When retailers decide to refresh or transform their fleet of stores, they often bounce back and forth between the aspirational and the realistic — cutting-edge technology and design versus execution-at-scale complexities.
It’s about innovation but staying within a budget. You want media headlines about a “Store of the Future” in Manhattan but also need to refresh hundreds or thousands of other locations with various footprints across the country. It’s important to elevate every omnichannel path to purchase but also achieve ROI as quickly as possible.
Ultimately, combining innovation and efficiency while refreshing and transforming branded environments at scale is critical for retailers trying to eclipse their competition and attract customers and build brand loyalty.
But how do you intertwine innovation and efficiency when they often seem at loggerheads? Here’s a four-step plan.
Transforming a branded environment starts with focused questions, such as:
Begin by assessing current store environments. Identify areas where refreshed design, layout and technology can enhance customer engagement and experience while also maintaining brand consistency.
“...combining innovation and efficiency while refreshing and transforming branded environments at scale is critical for retailers trying to eclipse their competition and attract customers and build brand loyalty.”
Then consider scale and scope and develop a playbook for rollout and site-to-site adaptation. Different regions and store footprints naturally will receive varied focuses, budgets and priorities.
Strategic planning involves setting clear goals based on data and pairing that with budget transparency and execution discipline.
Innovative and transformative design is about visual appeal that celebrates a brand but also provides purposeful improvements, from wayfinding to merchandising to operational efficiency. Just like customers, associates also should have a “Wow!” visual moment during early impressions but then take note of how many ways their experience — in-store, back of house and online — improves.
Interior view of convenience store CU located in South Korea.
Innovative design elements to consider:
As many retailers well know, the multi-faceted execution process moving forward from design to installation — and every step in between — is complex.
That’s why designers who regularly consult and collaborate with engineers, logistics and supply chain experts, program managers and production and installation teams understand the best intersections of innovation and practicality.
A design can be spectacular on paper — or even as a one-off flagship — but if it’s not efficiently scalable, it’s going to fail. It will logjam the project with delays, finger pointing and lose-lose compromises.
Four points of focus to consider throughout the process:
Is this blog post outlining the strengths of an end-to-end, no-handoff approach to transforming branded environments at scale?
Yes.
And, yes, that is what Miller Zell offers clients, though we can enter the process at any juncture and provide value.
Retail innovation that delivers ROI requires an intertwining of dynamic design and a broad range of execution expertise. It’s a funnel effect that unites and focuses a design and execution system that is purposeful, adaptable and, above all, replicable.
Even with a back-and-forth collaborative process, it seamlessly flows from research and surveys to design to prototypes to pilot to rollout. At each step in the design development process, value engineering takes place, ensuring that costs are kept down while quality is maintained or augmented.
Effective branded environmental designs deliver solutions that can be executed at scale, meeting speed, timing and pricing requirements. They also elevate your brand and build customer loyalty, thereby providing a roadmap for revenue growth and increased market share.