Hugely successful online, furniture retailer made.com has recently opened a new physical showroom in Soho, London. Located on Charing Cross Road, the flagship store will be MADE’s fourth bricks-and-mortar store – and by far the largest and most comprehensive.
Visitors to this new store that are familiar with the made.com website, will be able to sample a physical shopping experience that is akin to the online ‘look and feel’. As well as having access to multiple iMac stations to place orders, they will also be able to use handheld tablets to access product information while they browse a range of fabric samples and product postcards.
Ultimately though, visitors will be able to touch and feel selected MADE products.
And it is the ability for customers to actually touch the products that is encouraging more and more ‘pure play’ online retailers to open physical stores.
This does seem slightly contradictory when you consider that online retail spend in the UK passed £100 billion in 2014 for the first time. A total spend of £104 billion in 2014 represented an increase of 14% compared to 2013 – with analysts predicting spend to top £116 billion in 2015.
As the online retail space becomes more competitive with traditional retailers developing both on and offline business models – and online being driven by a price-led approach – the ability for retailers to differentiate themselves from the competition has become vitally important.
By its very nature, shopping online is transient and shoppers have very little loyalty to any one retail brand.
Enabling consumers to ‘touch and feel’ the product by having a physical presence is a very effective way of communicating brand values. It also helps to create a physical link between consumer and retailer which simply isn’t possible through a website.
As Ning Li, co-founder and CEO of MADE, told Furniture News:
“Everyone is trying to find a way to link both online and physical worlds. Online, there are no square footage constraints – space is endless – so coming up with ways to showcase our full catalogue here was a challenge. We’ve achieved this by incorporating digital elements but only in ways we feel add value and are not in any way gimmicky.
“Our showrooms continue to be a testing ground for new products – we use the space as an engagement tool with customers. It’s not about the hard-sell.”
Interviewed back in 2013, Simon Mottram, chief executive of high-performance cycle wear retailer Rapha explained to the BBC why they had decided to open physical stores (branded as Cycling Clubs) in 2011 after trading successfully online since 2004:
“It’s hard for brands to engage with their customers in a purely digital way. That may be fine if your business is only about conducting simple transactions, but if you want to truly connect with a customer and create a deep, ongoing relationship with them, then a physical experience is invaluable.”
MADE, Rapha and other pure play online retailers have worked hard to create ‘retail destinations’ combining the physical space with the best elements of their online presence. As Mottram explains:
“Many people like to shop in bricks and mortar locations. There is the possibility of theatre and human interaction.”
Opening physical stores provides another benefit – an additional part of the fulfilment chain.
The UK has seen a huge increase in consumers opting for ‘click & collect’. In the run up to last Christmas, 39% of online shoppers opted to use click & collect services according to JDA/YouGov research published in January.
As well as click & collect, bricks-and-mortar stores have been able to offer other innovative delivery options which can only be facilitated by being physically close to their customers:
- Buy online, ship from store
- Buy via mobile or website in-store, ship to home
- Buy via mobile or website in-store, pick up in-store
- Buy online, return to store.
A few years ago it was the online retailers who were teaching the traditional a trick or two, now appears that the tables have turned. As the consumer demands ever more flexible ways of shopping, we can only see the lines between online and offline even more blurred over the next few years.