design:retail - October 2016 - 40

searching for steve jobs 040 Technology's Real Lesson for Retail ROBERT HOCKING RETALE MATTERS robert@retalematters.com @rhockinguk I JUST RETURNED from IFA, the acronym for Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin, better known as the smaller cousin to CES in Las Vegas, and also known as the largest consumer electronics show in Europe. I've got to say, it wasn't great for the ego, as I left there realizing I live like a caveman compared to how I could be living if I replaced everything in my life with all this new stuff. What a spectacle it was: stilt walkers competed with dancing robots, and roller skating promoters were made to feel analog as "self balancing" scooter riders showed us the future of getting around. Acres of conference space filled with the sound, fury and freebies of established brands and upstarts all bringing to market the new and exciting replacements for everything we already own. What struck me as I marveled at all the investment and imagination on display was how most of it would fall with a wet thud the moment it made its way onto the typical shop floor. It's shocking, really, to see how much brands spend creating these amazing products. How much genius goes into creating the next season, the next generation, the next "must-have" item-and yet with all this amazing potential, the consumer, through the retail experience, often can't see much of a difference between one product and another. We all know this to be true: most retail stores are lousy at storytelling and even worse at giving people a clear answer on why something is worth paying more for. How many times have you been in a department store or big-box retailer and looked across a sea of products that all look similar and are often priced the same? I defy anyone to go into a consumer electronics retailer and point out to me which of the 100 TVs on display is worth paying more for. OCTOBER 2016 DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM To get a perspective on this, I interviewed Stephen Taylor, the soon-to-be-exiting chief marketing officer of Samsung in Europe, a brand that had an entire airplane-hangar-sized space to celebrate its products at IFA. I asked him how it felt going from this to the retail environment, to which he said: "To be honest, most retailers struggle to provide the level of 'dream selling' that many tech brands aspire to. And most have ended up with store estates that are too numerous and unwieldy to allow focus on real selling of complex products. In most cases, when a brand needs to tell its story, it has to invest in its own space and provide dedicated staff to tell its story." I wondered then whether it was time to look past retail, to something else? "Stores can and should still play a role in bringing the innovation sell to life, but clearly they've got a job to do being more than just the physical research point for the shopper to then go and get the best price online," Taylor explains. But what about their secret weapon: store staff? "Staff are at a complete disadvantage with shoppers entering their stores better informed than ever, and the proliferation of choice and technological innovation being bigger and faster than GLOBALSHOP.ORG ever, meaning the number of categories staff are expected to cover is too great," Taylor adds. And, sadly, he feels there's no easy fix, as brands themselves often lack the scale or will to operate their own stores. All these amazing new products going into too many of the same old stores. You could wonder whether there's even capacity in our lives for more stuff, but apparently there is. Despite our homes having grown by an additional 1,000 sq. ft. over the last 40 years, and one-quarter of us with twocar garages not having enough room to park inside them because we can't seem to throw anything away, off-site storage facilities are rapidly growing. According to the Self Storage Association, there are now five times more self-storage sites than there are Starbucks coffee shops. But this is better than great-it's awesome. Consumers consume, and it's our job to sell stuff to them. There are more shopping malls in America than high schools and we spend more on shoes, jewelry and watches than we do on higher education. It's believed that we consume twice as many material goods today as we did 50 years ago. To quote the Chicago Tribune, we clearly continue "to nurse our psychic ills through retail therapy." The real dilemma is that consumers aren't sick-their stores are. The companies that show at IFA and CES constantly reimagine what's possible, because it's the only way they'll win over consumers. Perhaps it's time for retailers to steal a page from the companies whose products line their shelves. ROBERT HOCKING IS A LONDON-BASED RETAIL BRAND CONSULTANT WHO LOVES RETAIL BUT HATES SHOPPING-AND CONTINUES TO SEARCH FOR STORES THAT WILL CHANGE HIS MIND. Photo by LADY-PHOTO/ISTOCK/THINKSTOCK http://www.DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM http://www.GLOBALSHOP.ORG

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