Holistic Retail Brand Experience.

October is a very busy month for me when it comes to birthdays and certainly not least my wife’s! Having not ventured down Chapel Street for quite some time, recently we both decided that Chapel Street this year would solve the usual question of “what would you like for your birthday?” in one foul retailing swoop.

With retail suffering possibly more than any other sector it makes you wonder sometimes how on earth certain retail brands survive, so this recent shopping experience was a rather enlightening one. Before venturing out I thought to myself, “what might the majority of these struggling retailers be doing doing to entice the customer firstly into the store and secondly convert that into a sale?”

Pretty much immediately I noticed a trend. This being that their brand expressions were so prominent in terms of their in-store dynamics and window displays which lead me to the conclusion; even though retail is struggling, some retailers are still investing huge amounts money not only on in-store visual merchandising to attract customers but also giving them a creative brand experience to remember once in the store.

One such experience that grabbed us was the Nike store. Yes, Nike’s a brand that has incredible budgets and has the ability to pretty much do as they please but we had no intention whatsoever in entering the store let alone purchasing anything. After being lured in by the window display and in-store dynamics (of which we were blown away by), a salesperson approached us asking if we required any assistance, we replied with the usual, “we’re just looking thanks” so duly left us alone – another tick! After a little more wandering around and checking out some of the hi-tech products we decided the time had come to ask for some expert advice. Cue the same salesperson and without going into the whole rigmarole we were professionally informed on what the best product would be for the type of activity that would be undertaken. No jargon, simply explained, properly measured, informed conversation and tried on. SOLD!

After the ‘Nike experience’ we ventured into another store who’s brand is nowhere near the magnitude of Nike’s nor has the reach or budget, but to be fair, their window display, in-store dynamics and visual merchandising nonetheless were pretty impressive. It was until we entered the store that our ‘retail brand experience’ was shattered, to the point that we pretty much walked out immediately even though this time (unlike Nike) we had plans in making a purchase. We were hassled from the second we walked in and the desperation of this salesperson not only to make a sale but his assumptions on us both was simply wrong! A lot of the hard work was done in getting us into the store but the in-store experience simply let us down.

I’m not saying that everyone needs to follow what we experienced at Nike but surely it can’t be that hard to train staff (even in the simplest of ways) on how to deal with a prospective customer, especially in this current climate. I’m only hoping that other potential customers weren’t subjected to this salesperson’s antics and for the brand’s sake this person was just having a bad day.

Check out some other retail experiences below that Sportsgirl have recently produced, let’s hope they have a similar in-store experience as Nike.

If you’re looking for your window displays, in-store dynamics and retail brand experience to increase your sales results then why not drop us a line.

Dominic Guthrie
Client Account Director