design:retail - January 2015 - (Page 34)

searching for steve jobs 034 The Dinner Club ROBERT HOCKING RETALE MATTERS robert@retalematters.com @rhockinguk W H E N S T UA RT LANGLEY found a woman in distress outside his dining club, he was worried. A compact man with big ideas for a food business built entirely on word of mouth, he knew an unhappy customer had broad implications on his success. "Is something wrong?" "Yes, I feel ill." [Food poisoning can be deadly, literally for the patron and ﬁguratively for the restaurateur.] "I'm the owner, I'm sorry..." She cut him oﬀ: "This is entirely your fault." This wasn't going to go well. "I was at one of your events two years ago. I came on my own and ended up meeting the man who'd become my ﬁancé. I've just found out I'm pregnant and my morning sickness is kicking oﬀ!" One more surprise in a surprising business. I met Langley at an event where he shared how he got his start. He explained that he set out with a dream to be in the food business, but with almost no money to make it happen; circumstances he described as making all the diﬀerence for his success. The approach taken by many budding restaurateurs is to ﬁnd a location, sink tons of money into it- $225,000 according to RestaurantOwner.com-and hope the customers come in. Langley had $7,500, no location, and needed to ﬁnd customers who'd be willing to pay before knowing what they'd eat or where, for him to get his business started. Langley's business, The Disappearing Dining Club, is essentially about creating experiences centered on food, and those experiences literally can happen anywhere. Starting out, he had access to a kitchen but nowhere for people to eat, so he needed to improvise- and that's when retail spaces came to mind. JANUARY 2015 DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM Walking past shops one day, he wondered what went on after they closed and thought: "Why can't dining and retail live together? Shops are nice places to be, the clothes make an incredible backdrop, retailers need exposure and they're closed at night-and I need underused space, so there's a direct beneﬁt to the both of us." His ﬁrst foray began by negotiating the set-up of a dining table at the back of a clothing shop and inviting people in. As he puts it, "Customers don't think about shops the way most retailers do, simply as rails, change rooms and a cash till. They see fantastic spaces they're attracted to, because they come in hoping to ﬁnd a diﬀerent and better version of themselves. Eating in a shop makes sense because they already go there with a mind to hanging out. I simply give people a reason to come and spend time." He said he marvels at retail's common complaint about getting customers. "You don't need more money, you need better ideas," he says. "It's easy to do things if you've got the money, but what do you do when you don't have it? This was what faced me when I started out: I had the same end in mind, but I couldn't sacrifice, so I needed a different approach. The only capital I had was 'creative capital,' and that outlook made me think differently about creating reasons for people to pay attention. And it has colored everything I do. Our view of 'better' isn't about being more eﬃcient, it's about being more creative." There are many fascinating things about Langley's philosophy, but most of all is his fervent belief that necessity truly is the mother of invention. And few have demonstrated the truth of this more than he has: to take retail environments and make them spaces people want to hang out in? Four years after his ﬁrst "dinner club," he's hosted dinner parties in stores (among other venues) all over London and counts 40,000 happy customers on his database. And retailers now turn to him asking if he can add to their spaces. His business today still is about surprise settings, dining with strangers and creativity. Although his success has given him the freedom to be "less creative," he explains that having to dig deep, to think through what will ultimately make people choose the unfamiliar over the familiar lies in ﬁguring out what moves people. Over the years, Langley has had numerous business-types tell him his concept will never work. But, his history of no money and no space has morphed into a growing reputation and his ﬁrst permanent location-located in the back of a clothing shop. 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 ROBERT HOCKING http://www.DESIGNRETAILONLINE.COM

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

design:retail - January 2015
Contents
Editor’s Note
Show Talk
On Trend
We Love This!
Designer Picks
Innovation
How’d They Do That?
Postcard
Mingle
Have You Heard?
The Visual Eye
Searching for Steve Jobs
West Elm
Winning Windows
Birchbox
Holt Renfrew
Visual Products
Products
Backstory

design:retail - January 2015