The Slower You Shop, the More You Spend
Free facials at Origins; coffee and a seat in the library at Club Monaco
Some retailers are trying to slow down the process of shopping to make it more “experiential" to customers. WSJ's Ellen Byron explains on Lunch Break With Tanya Rivero. Photo: Arash Moallemi/Club Monaco
If you sit down in an Origins store, you’ll probably spend about 40% more than you would standing up.
This type of insight, backed by data, is behind a change going on at retail. Stores are trying to slow down the shopping experience, a movement known as “slow shopping.” Adherents believe that browsing in a store should be a leisurely and enriching experience that’s not overtly focused on buying something. To entice shoppers to spend more time, boutiques and national chains are adding libraries, art installations, performance spaces and cozy lounges to encourage shoppers to hang around and enjoy themselves.
It is basically an admission that transactions are usually much faster and more conveniently done online and so stores have to offer something else to entice shoppers. For years, retailers focused on speeding up how we shop in stores, including self-checkout lines, quick-service call buttons and displays bursting with products. Now, some retailers are rethinking the role their selling floors play, essentially turning them into an interactive marketing space that also happens to sell products.
Customers can examine the herbs and plants that go into Origins creams and lotions at a Houston store. PHOTO: TODD SPOTH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
At an Origins store in Houston customers can get facials and try products at the in-store sink station. PHOTO: TODD SPOTH FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
Origins, owned by Estée Lauder Cos., is outfitting most of its 87 free-standing stores around the world with fixtures intended to keep shoppers lingering longer. The new stores include a wall specially lighted for selfies, a long communal table and a giant sink for sampling soaps, scrubs and lotions. Seating is plentiful.
“We made a conscious decision to have fewer products and more storytelling in stores,” says Origins senior vice president and general manager Stephane de la Faverie, who says that so far sales at stores with the new design are up 20% to 40% compared with the old format.
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Slow-shopping theory is an attempt to capture U.S. consumers’ growing preference for experiences. Their top two indulgences include a weekend away or a night out, rather than splurging on luxury goods like new clothes or cosmetics, according to a 2015 survey of about 1,000 people by Boston Consulting Group and the Fashion Institute of Technology’s graduate degree program for beauty-industry executives.
“We know that the more time they spend in a store, the more likely they are to make a purchase,” says Amanda Bopp, an FIT graduate who presented the survey results to about 750 beauty-industry executives in June. Ms. Bopp and other graduates urged the need for luxury brands to adopt slow-shopping measures. “You need to give shoppers an emotional motivator to be in the store,” she says.
A library and the dressing room at Club Monaco’s flagship store in New York. PHOTO:CLUB MONACO
Successful slow-shopping efforts don’t overstimulate shoppers, says Candace Corlett, president of consultancy WSL Strategic Retail. “The core of slow shopping is to make it interesting and engaging, versus online shopping, which is quick and easy.”
Execution is essential, she says, adding that stores still have to accommodate the shopper out for a quick trip.
Lowes Foods, a North Carolina-based grocery chain owned by Alex Lee Inc., offers self-checkout and express lanes as well as an online order and delivery option for shoppers who are in a hurry. For those who aren’t, 29 of its 94 stores offer options like clipping herbs from an in-store garden, samples at a craft beer bar and a “Chicken Kitchen” that features staff dance performances.
“It’s like a Disney experience,” says Lowes Chief Marketing Officer Michael Moore.
Club Monaco, a unit of Ralph Lauren Corp., in 2013 introduced a library, flower shop and coffee bar inside its New York flagship store. Since then, the apparel chain has continued the idea globally, including a whiskey bar and flower shop in London locations, a coffee shop and bakery in Montreal and farmers’ markets in Toronto and Hong Kong. Each location is outfitted with distinctive, location-specific décor, and salespeople are provided with the details behind them.
At the Urban Outfitters store at Space 15 Twenty in Los Angeles, customers learn to infuse their own wild honey. PHOTO: URBAN OUTFITTERS
After getting inquiries from shoppers for interior design services, Club Monaco started selling some or all of the fixtures inside its stores, depending on the location. “At our Fifth Avenue store [in New York], everyone is trying to buy the chairs,” says John Mehas, Club Monaco’s chief executive. The artwork and other items are rotated every two months, based on what shoppers want to buy, he says.
Some of Urban Outfitters Inc.’s namesake stores in cities including New York, Brooklyn and Los Angeles are finding ways to attract young shoppers and seem less like a chain store by hosting rock concerts or art events such as making silk-screen designs. They are also drawing people in for lunch or a new hair style. The company calls its new 33,000 square foot Austin location, slated to open next month, a “lifestyle center” and includes three restaurants. “We want our stores to be a place where customers love to spend time,” says Urban Outfitters spokeswoman Oona McCullough. “Our shoppers are asking us for more.”
Madeleine Condit never considered herself a Restoration Hardwareshopper, but on Saturday she and a friend stopped for lunch at the home-furnishing chain’s new Chicago store, housed in the historic Three Arts Club building, which was designed in 1914 and restored by Restoration Hardware Holdings Inc. Intrigued by the store’s elaborate architecture, Ms. Condit, a management consultant, browsed all six floors of the 70,000 square foot store, and ended up buying four sets of towels and three rugs, items she typically would buy online.
“I will go back,” she says.
Origins’ new store design emphasizes the “journey” its products make from plants to formulas, aided by explorers and botanists. Old-fashioned maps paper the walls and accoutrements like mud boots, lanterns, microscopes and even field jackets are placed throughout the store, but aren’t for sale. Entire shelves are lined with bottles of raw ingredients used in Origins products, including ginger, turmeric, mushrooms and rose of Jericho, but also aren’t for sale. The props are meant to help the sales staff, known as “guides,” tell how Origins products are developed.
“The guides aren’t there for the hard sell,” says Origins’ Mr. de la Faverie. He believes about 75% of purchase decisions are made online, before a store visit.
Origins’ store staff is now compensated differently in some stores. Rather than prioritizing sales targets, the brand is testing compensation plans that reward guides for how they well they collect contact information from shoppers and keep in touch with them. Origins declined to disclose specifics of the plan.
“When a client connects with a guide and they love the discovery experience they’ve had in the store, they’re likely to keep coming back to us,” says Pamela Hoffman, Origins’ vice president of global education.
A softly lighted wall with the outlines of leafy green plants is meant to replicate the exterior of a greenhouse and serves as one of the store’s “selfie stations,” says Caline Zavzavadjian, a regional marketing director for Origins. “Our guides can take the picture for you, and they know to hold your phone up and over, so you look great,” she says.
A sink with a nearly 5-foot diameter in the center of the store can seat four shoppers and a long table off to the side can seat about six more. Free mini-facials that last up to 20 minutes are offered at both stations and are also popular “selfie stations,” Ms. Zavzavadjian says. To encourage shoppers to play around the sink, guides are encouraged to leave jars of Origins products open and let some water splash. “It’s more inviting to the customer that way because it’s a little more like home,” she says. “Sometimes your kitchen sink doesn’t look so perfect.”
And no matter if a shopper stays in the store all day. “Traffic attracts traffic,” says Mr. de la Faverie of Origins.
