Answer These Three Questions Or Close Your Stores

Experiential retail is all the rage. It’s about the experience...the human experience.

Yet this week, one of the most experiential retailers, Bose, announced they were shuttering all their stores to concentrate on online shopping.

I purchased my first noise-canceling headphones from Bose at the Newport Beach store using a guided demo from an employee. He contrasted what I heard with the headphones on with what was actually going on in the store, the sound of an aircraft. I didn’t intend to buy them but did. And so did my buddy. Because of that experience, the salesman sold two instead of none. And I’ve been glad ever since.

The way to obscurity begins with invisibility.

Without their Bose name out there in prominent, high-end malls, they will be reduced to competing on price versus value, and become more of an online commodity than a luxury brand.

Also this week, Papyrus announced they were closing all 254 stores. Originally an importer of fine European paper products, they grew to include cards, gift wrap, and notepaper. They had some of the best products around. Their windows were always top-notch. 

And yet, when I went in there, I don’t think I ever had anyone greet, approach, or do much more than ring me up.

They never asked or listened. 

And yet paper products such as thank-you notes and journals are on the upswing as younger consumers seek to communicate with friends with the warm flow of words on paper rather than the cold click of an ecard. 

I was at NRF’s Big Show last week and appeared on a panel with Axonify and Foot Locker about how to empower front line associates.

When the panel was done discussing how to train associates to deliver a branded experience, we received a question from a young man in the front row. “How can we do that with online retail?”

Silence. Then I stepped in and said, “You can’t. Let online be online and let’s work on brick and mortar being better at delivering the human experience.”

Also while in New York last week, I had heard over and over that I had to get to Showfields. All the buzz was for this Bohemian chic multi-level building that rents itself out to vendors to gauge consumer interest. Kind of like Story innovated about nine years ago but less polished. The store bills itself as the most interesting store in the world.

A jumble of brands from electric toothbrushes to beds that automatically cool down at night, to jackets that were cut off in an angle, to lots of cosmetics and gadgets.

On the top floor was a performance space and vinyl records.

I walked around while employees dressed in white openly stared. No human interaction required.

I thought about all of this week…

Bose, the pioneer in electronics, brought their sound technology to upscale properties to attract, educate, and sell their headphones, home theater systems, and the like.

Sound is the most primal sense we have. They say a baby can hear sound at 25 weeks. How exactly does a sound company demonstrate their product through a smartphone or desktop speaker? It doesn’t. It becomes one of many instead of the one.

Papyrus had beautiful products, but you know what? So do a lot of retailers. When you can’t sell what you bought, you expect the product will speak for itself. It doesn’t.

Attracting people to a popup can get you buzz, but if the shopper has to ask for help or go it alone, is there much of a takeaway other than they had a bunch of niche products? I don’t think so.

This week’s retail advice

Brick and mortar exists to answer shoppers’ question, “What’s New?” When they make the effort to drive, walk, or bike to your store, it is your chance to give them an experience online retailers by design can’t give them. A feeling. A feeling they matter.

People who feel they matter buy. People who don’t, don’t.

Unless and until retailers look at creating a branded, human experience, they’ll close stores and lose market share as their brand becomes invisible or they’ll say the consumer has changed.

Retail is about being brilliant on the basics. How do you open your heart to another human being before they like you? How do you build rapport with a stranger, so they feel they matter? And finally, how are you going to sell your merchandise?

Answer those three questions and you won’t be going out of business; you’ll scoop up those customers retailers gave up on when they could have saved themselves by training their staff to deliver an exceptional branded customer experience. 

What say you?

 Oh and if you want to know how to sell value over price, check out my new post.

And remember, I can speak to your audience about how to become more human in an increasingly less human world. Find out more here.