In less than 5 weeks and after years of preparation, the long-awaited Pan Am Games will begin, but sadly Toronto has missed a huge opportunity to leverage event retailing. In an era when product simply doesn’t sell itself and experiences reign supreme, successful retailers across sectors have been ramping up their efforts, like never before, to engage customers. Yet, Toronto’s Pan Am shop at the Eaton Centre disappoints.
Event retailing
Event retailing, more than a peripheral courtesy, is a very real revenue stream, directly and indirectly. Like off-site team shops, event linked retail is more than an opportunity to dabble in licensed merchandise and souvenirs. It’s an opportunity to engage and excite customers, which in turn further fuels both merchandise and ticket sales.
During the Vancouver Winter Olympics in 2010, the first ever Olympic Superstore, a 21,000 sq. ft. shop in the Hudson’s Bay in downtown Vancouver was immensely popular with 20 minute lineups during peak times. Opened four months prior to the games, the retail hotspot was the flagship to eight other Olympic shops at various Olympic venues as well as an online shop. In addition to a plethora of licensed merchandise, the superstore housed Coca-Cola’s Happiness Café and official pin trading centre and games related merchandise from official sponsors, as well as provided a concierge service for shoppers wishing to ship their purchases home. The games also featured the first ever International Pavilion at a nearby location, allowing National Olympic Committees to display and sell their national Olympic Team merchandise.
Toronto’s Pan Am retail effort
While the Pan Am Games may not carry the same international recognition and cache as the Winter Olympics, it remains the 3rd largest sports event in the world, after the Summer Olympics and Asian Games. And what has Toronto done so far?
In early April, the first official Pan Am Games shop opened as a pop-up in the Toronto Eaton Centre. The 2,900 sq. ft. space is mundane; an out-of-the-box, knock-down shop occupying the vacuous area in front of the soon-to-be Nordstom store. There is no excitement here. The most impactful element is the monstrous, multi-storey Pan Am graphic filling the empty façade behind the shop. This is event retailing left untapped.
In response to the ever-changing marketplace, retailers in every sector are redefining and reinventing the physical store, creating engaging customer experiences and dynamic selling environments. And with that, customers’ expectations have increased. Consumers now buy more than products; they buy experiences.
Toronto’s Pan Am shop should and could be more than it is. Given that recent reports suggest that there remain over 1 million tickets unsold and hotels are yet to book up, the store as a vehicle to promote the games, generate excitement amongst residents and visitors, has been completely underutilized.
Why the Toronto Pan Am store falls short:
Omnichannel is omnipresent
Retailers have been moving aggressively toward a fully omnichannel approach, creating complete integration and consistency between online, mobile and in-store and allowing customers to move back and forth between the channels. That means that customers can begin a transaction through one channel and complete it through another channel, while having a consistent experience, and that websites are mobile responsive and user-friendly, allowing customers to shop on their mobile devices. But, perhaps the hottest convenience being addressed by retailers in 2015, is the pick and click option allowing customers to shop online and pick-up in-store. If you check out The Toronto Pan Am Games shop online, it’s apparent that omnichannel retail was not part of the plan.
Experience is king
With mounting competition from online retailers, bricks and mortar retailers must now offer an engaging customer experience to bring customers into their stores. No longer is great product, well-displayed and merchandised in a pleasant environment, enough. Retailers must emotionally connect with customers, providing them with interactive, multi-sensory experiences; give them a reason to come, stay, play and buy. For event retailing, delivering on this should be simple. Play on the patriot heart-strings; the sense of excitement about a once in a lifetime event; the natural rivalry of competitors……
But Toronto’s Pan Am store accomplishes none of this. Where are the looping videos showing victorious athletes or inspiring stories of overcoming obstacles or sweeping patriotic scenes of our great country? Where are the digital screens showing event locations and schedules or computer kiosks to purchase tickets on-line? Where’s the opportunity to meet and greet a world-class athlete or to mount an authentic racing bike and imagine oneself racing full speed around a velodrome.
Power of social media
Everyone is tethered to their mobile devices and social media. And more and more activities and purchasing decisions are based on peer input via social networks. For retailers, social media presents the opportunity to develop a dialogue with customers to engage them and then leverage old-fashioned word-of-mouth to generate interest and traffic. Retailers or event organisers need to create sharable moments. In the realm of event retailing, such as the Pan Am games, customers could be given the opportunity to take fun selfies with the official Mascot; or victoriously crossing the finish line after a gruelling marathon; or perhaps atop the medal podium, courtesy of a green screen backdrop.
Pop-up shops are everywhere
With successful and inventive pop-up shops appearing on a regular basis and in a variety of forms, the bar for temporary retailers has been raised. Temporary retail is no longer slipshod retail in the domain of wholesale clearing houses and fly-by-night businesses. Successful pop-up retail is experiential and infused with a sense of exclusivity. And customers have quickly come to have high expectations. As the ultimate pop-up, event retailing, driven by the excitement of the event itself, needs to not only meet but exceed customer expectations.
Sadly, Toronto’s Pan Am store doesn’t deliver. An out-of-the-box shop can hardly deliver an outside-the-box experience.
The spotlight is on Toronto
The Pan Am Games thrusts Toronto and Canada into the spotlight, exposing our city and country to most of the western hemisphere. It’s our opportunity to showcase Toronto as the world-class, cosmopolitan city that it is and Canada as the international player that it is. We should be demonstrating through every effort, that we are leaders in design, technology, retail and culture. Canada is home to innovative and successful retailers who are rapidly expanding beyond national boundaries, and premier retail design firms, whose services are sought out internationally. Yet, for the Pan Am Games store the best that we can do is a rather pedestrian, knock-down shop. Not the statement that we could or should be making!
