Design an Omnichannel G-Star Shopping Experience for 2018

Retail business is radically changing in this decade, due to (mobile) internet and changing relationships with consumers. In order to thrive in this new world, G-Star should adapt to create a seamless partnering experience with it’s customers - something quite different from the current sales and distribution approach. I have designed such an experience, for the year 2018, focussing on two elements. First, a store with a digital layer, but centered around the tactile, high-context experience. And through a digital ‘cloud’ that allows for a personalized relationship with each customer. Approach My approach is based on the Vision in Design (VIP) methodology developed at TU Delft. It focusses on re-framing and reinvention by creating future opportunities, instead of solving incremental present-day problems. Problem Three meta-factors combine to turn the world of 2018 into a ‘showroom without walls’: • Re-balacing Relationships: In the past, retailers used to have power over consumers: they had local mini-monopolies on distribution and knew more than their customers. This power balance reversed because of the Internet, but developments like big-data are changing it again. • Polarized Journeys: Customers will increasingly optimize non-interesting purchase journeys, seeking maximum convenience and ‘maximize’ the pleasure and quality of experience of meaningful purchase journeys. • Proposition Overload: Divisions are fading between taste-making media, product-making brands and fulfillment-oriented retailers. Together with many new sales channels, (social) media outlets, brands and propositions, the 2018 consumer will face a myriad of decisions. My assignment was to envision the most valuable shopping experience for this new future, thereby choosing how to respond to these developments. Strategic Solution I want to give people an option to build an empowering partnership with G-Star. This should happen in a way which is fitting for the brand: in a conditionally accepting and product-oriented manner. We help you find the best denim, but don’t celebrate your dog’s birthday. My recommendation is to focus on maximizing experience, leaving the super-efficient shopping and optimizing consumers to platforms like Amazon and Zalando - it’s an arms race we cannot expect to win. For experience-driven consumer attitudes, we should offer options to partner with, which boast clear added value. For example, remembering your style and size preferences, access to celebrity curators or ability to reserve products when visiting a store. Likewise, consumers that choose to disregard, instead of partner with should still be able to shop at G-Star, albeit less valuably. Finally, we choose to distinguish between two attitudes that fit the above criteria: Hands-on Venturing: For customers with clear taste preference who prefer to be in-control when shopping, the store should behave like a tool they control to find the coolest products and optimize their experience. G-Star takes on the role of a ‘wingman’ who assists you valuably. Attuned: Customers who need more guidance and prefer to be ‘taken for a ride’, need to trust in G-Star to take the lead. Like snowboarding a challenging mountain, G-Star should take on the role of the more experienced snowboarding partner, who leads the way, but still lets you ride. Design Proposal The final concept design is framed in the form of customer journeys, where the customers interact with a physical store environment with a digital layer and with a digital ‘cloud’ which allows for a ubiquitous, personalized relationship with G-Star. Getting the customers to experience a more edgy, empowered, raw version of themselves by bonding with G-Star clothing is still at the core of each journey. The store concept is a 150 m2 monobrand store, designed to serve both the Hands-On and Adhering attitudes - who traverse different routes in order to enable fitting interactions for each group. The store offers many touchpoints with a ‘digital layer’, yet this layer does not stand in the way of a contextually rich, tactile G-Star experience, as this is one of the biggest values of a physical store. An example are interactive mirrors that allow for 360 photos, digital measuring, rich media info on products the customer is wearing, product and price comparison. By ‘cloud’, we refer to a digital platform that makes all relevant information available to both customer and G-Star in every part of the journey and in any place or device. To create trust, this information can be accessed, edited, adjusted, elaborated and removed by customers. The compounding nature of this data-partnership could prove incredibly effective after some time, as customers grow a strong and valuable relationship with G-Star. For example, G-Star knowing your measurements can help predict product sizes and reduce returns. Also, having access to (famous) curators can lead to entirely new ways of selling clothing, i.e. periodical subscriptions where personalized sets are delivered to customers, together with exclusive messages from their curators. The designed concept is expected to be technologically viable by 2018 and costs can be kept similar to those of a present day G-Star store of the same size. In order to gauge market opportunity and customer response, real-world testing with actual customers has been performed in G-Star flagship store. We’re not executing an existing product/service, but deploying entirely novel ones. Thus, in order to further validate and develop the concept, I advise Lean Methodologies in quick, iterative sprints, opposed to a linear approach to product development.