Technology and Social Media Changing Retail: Celebration of Experience
Apple recently unveiled its new flagship San Francisco space. The tech giant has described this new store, which is a complete reboot of the Apple Store format, as the next generation of Apple retail. Eventually every Apple Store (or most of them) will have this new look.
And what a look it is, with some tantalizing new features and a surprising new approach to retail space design. This new approach, in fact, might be considered the symbol of the new era of retail and a glimpse of where the future is heading. (More on that in a moment.) The new store, according to a recent Wired video on it, has these features:
- The entrance has two giant hangar-sized doors that majestically slide apart to allow access. It creates a massive indoor/outdoor feel, as if the interior of the store were not merely the inside space of a retail store, but an atrium or a large hall that opens to a balcony looking out on the world.
- Indoor trees and greenery-filled public courtyard
- The hangar-sized doors slide open 40 feet, which gives Apple the ability to sell much larger products in the future, such as cars. That might sound insane, but it's true. The word on the street is that Apple will be unveiling the Apple car (will it be called the iCar?) sometime in 2019, as the Mac Observer explains: “Apple's car hasn't been announced yet, but is expected to come some time around 2019, giving the company time to expand more stores or add new locations with the space to showcase cars.”
- Products are displayed with the same clean minimalism as before, but with elegant wood paneling and a motion activated feature. You simply wave your hand over a section of the wood paneling and power and connectivity ports rise from beneath the table and open like the disguised high-tech master controls in the room of a super spy.
- The stores will not only be staffed with Geniuses, but with creative professionals who will aid customers and small businesses with their music and design projects or to help them operate or adjust the gear as they are giving different creative projects a test-run.
- The Genius bar has disappeared. Apple understands the pain point of going in to get your phone fixed. It's about as fun as going to the dentist. The new Apple Store will change that. Customers will instead go to the Genius Grove, a separate location in the store filled with a line of trees and designed to bring maximum calmness with its carefully planned, soothing layout.
- The Forum, located in the second floor space of the store, offers enjoyable views through a large glass wall and features musical performances and free talks by photographers and app developers to assist small businesses with their objectives. The Forum is designed with hipness in mind, and it promises to make the Apple Store not just another retail space but a cultural destination for its community.
The New Apple Store Is A Herald Of What's To Come
Retail stores, the cutting edge ones, anyways, are beginning to realize something: to remain relevant to consumers who now turn to online shopping, retail spaces must become cultural destinations. They can no longer just be a store where you go to shop because it's filled with stuff. We can all do that from the comfort of our mobile devices now. If retail spaces are to continue existing, they must give society a new reason to come to them. The shopping almost becomes a side-event to the main purpose of the shopping trip: to experience the venue.
The new Apple Store is not the first to do this, but it provides a beautiful example of what the new era of retail will look like. Other stores, like the Samsung 837 store in New York City, have caught on to the same realization. The Samsung 837 venue:
- allows you to play around in a fully functioning, top-of-the-line smart kitchen loaded with amazing new gadgets.
- lets you use the world's largest mobile screen to take a massive selfie.
- gives you a chance to play in a music studio and interact with creative professionals and even watch artists perform in the store's auditorium.
There are many other amazing installations as well that give the retail space the feel of an amusement park or a popular hangout spot in the city instead of a store.
Social media has helped guide our culture to be more experiential, and just as we're staying on top of the latest in social media, we're staying on top of the latest in technology. More and more, we will see these two melding together. Contact us for more helpful insights into the future of business, marketing trend predictions (like these four).
