design:retail - March/April 2020 - TR5

Future of Bricks and Mortar

To help ensure continued growth, the industry must
innovate around three themes: Experience, Convenience,
and Personalization. Store design, fixtures and visuals
must support experiential and interactive environments.
Investments in digital technology must support market
demands for convenience. And custom-designed displays
should be leveraged to create a unique, personalized
value for shoppers.
In the 2016 Industry Size and Composition Study, Shop!
identified five retail trends that are transforming the
retail landscape.

Rise of omnichannel retailing.
Stores are now playing the role
of showroom and distribution
center, rather than buying center.
In many cases, there are sepa-
rate areas for click and pick-up
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with stores are being redesigned
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to convey this multiplatform message.
Innovative retailers are creating hybrid stores where
the physical and on-line merge seamlessly, and cater to
shoppers with ultimate convenience and ease of access.

2017 Shop! ROI Standards: Store Redesign

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In-store retailing becoming more
interactive and experiential.
Retailers are seeking fixtures
and displays that are customized
to meet new interactive and
experiential retailing strategies.
Designs must aid in the creation of
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the store itself as a brand, as well as a
place for customers to experience brands.
Refreshing/remodeling/
redesigning of stores is
happening faster. Successful
retailers will have the ability
to change rapidly. Stores are
refreshing, remodeling, and
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to
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redesigning themselves much
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faster than they were able to do
even a few years ago. There is a higher demand for fast
turnkey solutions, along with an increased pressure on
suppliers to remain aware of and anticipate trends.
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Shrinking selling space. Stores are
getting smaller, and the number
of outlets is shrinking, even as
U.S. retail value sales are growing.
Consumers are cutting back on
the number of trips and doing
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more big-box, one-stop shopping
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trips and shopping online. As such, store
fixtures need to maximize space utilization and do more
with less. Portable, movable and/or adjustable fixtures
will be increasingly important.

Online retailers opening physical
stores. A growing number of suc-
cessful online retailers are open-
ing physical locations to create
a more in-depth experience for
their customers. Fixtures can help
bridge the gap between the online
and physical realms by carrying themes
and colors from online to in-store.

According to Shop! Research, retailers almost unanimously
agreed that the in-store customer experience is very or
extremely important to them. Retailers also see brick-and-
mortar stores as extremely important to their business and
foresee its importance continuing, if not growing, for the
next five to ten years.

KEY LEARNING:
Larger industry trends indicate that stores must
deliver more experiential environments that seamlessly merge the physical and digital. Consequently,
store design needs to keep up with rapidly changing technologies and shopper expectations to be
successful.

design:retail - March/April 2020

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