Trends in Retail: Successful retailers communicate culture and engage with experience -July 2017

STOREFLOORS
Since 1994, Atlanta-based Storefloors has been providing the retail industry with customized, value-engineered flooring solutions. Karen Childs, director of accounts for the business, describes Storefloors offering as such: Storefloors can help retailers design stores, fix national account pricing, ensure product availability, do take-offs, handle logistics and send an installation package to the installation team.

As with the designers we spoke to, Storefloors notes a continuing trend toward the use of and preference for hard surface flooring materials for retail applications. Earl Wasserman, founder of Storefloors, notes that this trend has been growing for about six years as use of soft surface materials decreases.

Childs notes that more hard surface use means more area rugs as well. This is typically a mix of traditional rugs or bound and serged broadloom. Insets of carpet tile are less frequent. “We are doing a significant number of custom area rugs made in the kilim style,” says Childs. The company partners with manufacturers to produce these and offers the products with an acrylic backing that provides added structure, as well as a carpet pad that functions like double-sided tape to secure the rug to the floor, reducing trip hazards and movement.

Storefloors reports that priorities with regard to flooring specifications vary from retailer to retailer, but branding, budget, design and performance commonly rise to the top. “Everyone is trying to reinvent themselves every five years,” says Wasserman. “If they don’t upgrade their communication, their branding, they will fall behind. Retail is changing really fast right now.”

According to Childs, another factor that plays a significant role in retail is lease length. “What’s the length of the lease?” she asks. “Retailers want their flooring to last that long. If there is a brand modification between today and the end of the lease, they will address that, but they want their flooring to last at least as long as the lease.”

Kristen Howard, account director for Storefloors, adds, “Many products ugly out before they wear out. As we’re helping clients through the value engineering process, that is always top of our consciousness as well.”

Porcelain tile is Storefloors’ top choice for retail use. “We have the greatest confidence in porcelain,” says Wasserman. “It remains the most bulletproof product we can offer a retailer.” As with the designers we spoke with, the company loves the look of new large format porcelain panel products but has reservations due to their installation. Says Childs, “Retailers need to ask themselves if they are going to sell more X because they have fewer seams in floor. It’s an ROI question.”

EXPERIENTIAL
Closely aligned to the concept of culture is that of experience. Creating an experiential brick-and-mortar retail environment can be achieved in a number of ways and, like culture, varies greatly from brand to brand.

According to Nicole Tricarico, director of design for Tricarico Architecture & Design, “Retail has evolved. Today it’s about acclimating to the environment, considering social issues and understanding that location/demographics plays an important part in a shopper’s experience. Retailers can’t just rely on the mall concept anymore. They have to be looking at demographics, entertainment, restaurants, beauty/health offerings and more. Lifestyle centers are key to creating these types of environments for the future shopper. In these locations, in which some may even reside, consumers can meet friends for dinner and drinks, see a movie, work out, get their hair blown out or see a physician at an urgent care facility. While so much can be bought with the quick press of a button and one- or two-day shipping, retailers still must understand that there is a large number of people who need, want and enjoy walking into a store.”

According to Tricarico, building experiential design at retail hinges on “creating environments where the customer feels they are part of the experience.” This, according to Tricarico, can and should appeal to multiple senses and may include “lighting in the store, large-format graphics and LED screens, machines that pump scents into the store, multimedia mirrors in the fitting rooms [which may offer changes in lighting, music or an app that allows the customer to see what products are in the store]. Some stores are putting in mini bars or doing happy hours or designing a speakeasy feel. They are also placing props with the merchandise, creating a visual. Technology plays a huge role, as Millennials are so driven by posting their thoughts on what they feel is evolutionary. This can include selfie stations, a photo booth, jukeboxes with the latest music trends.”

In addition, Tricarico advises that retailers include comfortable seating areas and complementary drinks to encourage customers to come in and spend time. “Retailers have to consider their business model,” she adds. “If they don’t have entertainment, good food-people are less likely to visit if they can’t spend quality time doing activities besides shopping. If you think people are coming just to shop, that trend is lessening.”

Kolthoff adds that brick-and-mortar retailers today should focus on offering “unique and engaging spaces that make shopping fun.” These concepts should not be random, left-field attractions that are unassociated with the product that the retailer is selling. “Don’t just throw in a coffee shop if it doesn’t make sense,” she advises.

Rushbrook points to Frank & Oak as an example of a retailer that is adding experience in numerous and successful ways. The retailer’s flagship location in Montreal, Quebec includes a full-service barbershop; a branch of the established Montreal brand, Café Névé, which serves both beverages and fare; and a third-floor community bar and event space. In this way, the company is embracing and celebrating the local community in which it is situated as well as encouraging consumers to come into the space to do things besides buy. It’s a softer sell, perhaps, but one that establishes good vibes, if you will, and puts the retailer top-of-mind down the road when a consumer, who may have come in previously for a coffee or a cocktail hour, is in need of a new t-shirt or a pair of kicks.

Similarly, many Lululemon Athletica retail locations offer yoga classes, sell yoga and running gear and feature a juice bar. How much easier is it to sell a consumer on a cushy new yoga mat after a challenging but great Vinyasa class than it is to get them in the store apropos of nothing?

But creating an experiential retail environment doesn’t only hinge on providing multiple offerings in a single location. Encouraging customers to engage with the brand by utilizing their smartphones in the store, for instance, also enlarges the standard retail experience. Rushbrook reports that at this year’s Euroshop, he saw technology that would allow a retailer to communicate with a consumer as they walked through a retail space, reminding them of what they purchased last time and making suggestions based on their likes. Similarly, some retailers are now employing mirrors that offer lighting options to simulate different times of the day or varying locations as well as taking photos of consumers in the items they are trying on and even allowing them to text these to contacts to garner opinions.

Retailers that include a workshop experience-called make-tailers-or allow customers to engage with their item as it is being made are offering other creative means of building experience. Rushbrook points to a bespoke denim manufacturer that allows customers to come in and watch their jeans being sewn, then packages them up in a box labeled with the customer’s name, as a great example of building an experience around a purchase.

LAYERS OF MEANING
Flooring plays an interesting role in the new retail model. Explains Nisch, flooring in retail today must be “adaptable and changeable but not generic and neutral. It must offer the flexibility to move furniture, to adapt to new ideas, to create freshness by changing presentation, to be flexible enough that it isn’t design-specific, to be appropriate through a variety of marketing concepts, while still having personality.”

Similarly, according to Pulk, the floor performs a spectrum of tasks, “Flooring can do a million different things: it can tell a story, reinforce values. I always think in terms of aesthetics. A soft, unstained oak communicates something different than a highly lacquered one. Often, flooring is the background that links the space together. If it’s not really well composed, then the space won’t make sense. Flooring orders the space. It’s the major plane. In my studio, we imagine that the flooring layout links not only with the traffic pattern but also with what we want to communicate: zones, paths of travel. There are many layers of meaning in the floor.”

The best contemporary brick-and-mortar retailers lean heavily on the ability to transform their stores. The idea of the pop-up plays an important role in retail today, as a pop-up shop can be used to highlight an offering or to tell a story, giving customers a reason to revisit a location frequently. For this reason, the floor must be a plane upon which the shop can be reconfigured. “There is more focus on flooring in experiential retail,” says Kolthoff. “The floor becomes more flexible and neutral because things need to change. If we do a pop-up shop in a retailer space-maybe ‘what’s hot’ or something about local flavor to pull customers in-we might use flooring to segment an area, but we don’t want to eliminate the flexibility of what we bring in.”

While a floor today is often expected to last through multiple refreshes, designers often use floor-over-floor products to create islands or points of interest in these locations. Rushbrook often turns to thin magnetic vinyl flooring, which can be installed over the existing flooring in a process that can be completed overnight. He also utilizes carpet tile or vinyl print film-think of those all-over car decals here-with, for example, a bold graphic that will sit atop a hardwood floor. These temporary “stickers” last a week or two before they are pulled off with no damage to the underlying surface.

Similarly, pop-ups can be a tool of convenience in the larger renovation scheme. Says Rushbrook, “Pop-ups buy retailers a little time because they can renovate certain areas-a men’s area or a fragrance area. They can use this renovation to create a buzz on social media. After that’s died down, they can do another pop-up renovation. In the past, retailers had this requirement, almost, to shut down, renovate and reopen. Today, they can do it in sections. It’s easier on the pocket, and they can amortize the cost. What’s more, it keeps a constant buzz going. That’s one thing that I love.”

MATERIALITY
Hard surface flooring has made significant inroads in retail, as it has across the commercial sectors. “Within the last year or two, I have noticed that the floors are all hard,” explains Kolthoff. “Everything is going hard. Soft is not the medium that people are requesting. The technology in porcelain has blown up exponentially. I can’t keep up with the sizes, shapes, formats and price points. It’s a good investment. When you are looking at what you are trying to do on the floor, in retail particularly, porcelain is a good investment that lasts a long time.”

As a group, the retail designers with whom we spoke are highly impressed with the offerings made by today’s ceramic tile manufacturers. In particular, they are smitten with the idea that digital printing enables creativity. Tile manufacturers today can create almost any style-realistic, colorful, graphic, clean-and quickly. What’s more the pace of innovation by ceramic manufacturers has caught the eye of designers. While manufacturers previously made introductions once or twice annually, they are now rolling out new looks and formats every quarter, Kolthoff reports.

LVT has also caught the eye of several of the designers with whom we spoke, as, similar to ceramic, there is a virtually unlimited fountain of creative options for the material, the visual for which is printed film. Reports Pulk, “I am seeing a lot of LVT options out there, and they are getting pretty sophisticated too. Three years ago, I thought I’d never use it, but I have specified it a few times lately. It’s very durable. Overall, I am seeing a trend toward crazy-durable products. Because of the bottom line, retailers are more conscientious about having to replace any material today. There’s just not as much money to invest in the store when you have so many channels to spend money on, so people want their interiors to last longer, to be more durable, but also to be responsible.”

Kolthoff reports that the speed of innovation, particularly in regard to LVT and its cousin products, demand that designers educate themselves if they are to specify correctly. “We’ve had to educate ourselves a lot on LVT: on installation methods, flexibility, moisture resistance, thicknesses. When reps come in and present now, we feel that we are at least educated to ask the right questions.”

“What role does flooring typically play in our retail designs?” asks Tricarico. “A major role!. As designers, we need to look at all aspects of retail when specifying a product. Flooring can help delineate one product category from another. It can create divisions within the space. It can help organize the store as a whole. Color, the look and sustainability are important to the look and feel of the store. But then you need to think about construction. What is the substrate the flooring is going on? How will it be installed on a second story of a mall or in older buildings in city centers? And then there’s facility management. How will the product hold up over time and under foot traffic, dirt, high heels, baby strollers and spills? It’s important to think about all these aspects when specifying flooring.” Tricarico, like the other designers, prefers hard surface flooring in retail and is amazed by offerings in the ceramic category.

Of course, with widespread use of hard surface flooring, acoustics can be a concern, but less so in retail than, say, education or healthcare, as having acoustic energy in a space contributes to creating an active, lively environment. That being said, especially if technology is involved, it can still become an issue. Kolthoff explains about one situation in which her team had to go in consider acoustic issues, noting, “We have been working with T-Mobile to do their flagships. In Miami, they were having acoustic issues with so much media playing in the space. We worked with them to address the acoustics. We looked at everything from the ceiling to the paint to the plaster. Ultimately, it’s a balance. Even in restaurants, a bit of acoustics creates energy. People like seeing in the kitchen, and the kinetic energy that you see, hear and feel. A little white noise that engages patrons in a place is a success, but when you are in a retail environment and have a challenge interacting in conversation, you have to address things.”

The designer continues, “Every time we sit down with clients, they say floor cost is something they are sensitive to, so we are always looking at how we can maximize the use of a floor. Customers want to do it right because they understand the cost implicated in it.” That being said, lifecycles of flooring products are typically extending today, as customers understand that the right investment in a flexible and longwearing product, even with a higher upfront cost, will pay off in the long run.

To this end trendy is often eschewed for more enduring looks. “People used to think of spaces wearing out physically,” says Nisch. “Today, we’re thinking of ways to freshen and recreate physical spaces based on emotional obsolescence rather than physical obsolescence. Flooring has to work very hard to be appropriate in many kinds of uses-all at the same time as retail spaces become more experiential.” Rushbrook particularly loves how manufacturers today are pushing the envelope with regard to aesthetics, “giving us amazing visual textures and reproductions. Rich colors. Wood looks. Interesting colors, textures and even shapes. Carpet tile, again, is doing really amazing things. Flooring adds a whole other layer to a design-it’s the fifth wall-and today we can have a lot of fun with it. Floors don’t need to be as quiet. Today, we can be graphic, bold, colorful and playful.”

Copyright 2017 Floor Focus