Does your store have the 'chill' or 'kill' factor?
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Retail |OPINION
These days, terms like "retail experience," "total experience," and "Instagrammable" are ubiquitous in fashion retail. Many modern fashion shops are beautifully designed and score highly on the visual checklist of Instagram and TikTok influencers. Yet, sometimes something crucial is missing on the shop floor: feeling! To achieve this, not just your visual senses, but all your senses need to be stimulated so that your brain thinks: I never want to leave! In short, it's really nice here. Or, as the young people say, "very chill". And subsequently: I want to chill here, or rather, linger and enjoy myself. That feeling creates a strong emotional connection with the customer, which can be very beneficial for the retailer.
First, a clinical analysis: Let’s get physical!
Most shops now have a digital storefront via social media or a stylishly designed webshop, primarily pleasing the eyes of their online visitors. In addition, many physical shops are largely designed for visual enjoyment. The goal is for people to be increasingly drawn in by the decor and snap a photo or video for their social media. This is a clever way to generate traffic to the shop. This tactic works perfectly, especially in the food industry: special snacks or unique chips quickly go viral on TikTok, along with the shop's decor. Hordes of followers flock to the shop, queue for ages, buy the product, proudly snap a photo – with the decor as a backdrop – and then gobble it down within minutes. You could call it the "snap-and-gobble" tactic.
However, in the fashion industry, the sales conversion of these incoming visitors is still too low to benefit from this tactic. Because after their snapshot, they're quickly gone again. You'd want to keep them inside longer, to engage more with your brand, your services, and your products. And that's the crux: your products, services, and your brand require a different approach than a biscuit or chips.
To begin with, the physical presence of a potential customer should also be physically rewarded. Because if you, as a customer, take the trouble to physically visit a shop, all your senses are available to be stimulated. And the more senses involved in the experience, the more intense the emotions. If only the eyes are appealed to, then you, as a customer, might as well browse and shop online. Why would you still go to a physical shop?
To evoke a wonderfully chill feeling – or moment of happiness – in your shop, appealing to the senses in a pleasant way is essential. Through the senses, you reach the emotions and feelings that evoke an experience in the customer, where the experience in your shop becomes linked to the feeling of happiness. The physical shop environment must therefore stimulate the senses at the right moments and in the right way. And in this, more than just visual stimuli, scent and the tactile (touching fabrics, textures, and warm surfaces) are also very important. Your strongest memories from the past are often associated with these senses.
The benefits of the 'chill' factor
A recent Crossmarks poll among Dutch retail professionals shows that most prioritise creating unforgettable experiences for their customers in their future strategy. The physical shop environment offers many possibilities for this. For an extra high 'chill' factor in this physical environment, authentic interaction with staff is essential, particularly if they can strike the right chord, allowing the customer to identify with the style, values, and ideals that the staff embody from your brand or shop. In this experience, you can also have the best advisory conversations or surprise the customer in the best way with truly personal solutions. Of course, there are even more commercial benefits to having a shop experience with a high 'chill' factor:
- Lots of traffic that also lingers: In the Paris flagship store of Kith, a trendy urban retail brand from New York, the label cleverly capitalises on the longer stay of their customers by having an eye-catching hospitality concept in the middle of the shop. This creates extra buzz, as if you're in a club. However, a lounge area or coffee bar is also sufficient, as is the case with the Amsterdam high-end streetwear brand Four in Amsterdam.
- It increases the chance of more sales: A high 'chill' factor is inviting to discover more in your shop, and that increases the chance of impulse purchases. A good example of this can be found in the shops of Sissy Boy, where you may always feel welcome and relaxed to explore. And because of the stronger emotional connection in the relationship with staff, the chance of cross-selling and up-selling also increases.
- People come back more often because they simply feel happy in your shop: This increases loyalty, and they are also your best ambassadors, providing free promotion.
- It makes visiting your shop a memorable experience: After many shop visits all over the world, I mainly remember the feeling I had in a shop, and not so much the decor -- akin to my visit to the Sommarboden beach boutique on the island of Sandhamn in Sweden. In a cute little nostalgic building, you are totally moved by the scents of handcrafted textiles and sea air, to the rhythm of swinging 1930s jazz music. And to try on a shirt, a fitting room is improvised. All this with staff who are happy to give you tips about adventures and lovely places on the island. Clever, because they have an outfit for every occasion hanging on those few square metres.
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Avoid experience 'killers'
However, a carefully constructed shop experience can also be easily ruined. It is important to remember that a shop experience is essentially a performance, but one that you perform with the audience rather than for the audience. For this reason, there are a few rules of thumb from show business to prevent your shop experience from becoming a flop:
- What is not part of the show, should not be on the stage! This refers to items on the shop floor that are not part of the decor and are not part of the product range. So stacks of (empty) boxes, empty clothes racks, unmanned folding stations, and the like are best kept backstage.
- Be in character! Watch out for sloppy appearance or inattentive behaviour from staff in view of customers. If they need a time-out to check their mobile or relax, this is best done backstage.
- Drop fake performances! Avoid fake behaviour such as fake smiles and "insincere greetings" like those formerly used at Abercrombie & Fitch. Customers can sense this unerringly, and it creates an unnecessary barrier.
- Kill the overkill: Stay away from overly strong scents, overly loud music, overly slippery floors, overly full clothes racks, or overly pushy sales techniques. Chill also means relaxed.
For a wonderful 'chill' factor on the shop floor, it is therefore important that your customers and staff are in a good flow. And a flow where you have (pro)actively eliminated all possible friction and irritations, and actively steer towards triggers that make people happy. This guarantees that people will genuinely feel happy in your shop and therefore have an unforgettable time. That makes it worthwhile to physically come to your shop!
This is a contribution from Melvin van Tholl, customer experience architect, from BLOODY BELIEVERS. The creative-strategic agency that helps brands and companies develop groundbreaking solutions in their customer experience. He does this for companies both in the Netherlands and abroad. In this series, he takes you into the wonderful world of the consumer, with lessons to make your company future-proof from the customer experience perspective.
This article originally appeared on FashionUnited.NL. It was translated to English using an AI tool called Genesis and edited by Rachel Douglass..
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