Bernard Arnault made an unexpected visit to San Francisco last week, by way of Cupertino – more on that later.
The luxury Major Domo strolled into the Louis Vuitton Union Square store with daughter Delphine and son Alexandre. The CEO interacted with store staff and seemed pleased when one of them welcomed him in French, however Delphine (considered by many to be next in line for the throne) remained chilly and avoided eye contact with staffers.
The reason for their visit to the Bay Area?
Having just attended the LV show in Palm Springs, Papa Arnault suddenly aimed the private jet towards San Francisco because his son is vying for an internship at…. Apple. Our guess is that there will be some interesting cross-pollination going on between LVMH and Apple, and it probably won’t just be an internship for a luxury titan’s son.
Back in 2009, luxury department stores began to scramble to find a solution to plummeting sales, and that solution came in the form of the outlet store. For decades, Nordstrom has enjoyed considerable success from its Rack stores, so why couldn’t Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus do the same?
Well for one thing, many of the luxury brands that sell in these stores don’t like the idea of being sold off at a discount in an outlet store.
In fact many vendors have strict rules about how and when their merchandise is marked down and merchandised – that is, if you’re a brand that has the cachet and critical mass to make stores do your bidding. Look who has the biggest real estate on the sales floor and that will give you an idea of who we’re talking about.
Apparently that hasn’t stopped Neiman Marcus from dabbling in what we would consider very risky behavior, and it’s happening at their “off price” stores called Last Call.
Here, you’ll see some familiar name brands – Diane Von Furstenberg, Chloe, and Helmut Lang, to name a few — but chances are none of that product ever saw the light of an actual Neiman Marcus store. That’s because most of it is either bought or produced exclusively for the outlet stores.
But what happens when some of that merchandise starts to masquerade as the actual prestige pieces sold at Neiman Marcus – and features a Neiman Marcus label?
That’s what we discovered on a couple of visits to the Last Call store in San Francisco, where we saw flagrant imitations of current season Valentino wallets, featuring camouflage and gold studs, merchandised next to actual Valentino neckties.
A sign, standing ambiguously between the two displays, said simply “Valentino.” It appears that Neiman Marcus is taking advantage of customer confusion since they are well-known for carrying authentic luxury brands and products in their full price stores. In all likelihood many who shop at Last Call do so believing that most (if not all) of the products are sale items from those stores.
But wait! Is that the iconic Celine Luggage Tote?
I asked a sales associate who was tidying the area. “No, it’s not – but it looks like one, doesn’t it?” he replied. “So then this isn’t a real Valentino wallet either?” Nope.
So what gives? How does Neiman Marcus get away with it and why haven’t Celine or Valentino reps been in touch with them?
As it turns out, one luxury brand has – one with a very large flagship store only two blocks away and they’re not happy about the imitation products. They’ve been in touch and demanded that Last Call remove the offending product. It should be noted that this luxury brand also sells its collections in full price Neiman Marcus stores.
But when we stopped into the store today, months after seeing the faked bags and accessories in the store, there they were again, and that fake Celine bag? It’s now also for sale on Last Call’s website.
Most consumers might not know it but those in the trade do: the small, upstart advertising firms are increasingly getting better accounts and bringing their creative to some of the most visible and memorable campaigns on television, in print and on digital.
Firms like Y&R, McCann Ogilvy & Mather, BBDO, Wieder+Kennedy, JWT, and Leo Burnett (all regularly in the top 20) are practically household names and count major Fortune 500 firms as their clients. Sure they’re responsible for the majority of Superbowl ads – but that’s changing.
More nimble and arguably more creative “boutique” firms are stepping in to develop work that challenges the kind of creative delivered by the industry veterans.
Jamie Barrett is co-founder of barrettSF, a firm that in the two-plus years of its existence has already won major projects with Rubio’s, Nike, and Major League Baseball, among others.
Jamie cut his teeth with the big dogs: 10 years at Goodby Silverstein & Partners where he contributed to the firm’s work with such brands as Comcast, Quaker, Doritos, and the NBA, and seven years as writer and creative director at Wieden + Kennedy, where he most notably developed creative for Nike, including the Michael Jordan campaigns.
Altogether, the experience gave Jamie the ambition and chops to jump ship and build his own kind of creative agency – one he is still seeking to define. He talks with b. on brand about the changing world of advertising and how soon, we might just be telling stories in two seconds instead of the usual 10 or 15 second spot.
B. ON BRAND: Has barrettSF put a stake in the ground and created an identity for itself as a firm?
JAMIE BARRETT: We haven’t yet. At least that’s our mindset. The moment you think you’ve put a stake in the ground and “created an identity” for yourself is the moment you lose momentum. The truth is, agency reputations can turn in an instant – one piece of transcendent work and you’re part of the conversation. Conversely, if you’re off the creative radar for six months, you slide into irrelevance.
We’ve put several stake-like objects in the ground in our two year-plus history, but none of them represent the stake. To be great in this business you can never stop coming up with new stakes and you can never stop sticking them in the ground.
B: Increasingly we’re seeing the smaller agencies getting the juicier projects. Are major agencies the communications dinosaurs?
JB: It ain’t easy to be huge and great at the same time. It comes back to my earlier point – it doesn’t take a lot of people to make great work, just a few really good people. It seems to me the ideal agency size is somewhere in the 50 to 200 range. Under 50 people, you aren’t a viable agency for major advertisers. You can take on a project, but you simply don’t have the infrastructure to handle their account. Over 200 people, you become a bit Brontosaurus-like. You lumber. You have a hard time reacting and changing directions.
That said, barrettSF aspires to be big. Not mega, but big. Why? Because we want to make an impact in the world, and the larger you are the greater your opportunities. Hopefully, if and when we’re big, we’ll be more like a Velociraptor. They’re pretty nimble.
B: But do you think the challenges are greater today than before, say, 20 or even 30 years ago?
JB: Good question for an old fart like me. I actually was in the business more than 20 years ago, 29 years ago to be exact.
In my mind, the business has gotten dramatically more challenging. My life as a copywriter used to consist of writing print headlines, radio commercials, and TV commercials with a $10,000 budget. You were brought into a conference room, the media plan was presented to you, and then you got a very prescriptive assignment and you fulfilled it.
https://youtu.be/MV9-Ns5dgko
It’s so radically and unrecognizably different in 2015. We are all – if we’re any good – renaissance ad people now. A good creative person is a technologist, media strategist, event planner, amateur Google researcher, and master presenter all wrapped into one. And if we have a little time left over, we’re supposed to come up with good ideas.
B: Social media has been blamed for making it difficult for brands to have a singular voice in speaking to consumers. Do you think that’s true?
JB: It shouldn’t be true, but it can be.
The reality is, one or two people generally create the “voice” of a brand. The words and images that form that voice don’t come from multiple companies or multiple departments, they come from a creative team. A creative team that is guided and informed by many smart people along the way, but still, a creative team.To replicate the “voice” of that team is tough. Particularly when you’re communicating across a wide variety of mediums, and in the case of social, needing to create work in real time.
In my experience, the fewer creative people involved, the more singular the brand’s voice. But that doesn’t seem to be the prevailing view out there in the client world. More and more brands are using multiple creative resources, often working with eight or ten advertising agencies at a time. Google has pulled it off pretty well because they have a strong internal sense of self. But they are an exception.
I’m a big believer in the model of one client-agency partnership. You wouldn’t write a novel with ten different writers, why would you create a brand with ten different ad agencies?
B: How is mobile advertising changing the way we tell a story?
JB: The stock answer is that stories, by necessity, are getting shorter. We used to tell sixty and thirty-second stories. We then learned to tell fifteen and ten-second stories. Then Vine came along and taught us to tell six second stories. And now the latest app, Whatsyourpoint?, is forcing us to complete our stories in just two seconds — Okay, I made that last app up. But you know it’s coming.
My point is, I don’t think longer-form stories will ever lose their appeal. I still see Hollywood making movies. I still see people addicted to sixty-minute TV shows. And I still see YouTube videos with 240 million views that are several minutes long. If something is good, we will watch. Whether it’s short or long, projected on a mountainside, or miniaturized on our phone.
Jamie Barrett is founder and creative director at barrettSF. Follow them on twitter @barrett_sf and Facebook.
San Francisco continues to be a major destination for retailers looking to open new doors, and it’s no wonder.
Silicon Valley’s hoodie generation is (finally) growing up and spending those start up dollars on all manner of luxury brands, although Shhhhh… the more discreet the better.
Not so for the bay area’s growing Asian population, another key target, which is an added bonus for brands looking to extend their reach beyond the sneaker set.
They’re also willing to pay the price: rents are up 30% over the past year, and according to a recent Cushman Wakefield report, the average Union Square space goes for $650 per square foot per year, making San Francisco the sixth most expensive market in the country, next to New York’s Upper Fifth Avenue, Times Square, Madison Avenue and Lower Fifth Avenue and Los Angeles’ Rodeo Drive.
So say goodbye to that very strange Porsche Design store on the corner of Grant and Geary and say hello to a massive Dolce & Gabbana which will occupy the space as well as additional one next door. They’re also planning to take over part of the building’s first floor. Rumor has it the owner had no trouble finding someone else to take such a prime space and was happy to show Porsche the door.
Meanwhile construction has already begun on the new Martin Margiela store at 134 Maiden Lane, just across from Chanel. MM has already received loads of positive press with the recent appointment of designer John Galliano, and his first show in London got rave reviews.
Down the lane you’ll also find Italian label Marni getting ready to break ground on their new store. They’ll be in good company with Brunello Cuccinelli just around the corner.
Powell Street’s Uniqlo will be in good company with Jins, the Japanese mega-retailer of glasses and frames, which will be opening at 151 Powell this spring. That’s what we call a nice adjacency. The 5,000 square foot space will be home to 1200 styles of frames and shoppers can get their prescription filled in thirty minutes flat. We can assume that the store will resemble those designed by Japanese firm Suppose Design Office.
It’s no secret that Moncler has been enjoying steady sales of its pricey puffers at Barneys New York, so it makes sense that they took the lease for 212 Stockton Street.
Yes, that’s currently Loro Piana’s space but don’t worry, LP will be moving over to Ferragamo’s old spot in-between Louis Vuitton and Macy’s. Now they get to be the ones having to deal with women asking for the Macy’s bra department.
So far, this hasn’t been a very merry Christmas for most retailers, and you can bet there won’t be any sudden surprises at this point. America has shopped and now they’re taking advantage of a desperate retailer.
Brands such as J. Crew, Prada, American Eagle, and Abercrombie & Fitch have all reported less than favorable third quarter earnings. A&F’s board of directors wasted little time in showing CEO Michael Jeffries to the door, offering him a “retirement.”
If you had a shiver that recalled the gloom of our most recent recession, you weren’t alone. What can we do better, and what can we expect from 2015?
We thought it would be interesting to hear from some of our friends and colleagues about their vision for 2015. From all of them we heard a collective Om.
Now breathe and say it with me: Om. Omnichannel.
Surprisingly, there are plenty who still think omnichannel sounds more like a Buddhist chant than a business strategy. Designer John Varvatos says the customer of 2015 will still demand just as much – if not more – brand engagement.
“Consumers are more educated than ever and they’re looking for the best product, the best quality, and the best experience. We want our customer to have a 360-degree experience when they are shopping with us. We want them to be fully engaged at the store level, on our website, and through our social media channels.”
So why are so many retailers still so challenged? It might be because too many C-Suite executives slice and dice the customer experience and aren’t always using the same methods to validate their data.
Many still look at their budget outlays the same way they did, say, ten years ago: segmented and with no relation to how the rest of their business operates. The e-commerce team, marketers, merchandisers, and store staff, all marching to their own drummer.
Meanwhile the successful retailer is operating seamlessly and paying close attention to what the customer is responding to.
Just ask Barry Bourbon, principal and retail practice leader at Gensler’s San Francisco office.
“As technology continues to blur the lines between physical and online retail, omnichannel retail will become simply ‘retail’,” says Barry. “Because of this brands and retailers are relying heavily on their most loyal fans to not only help develop relevant and innovative products, but also to define the setting in which those new products are experienced.”
Japanese fast-fashion brand UNIQLO made major strides in 2014, but Larry Meyer, CEO of UNIQLO USA acknowledges there is still more to be done in building a seamless brand experience, as the retailer increases its foothold in the United States.
“Engaging with customers through interactive technology will continue to evolve and grow to meet the ever-changing needs of the customer,” says Larry. “This means combining both brick and mortar retail with e-commerce. And I believe this will only continue to grow in importance in 2015.”
In other words, the successful brand lets the customer feel like they’re in the driver’s seat.
“The future of retail in 2015 will undoubtedly include an increased focus on one to one personalization,” says Heather Marie, Founder and CEO of Shoppable. “That means better customer experience and a wider-spread adoption of technologies that increase the point-of-sale experience– including things like universal checkouts.”
Heather makes an important point. Consider that only a few years ago, many of this country’s major retail executives continually misunderstood the Millennial shopper and made costly mistakes in trying to cater to them.
“Both Millennials and their younger siblings, Generation Z, are continually putting their loyalty into brands that involve them early on, allow them to share ideas and thoughts, and see those ideas realized,” says Barry.
“Brands that develop social platforms for customers to easily create and share content, personalize and customize product, and access relevant information will continue to gain momentum.”
2015 will also see a growth in marketing strategies where advertising emphasizes a call to action and awareness, giving the customer a feeling of being a brand partner – not just a customer.
John Varvatos saw that effect with this season’s fall campaign.
“Our Fall 2014 ad campaign featuring Ringo Starr featured a social media initiative that supported the David Lynch Foundation,” says John, referring to the non-profit organization that provides transcendental meditation classes to help at-risk youth, among others.
“This kind of integrated marketing campaign allowed fans across the globe to get involved in a cause. For us, it really opened our eyes to how consumers are hungry for content and to participate in something that is meaningful. We want to take this approach for everything we do.”
REI, Inc. used a similar approach with a brand advisors program.
“They asked these advisors to give their opinions and insight on both products and the store experience, and effectively created this community where ideas flow freely,” says Barry. “The net result for REI is that this is insight that helps them to direct future decisions for the brand.”
Experiments in localized retail experiences – where customers can personalize products and stores are designed to echo the style of a particular town or neighborhood – continues to gain traction. This Christmas, we’ve seen a lot of examples of pop-ups becoming business-as-usual rather than just a marketing exercise.
At San Francisco’s Westfield Mall, Artisan Square has been getting buzz, a multibrand shop that showcases dozens of local start up entrepreneurs.
“I think localized retail that emphasizes the smaller designer or craftsperson will still be a key theme in 2015,” says Anne Marie Luthro, CEO of AML Insights.
“Call it ‘artisanal’ or ‘small batch,’ this is the kind of thing that still draws shoppers seeking newness and authenticity, and brings a different dynamic to traditional malls.”
Great cities reveal themselves like an onion, but I would argue that modern masterplans are changing the face of the world’s urban centers and stripping away those onion layers in favor of a more sterile and homogeneous vision of city life.
Cities are being redeveloped in favor of micro-economies and a steady stream of somewhat transient professionals with no real interest in the essence of our cities. Nail parlors, Starbucks, yogurt shops and mile upon mile of condos. What city are you in? Who knows.
I’ve come to yearn for the grit of the unpolished city, that hint of danger and the contrasts of past and present. People making their environment adapt to their needs. Community by circumstance.
One of my favorite examples is the Bladerunner-esque Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong’s Kowloon, a giant shipwreck of a building that forever seems ready to collapse under the weight of so many Indian tailors, Thai massage parlors, noodle shops, and ratty backpacker hostels. It is a city within a city, a marvelous decrepitude of organic design. But such places more than likely won’t be around for long.
Development companies are hiring “Star-chitects” like Zahar Hadid, Frank Gehry, and Norman Foster to transform their cities with visually stunning buildings that often have no relevance or connection with the culture or community that surrounds them. To make way for such large buildings, Entire neighborhood’s are gutted, dissolving the very ecosystem of human life that had evolved over time.
Developers like to call it “Urban Renewal,” but often it means much more than that. Developers however, are not social anthropologists.
“If you think about the world’s greatest cities, what makes them great is that they have these incredible layers of both design and cultures,” says Michel St. Pierre, a former colleague and now principal at architecture and design firm EHDD. “To get that kind of authenticity and soul in a city takes centuries — not two or ten or even thirty years.”
Paris is perhaps one of the most famous examples of a city that was viciously masterplanned, although arguably successful in its aims. In 1853 France’s Napoleon III ordered a massive public works project designed to do away with the filth and decay of several centuries. Masterminded by George-Eugene Haussmann, huge swathes of the city were completely demolished in order to make way for today’s orderly grid of wide boulevards, harmonious buildings, and groomed gardens.
“Paris is remarkable because public parks were made a central feature of the experience. It’s at the core of what the city is really about, a place to walk and reflect on the beauty of the city. The monuments and open spaces invite people to come out and be together. And that’s what successful cities do.”
Iconic urban planner Le Corbusier had the same idea in mind with his 1935 doctrine, La Ville Radieuse, but his overscaled environments left people feeling small and insignificant. “To create architecture is to put in order,” wrote Le Corbusier. “Put what in order? Function and objects.”
“To create architecture is to put in order,” said Le Corbusier. His ambitious vision for urban planning was controversial, yet today he is hailed for his modernist designs and experimental approach.
Michel disagrees. “Le Corbusier was too simplistic, He didn’t understand scale and instead what he did was zone activity, and you still see that happening today. It’s a very sterile approach to understanding how people live.”
Across the United States, we’re seeing relatively low-profile cities becoming stylized suburbias on steroids; the kinds of places where young professionals go to live a more expensive and “city” version of the suburban life they’re escaping.
“In order for a city to be relevant and authentic, it needs to have serendipity,” says Michel, whose most recent projects in urban design and sustainable development have been in China and India. “You have to have spaces where function is not forced, but organic. Mixed-use allows for spaces to be flexible and to expand and contract with human need.” Big, over-designed buildings tend to lose value more quickly because they essentially only serve one purpose. It’s why we see so many big box stores and shopping centers vacant. They are purpose-built with little thought towards transformation.
“A well designed city begins with a basic grid and key functions, and then the rest is allowed to grow organically over time. It’s one reason why people gravitate more towards older neighborhoods with a mix of high and low, mixed incomes, and a mix of textures in terms of retail. It feels real.” In San Francisco, the nearly completed Mission Bay project has already been called a failure, with critics calling it nothing more than a glorified industrial park. A substantial portion of the 303-acre project is UCSF’s new $1.5billion medical research campus and a fourteen-acre campus for Salesforce.com.
“If you walk through Mission Bay on weekends, it is completely deserted. It’s ultimately not designed to be a living space. The landscaping looks like something you would see in the South Bay or San Jose. It feels completely out of tune with San Francisco.”
Years ago Michel and I worked together on a masterplan project for an entirely new city to be built on the soggy marshes near Seoul’s Incheon Airport. The Korean client wanted to replicate elements of New York’s Central Park, Amsterdam’s meandering lanes, and a host of other romantic notions that Asians associate with Europe. The project remains unfinished.
“When you begin an urban planning project, you have to believe in people’s initiative to take ownership of spaces and create meaningful environments for themselves,” says Michel. “The community not the architect ultimately decides how a space should be used. A successful architect sets the stage for that to happen. The movement here in California with farmer’s markets is a great example of that, and part of the reason they works is because they encourages people to get together around something we all need and enjoy. Good quality food.”
>> Michel St. Pierre is a principal at EHDD and leads the planning and urban design practice there. For more information, go to ehdd.com.
Amazon Web Services, the largest of the cloud service giants, is taking it to the streets – literally. Here in San Francisco, the company opened a pop up lounge that is meant to bolster awareness and excitement about the company’s IT solutions. The AWS Pop Up Loft is open through June 27th, 2014, at 925 Market Street.
Cloud computing has drastically altered the landscape for IT infrastructures and Amazon has been the leader in that arena for some time.
Until fairly recently, the majority of major retailers were saddled with grandfathered technologies that didn’t give accurate data about their inventory, nor gave them flexibility and agility with things like apps or the massive content structures required for ecommerce solutions.
The go-to provider for those solutions has been Amazon Web Services, which offers scalable solutions to manage everything from apps to web services to big data archives, and a host of other data-based applications — all under a pay-as-you-use system that allows for flexible business growth.
Still, critics say Amazon is only relevant to major retail and doesn’t enable brands to build customer relationships or foster loyalty, making it far too easy for the brand experience to become generic and unfocussed.
Hot on Amazon’s heels is Bigcommerce, a company that is aiming to be the biggest e-commerce platform for small retailers. Based in Australia, the company has already raised $75million and boasts over 50,000 merchants in 137 countries.
And now the company is ready to seduce Silicon Valley’s cloud customers. Earlier this spring the company opened an office in San Francisco, so you can bet that the Amazon Pop-up Loft is part of a strategic effort to win over some of those small businesses that before, weren’t really part of Amazon’s marketing strategy.
Since its opening day (June 4), Amazon’s Loft has been busy and booked for many of the events, with a daily calendar of free technical sessions, boot camps, and workshops with such experts as Adam DePue from Hearsay Social, and Peter Adams from Cloudability. However the big night for tech heads was last Wednesday’s “fireside chat” with Amazon CTO and vice president Werner Vogels.
>> The AWS Loft, 925 Market Street in Downtown San Francisco. See the Loft schedule of events. Read Amazon Evangelist Jeff Barr’s blog.
A well-designed store should constantly beckon us to come closer. It should invite discovery but not conceal what is being offered. A simple idea but one not always demonstrated at many stores. Salvatore Ferragamo’s recent store renovations offer an excellent example of this concept with spaces that are luxurious yet understated.
Since 2012 the Salvatore Ferragamo brand has been slowly rolling out its new design strategy to all of its fifty global stores, and this month the company unveiled a new San Francisco store that reveals a more sensuous and modern interpretation of the legendary brand.
The store, which relocated from Geary Street opposite Union Square to its new location on Post Street, takes advantage of the building’s historic façade and balances it with a sleekly modern interior that is rich in marbles, mirrors, and suede. It now joins some of the City’s most important luxury purveyors including Graaf, Bulgari, Prada, and Burberry.
The new location is expansive: 11,000 square feet with an entire second floor devoted to men’s ready-to-wear, accessories, and shoes. Men’s has been a key directive for the brand for some time now, and here it’s clear they were certain in making a bold, masculine statement with a penthouse-like environment that is comfortably removed from women’s wear down below — yet thanks to the stunning staircase, feels open and invites a natural flow between the two floors.
Below are some of the other design features that we feel make the store fresh, modern, and approachable.
The San Francisco Salvatore Ferragamo boutique is located at 236 Post Street near Union Square. www.ferragamo.com.
In the darkest days of the recession, it wasn’t unusual to see block after block of empty storefronts in cities across America. Malls covered their empty tenant spaces with billboards, or worse, architectural renderings of imaginary stores.
But the recession was also the birth of the pop-up shop and today, pop-ups are strategic opportunities for ecommerce brands to strut their stuff in a brick-and-mortar setting.
eBay.com was one of the first ecommerce brands to use Pop Up retail concepts. This one in New York was installed at Phillips Auctioneers.
It’s estimated that retail vacancies in the U.S. hovers at around 10-percent, representing close to $20 billion in annual losses for landlords across the country. Enter TheStorefront.com, founded by two former ecommerce employees, Erik Eliason and Tristan Pollock, who saw an opportunity to become “the Airbnb of retail.”
With $1.6M in seed funding from venture capital, they created a streamlined process for bringing brokers and new retail clients together, and fill those vacant stores with the energy of a pop-up experience. The approach has helped energize the traditional mall formula of cookie-cutter brands.
Storefront recently held a launch party in Manhattan, which drew over 2000 people.
“There are a lot of malls and vacant spaces needing unique activations throughout the U.S.,” says Sabrina Goris, retail manager at Cushman Wakefield. “Storefront has all the right tools to be successful in this niche market.”
Pollock says the challenge is in streamlining the process of filling those vacancies and ensure a win-win for everyone involved.
“Right now, if you went out looking for a short-term space in San Francisco, where would you go? You might go to a broker who may or may not want to help you depending who you are. If you’re a big brand, maybe they’d do it as a favor to you but they’re still not going to get the commission they would get on a five or ten year lease.”
Christina Ruiz (top) leans against her mobile retail truck, never dreaming she could open a store, let alone in a major mall. “Storefront really provided an affordable option to test out what it could be like to have a real brick and mortar store.”
But that’s changing. It’s not just about filling empty spaces, but bringing a fresh energy to traditional retail settings.
“Having pop-up shops adds an element of constant change, which tends to keep shoppers engaged and encourages them to revisit,” says Goris, who manages the Crocker Galleria in San Francisco’s Financial District. “It has absolutely assisted in bringing new energy and demographic that may have not otherwise visited the Center.”
Christina Ruiz ran her women’s clothing business called Topshelf out of a customized truck. Storefront negotiated a space for her at the Crocker Galleria. “I don’t know if I would have chosen the Crocker Galleria as a location to run my business — not because I wouldn’t have wanted to but I just never would have considered it financially feasible.”
Kate Spade’s most recent pop up entailed a “touch screen store.” Items were displayed in an actual shop window and a street-facing touchscreen allowed customers to make a purchase, which promised to be delivered within one hour.
While Ruiz still operates her fashion truck, the store balances her business model during the winter months when the truck business tends to wind down. “Storefront really provided an affordable option to test out what it could be like to have a real brick and mortar store.”
Storefront also worked with Indochino, a Canada-based online retailer of men’s tailored suiting, with a “traveling tailor” concept that launched in Manhattan’s Meatpacking district. “In the end, the customer was still ordering their suit online but they were getting that one-on-one tailoring service in a physical environment,” says Pollock. “I think that’s the power of what Storefront can offer.”
Of course, for other, more mature brands, a temporary or “pop up” store is all part of their strategy, and Pollock says, that’s where modern retail is going. “Retail has just evolved where the online world is using the offline experience of traditional retail to further their brand experience,” says Pollock. “It’s this idea of a showroom, where maybe very little of your actual product is for sale but you can experience it and then order it online.”
Storefront worked with ecommerce brand Indochino in developing a “traveling tailor” experience, such as this one in Washington D.C. held at LivingSocial’s 918 F Street space.
Last month, Kate Spade and eBay experimented with hybrid digital and retail experiences in New York. Spade had touch-screen storefronts while eBay opened a physical store but purchases were still made online. Both offered free delivery, allegedly within one-hour (although with Manhattan traffic, that can be dubious at best.)
Meanwhile, Storefront is working to further streamline the client experience with faster approvals and leasing options, and an even broader national reach (currently they service only San Francisco and New York, with Los Angeles to follow).
Pollock says they will also continue to experiment with concierge services such as procuring temporary store personnel, shop fixtures, and signage through their “referral partners.”
While pop ups are not exactly a bargain – rents can range from $100/day to $100,000 a month depending on location – they’re still far less of a commitment than a long-term lease and a chance for new players to perform on the world stage.
In the long term, Storefront’s challenge will be to innovate their concept so that they don’t just end up being a short-term broker, but a multichannel retail agency with a scalable menu of services that meet the needs of a broad client base, from established, premium brands to new-to-market businesses.
‘Put it on wheels and they will come,’ might just be the new retail mantra right now. Hot on the heels of the Pop Up store trend is mobile dining with food trucks as the ultimate cliché in hipster dining, but one that has managed to spell success for all sorts of culinary concoctions (adobo burrito anyone? — yes please.)
But when it comes to fashion, mobile retail is still largely just a marketing tool used to bring a sense of theater and excitement at such high impact events as New York Fashion Week or Milan’s Salone Di Mobile. Since last October, however, Upstart eyewear brand Warby Parker has taken a serious stab at using it as a compelling retail strategy with a roving school bus full of spectacles. Dubbed the “Warby Parker Class Trip,” the goal to build awareness for the fledgling brand, which currently sells online and through boutique retailers. This week, the brand opened its first Warby Parker store in Manhattan’s SoHo.
The company bought and refurbished an authentic vintage school bus, cleared out the seats and installed dark stained wood shelving and cabinets. A tiny glass display case containing exactly two hip flasks, a little plaid hankie, and a monocle: all an urban hipster needs to survive.
Top: The interior of the bus during construction. Bottom: Interior of the bus on a recent Saturday in San Francisco’s Hayes Valley.
“The school bus idea came about because the founders of Warby Parker love Jack Kerouac and the whole idea of the adventure road trip,” says Phineas Ellis, a marketing assistant with Warby Parker, who’s job its been to drive the bus to all 10 cities on the tour. “This is as much a vehicle for selling our glasses as it is for giving people a better sense of who we are.”
In keeping with that road trip theme, the bus is stocked with a small but noteworthy library of classic American literature including vintage editions of On the Road, Catcher in the Rye, and Howl. Originally the plan was to sell the books as well, but that part of the business plan didn’t get fully realized so for now, they’re just for display.
“We’ve found that a lot of customers are familiar with the Warby Parker name but they don’t know the whole story,” says Chris Lee, a suitably bespectacled sales associate. “Here they can see the full range of our collection.” Perhaps missing from the customer experience, however, is one important part of the brand story: that for every pair of glasses sold, Warby Parker provides a pair for someone in need through a partnership with the nonprofit, Vision Spring. The inside of of the bus was largely devoid of any messaging or storytelling — a critical opportunity to showcase their mission of value (prices starting at $95 for frames and lenses) and social responsibility.
Clockwise from Top: a young visitor locates the bus’s latest location on an old-fashioned roller-shade map; sales associate Chris Lee attends to a customer’s order; and a small display case featuring Warby Parker accessories, including the brand’s own monocle.
“Warby Parker is still very much a startup, so the bus idea is still an experiment,” says Ellis. “One thing we know we need to work on is making sure people understand the brand’s social mission, but we want to be careful how we do that. For now, it’s our sales associates who do that job.”
Meanwhile there are other challenges at hand in these last remaining days of the bus tour — like city permits. “Yeah we’ve run into some problems and its meant we’ve had to change our location a couple times,” says Ellis. “But all in all, this has been incredibly successful for us. We’re already talking about how we’ll do the next one.”
>>The “Warby Parker Class Trip” completes its final tour in San Francisco on April 12. To find out where the bus is parked, go to www.warbyparkerclasstrip.com.