Tag: Customer Experience
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Delight in the details
Sometimes, the smallest details create the greatest delight in a retail experience Among all touchpoints, the fitting room stands out as a pivotal moment. It is where the customer fully engages with a product and where its transformative potential becomes real. Yet this “moment of truth” is often undervalued by retailers, even though it is…
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Great customer experience = happy shoppers!
It’s no secret that customer experience is a huge element in any successful retail equation. Retailers have come to realize that it’s simply not enough to provide customers with great product; that in a crowded marketplace, to achieve a competitive edge, retailers need to connect with their customers by delivering a great customer experience. But…
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MAP Provincetown: Seasonal retail done right
As I touched on in my last blog, seasonal retail, especially when aimed at affluent urban vacationers, can and should provide a more sophisticated shopping experience than the run-of-the-mill. While on vacation, style-savvy LGBT urban dwellers as well as their straight counterparts, are perfectly primed for indulgent shopping and self-gifting. In the gay mecca of…
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No gold for Pan Am Games Superstore
While Toronto seems to have pulled off the Pan Am Games without any major glitches, the official retail efforts have been nothing but disappointing. And as I suspected, even the so-called Pan Am Games Superstore at Nathan Phillips Square failed to deliver anything more than a rudimentary retail experience. Theoretically well-positioned at Nathan Phillips Square,…
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Apple Watch: Why Apple’s new retail strategy is just the beginning
With the launch of their long-awaited Watch, Apple has implemented a game-changing strategy to position themselves as leaders in the wearable tech market, choosing to aggressively target the luxury consumer rather than relying on their core customers. However, luxury consumers, specifically fashion-savvy consumers, can be a hard sell. With obstacles to surmount, Apple’s new retail…
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5 Reasons for art in retail
Some retailers have become curators and patrons of the arts, highlighting local artists and emerging artists or even internationally renowned artists within their retail locations. Far from a fleeting trend, leading-edge retailers across the globe have embraced the concept of art in retail. On an international level, Selfridges in the UK has a long history…
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Why off-site team shops make sense
Recently, while wandering through the Toronto Eaton Centre, I discovered nestled there among national and international retailers, a Toronto Blue Jays store. Even though the store launched last August, not being a sports fans per se, nor a frequenter of that part of the mall, I was unaware of its existence. Spotting it, I was…
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New Anthropologie store: From neglected church to lifestyle temple
Just before Christmas, a new Anthropologie store opened – another outpost in Toronto, for the popular American retailer of clothing and housewares. The location: a 19th century church in the heart of Queen St. West that has been respectfully renovated and converted into a cathedral of fashion – or perhaps more accurately a lifestyle temple….
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5 Retail Learnings from Cirque du Soleil
Recently while enjoying the current Cirque du Soleil show, Kurios, it struck me that many of the principles behind their success could be applicable to the world of retail. Behind the wildly creative costumes, clever sets and spectacular performances lay some very simple ideas that create some of the magic that is Cirque du Soleil: in…
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Perfect Retail Marriage: The Bay & Kleinfeld?
In May, The Bay is set to launch a Kleinfeld Bridal shop in their downtown Toronto flagship – the first of its kind in the world. If successful, the retail concept could pave the way for additional locations helping to position The Bay as a leader in the bridal market. But, will The Bay be…