I've always loved working with retail clients and seeing how much consumer trends impact even the most established brands.
Just this week we see the final closure of troubled Ted Baker stores across the UK, at the same time as Wilko rises from the ashes, announcing a seventh store opening, yet again leaving mixed messages about the fate of the high street.
With the ever-growing options for online retail, and the rising costs of everything from rent to utilities the reasons to write off bricks and mortar are stacking up now more than ever. Why add a whole building, and staff, to your bottom line when Gen Z are shopping direct from TikTok and influencers are driving click throughs to your website in droves?
And yet.
Just when we all started to write off the high street there’s a quiet but significant resurgence in brands building a physical presence to enhance their online success.
Missoma, having built a cult following online, opened its first permanent store last year. Sephora, launched online in the UK, is quickly rolling out stores across the country, each drawing the type of queue an online drop can only dream of (with a little help from M&C Saatchi Talk!).
So, if the high street is back does this mean the internet is dead? Of course not. And perhaps the mistake retailers and marketers alike have made is assuming that one can’t survive if the other succeeds.
The brands that are flourishing with bricks and mortar are those who understand that stores are part of the eco system. That footfall and clicks are not metrics to be pitted against each other, but to work together and drive growth.
A store is a destination, a home, a place to build affinity and connection. As AI content makes it harder to assess quality (or even if something exists!) from a picture, the presence of a physical store brings comfort and connection that can’t be seen through a screen.
The Missoma store on Monmouth street includes a piercing studio, in-store welding service and consultations on layering and stacking jewellery. All take up valuable space, but they create a destination. An experience. A reason to plan a visit that a website simply can’t provide.
From a comms point of view, our mindset needs to follow suit. We can get caught up in whether the objective is to drive footfall or web clicks, but we should be pursuing growth with everything at our disposal. By working with retailers to support stores designed for experience, we add a huge weapon to the marketing arsenal.
Blending the online with the physical by creating experiences for influencers and media, hosting events that engage those who influence customers and even consumers themselves. Even building a social strategy around the people working in the stores can add the personality and connection today’s consumers seek from the brands they buy from.
Real estate is pricey, but with the right space and the right comms strategy you can work every square foot extremely hard to get your money’s worth.
