Notice I didn\u2019t mention anything about selling products. This, of course, is not to suggest that the retail space of the future won\u2019t sell products\u2014but that the sale of those products from within the four walls of the store will cease to be a priority. Instead, the goal of the store will be to create experiences so powerful that they catalyze sales across all available purchase points and channels.<\/p>\n

Renowned retail shopping center developer Allan Zeman once said that it was time to reverse the design standard in malls, which have traditionally been 70 percent retail and 30 percent entertainment. The shopping center, he said, must be a place for entertainment first and retail second. Without a heavy emphasis on entertainment, Zeman maintained, people will have little reason to go to the mall at all. Similarly, I\u2019m suggesting to you that in order to be viable in the future, retailers must apply this same approach to how they plan, design, build and operate their physical spaces: experiences first and foremost and products second.<\/p>\n

I realize that this vision of the future is hard to square up with retail as we know it today. In the current era, retailers spend a disproportionate amount of their time busying them- selves with products. They buy them, inventory them, move them from place to place, merchandise and itemize them. They mark them up, mark them down, sell them, accept them back as returns and then physically count every damn one of them at least once a year. It\u2019s to the point that in most retail companies, so many resources go to the movement and maintenance of product that customer experience becomes an afterthought, a mere garnish.<\/p>\n

But in the retail space of the future, the most important product will be the experiences it offers shoppers. And the most successful retailers of tomorrow will obsess over the design, execution and measurement of experiences. In a world of unabated product proliferation, where just about any product can be reverse-engineered within days or weeks, experiences represent the last remaining fortress of differentiation and consumer value a retailer will have. Anyone can knock off your product\u2014that\u2019s easy. But recreating the unique alchemy of people, place, purpose and production that forms a wicked brand experience is infinitely more difficult, if not impossible, to copy. Consider how long other retailers have unsuccessfully been trying to replicate the Apple experience; and product has little to do with it. e truth is, Apple could sell shoes, groceries or pet food and its stores would likely be just as cool.
\nMoving the emphasis away from product distribution and toward the delivery of a physical media experience will change the very nature of how stores are conceived, located, designed, staffed, managed and measured.<\/p>\n