LIVING.BRAND-HD#8
Rethinking Retail in Living
Why you will go furniture shopping in your home.
The living experience is changing. Guess what… the physical shopping experience is changing too. Retail is going through a crisis.
I have worked in proptech in New York for the past 3 years growing the us office for tech startup Storefront. I have been observing changes in retail enabled through Pop-Ups and other alternative retail concepts. Only a few seem to work. Only a few will survive. I was amazed by the lack of creativity in the industry and also by the lack of awareness that change and innovation come fast.
However, retail won’t die. There will always be the need for a customer to physically engage with a product before buying it. Experiential retail is the future and companies like Restoration Hardware know it best. RH recently opened a massive retail concept in NYC. A house fully designed by the brand with additional f&b concepts to attract customers. Future retail experiences will also be embedded and merged into other physical experiences. It will essentially appear in places where retail isn’t the primary focus.
Soho House provides a sub-brand called Soho Homes that offers and sells their own furniture & home products showcased across their own Soho House’s and hotels. Instead of using other brands to showcase products Soho House creates their own furniture and sells it via their own online shop.
In our LIVING.BRAND publication, we add stories about the future of living and how it is changing. So far, we focused a lot on discussing the mismatch between the current existing rental experience and what a millennial modern tenant would preferably want — more convenience & more flexibility.
The young professional that moves into a modern (co-)living concept does not want to settle. They are in exploration mode. It is the first time they really live alone and it is still a phase where they are shaping their character and personality. The living solutions or housing brands these young professionals live in should inspire. It is the chance to capture the customers attention and shape the perception and ideas of these young individuals. While these housing solutions should “inspire how to live”, they ultimately become a retail platform for home and furniture products similar to how Soho House explored the furniture vertical.
Home and furniture brands can use these homes as showrooms or retail platforms to showcase products to multiple tenants throughout the year. The tenants can test and live with the products that they could buy when they decide to move on and settle in a place. It is a brilliant opportunity for brands without any real associated risk or investment. It is simply a platform to showcase products to attract future customers.
This method can apply to more than just furniture. You could adapt this to all other related products from bed sheets, apartment smell, kitchenware or even drinks and food. It supports the idea of a well thought through product to improve the user (or tenant) experience.
As we redefine the meaning of luxury, these modern housing solutions enable people to live in a quality design that they would not be able to afford otherwise. It is part of the sharing economy where no single individual actually owns the apartment or furniture, but the tenants use it like it was their own. It perfectly aligns with the values of millennials. Living is an experience like taking an Uber. It might be more complex and it has more (user) touch points, but it fundamentally is a service that needs to be optimized.
Taking retail into the equation makes sense and opens up a whole new aspect of the living experience that extends beyond the primary offered service as a modern housing brand. It enables a housing brand to impact a person’s life after they were an actual user (or tenant) in the concept.
Please check out our website www.livingbrand.ninja or our IG channel @livingbrand.ninja where we will post all of our content and would love to start discussions about the way we should and will live!
