Your Brick and Mortar Built with Pixels and Electrons

One thing that seems to be missing from all the “retail is changing/dead/transforming” articles and stories is the element of consumer trends and behaviors and where those new behaviors are heading, because that is the direction we should all be looking at. To understand consumers and how to sell to them, you need to understand what is important to them: for instance, time and convenience have continually become more important to people and they are willing to pay more money to save their time.

Consumers are constantly changing and we love having conversations with our retail clients about consumer trends, which are rooted in human trends.    Our client Levi’s, for instance, has a customization tailor shop in store so that shoppers can embroider things, stitch on cool patches, pick out cool pins and make their Levi’s apparel unique to them.  It gives those shoppers a reason to go to the mall and inside the store.

There will always be physical retail stores, but digital platforms will continue to provide so much convenience that stores will need to change and be reinvented. For retail brands though, this should not be seen as a problem, but rather an opportunity. This opportunity is in VR and AR retail shopping experiences. The future store won’t be a store, it will be branded experience in VR where consumers can make purchases, try on clothes virtually, read reviews, get in depth product information and be entertained, all on their couches.

We love having this conversation with our retail brand clients because we are on the forefront of this technology and are enabling them to design, build and sell using Mixed Reality. The reality of the future of retail is still a store, but unfortunately for your construction contractor, its built from pixels and not sheetrock.