://www.DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM/FORUM http://www.DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of design:retail - July 2015

design:retail - July 2015
Contents
Editor’s Note
Show Talk
On Trend
We Love This!
Designer Picks
Clicks & Mortar
Have You Heard?
Mingle
Perspectives
Shopper Insights
Shopping with Paco
From Concept to Completion
Brothers Marketplace
Nebraska Furniture Mart
Fixture Leaders
Fixture Products
Backstory

design:retail - July 2015