Beyond Experience: Why Retail Needs a PLUS

We’re witnessing a global revolution as brands are reimagining physical spaces in order to build brand love. Leading brands recognize the evolving relationships with consumers and have shifted beyond just selling products. They’re creating movement, fostering community, and immersing shoppers in new forms of brand storytelling and interaction – experiences that evoke true emotion and desire.

We explore this Retail Revolution in a series of articles each one focused on a different theme: Hero Merchandising, Experience PLUS, Sensory Immersion, and Cultural Capital. The final chapter in our series is Experience PLUS.

Experience. Experience. Experience.

It’s perhaps the most overused word in the retail industry. Everyone talks about it. Every brand wants to deliver it. Every shopper seeks it out. Experience is the catch-all for the place, the vibe, the desire, the “je ne sais quoi” of shopping. Interestingly, we probably use that word so much because there is quite literally no synonym for it. Believe me, we’ve looked. No other (English) word captures that intersection of immersion and location and being quite like “experience.”

So, what do we do with it? Let’s add to it. Turn it up to 11. These days, a single experience isn’t enough… it’s all about Experience PLUS.

“Printemps New York is not a department store, instead it represents a visionary approach to the future of retail — where we seamlessly integrate retail, hospitality, dining, and innovative programming with a curated approach to fashion and lifestyle,”
— CEO Jean-Marc Bellaiche

Monsieur Bellaiche sums it up perfectly. Doing one thing in a store doesn’t cut it. The real key to building buzz and driving shoppers is in those extras where the Venn diagram of retail, hospitality, dining, living, doing, and BEING happens. The Printemps New York store in downtown Manhattan is a prime example of Experience PLUS. You are presented with a plethora of choices to make your visit worth every moment. Concierge-level hospitality awaits at every turn. Personal shoppers cater to your every whim. Coffee, snacks, cocktails, champagne & oysters, four-star dining—all on offer in a variety of settings. Stylists to help assemble your look. Hair & makeup experts complete your makeover. Couturiers and tailors on site. It’s literally Disney for the glitterati. All inside a glorious, over-the-top, luxe environment that screams EXPERIENCE at every turn. They’ve plussed up everything about shopping to the point that shopping is no longer the only thing.

Content & Character FTW

“A place where the Netflix story you can’t get enough of becomes something real that you can play, shop and taste,”
— Marian Lee, Chief Marketing Officer, Netflix

Recognizing how their competitors drive loyalty through multi-dimensional businesses (Disney Parks, Disney Cruises, literally Disney +!), Netflix has launched their Netflix House as a very different approach to capital-E “Experience.” Building on its owned IP, Netflix dimensionalizes its most beloved shows in a neon-lit carnival of shopping, playing, watching, and eating. You can taste Great British Baking Show treats, visit the Upside Down with your favorite Stranger Things characters, dance alongside Bridgerton fancies, and shop for localized merch as a memento of your visit. And ironically, they’re bringing it to the exact locations that everyone has been memorializing as no longer relevant: the shopping mall. At venerable King of Prussia in Philadelphia, Netflix House is now an anchor the way the old school department stores used to be. Only now, Squid Game and The Floor is Lava drive the experience. Next up? Las Vegas—because if there’s a city build on immersive spectacle, it’s that one.

Can a brand move you to… move?

“You can copy a product. You can’t copy a feeling.”
— Gymshark CEO Ben Francis

Athletic specialty brands have dominated the retail world for years now. The Swoosh and their competitors rightfully tap into both fitness and style trends. But are those retail environments delivering true PLUS moments? A recent up-and-comer from the UK has arrived to show us what real conditioning looks like in-store. Gymshark is building very smart brand experiences in their brick-and-mortar doors, where true workout apparel is merchandised in gym-like settings, alongside an actual gym and with personal trainers on site. The stores are packed with loyalists grabbing performance-driven gear, but the real plus up is in the try out, in the Sweat Room, and at the Cool Down spaces, where the Gymshark brand is building a true community of obsessives who buy into the brand’s ethos as a lifestyle, which is bigger than just the apparel. Their brand new New York flagship is meeting the same metric, and you can already see Gymshark popping up across the US with their exclusive partnership with Dick’s Sporting Goods.

One Plus One = MORE

The above examples are simply some of the better, more exciting highlights we’ve seen across the retail landscape. All different, all trying to achieve something unique with specific goals and actions. The unifying thread across them all, and the big lesson for retail brands and experience designers to rally around? Open your mind to crafting multiple moments of engagement in the store that map to your shopper’s world. What can we give people that they really want, or sometimes don’t even know they want? As creators and authors of experience, we have the power to create the future of retail for years to come, always with experience… PLUS.

This is just the start. Dive into Create to Resonate and discover more bold ideas shaping the future of brand and consumer connection here.