British fashion mecca Topshop hosts weekly in-store DJ sets, free tea and cake stands, roller-skating parties and photo booths that automatically load pictures to its Facebook page. The store is one of many showcasing in-store bashes for their customers to drive traffic and build awareness.
At Saks, 25 new marketing personal were hired last year to help tailor in-store experiences by location, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal. Cocktail-infused designer meet-and-greets and auctions to benefit local charities are regularly held in stores. Many stores also have "community rooms" for customers to throw private birthday parties or hold book club meetings.
"Many of our customers already feel that Saks is a home away from home," Kimberly Grabel, Saks's senior vice president of marketing, told the Journal. "We need to give customers a reason to come in to the store."
John Varvatos' boutique on New York's Bowery, which replaced the legendary punk-rock club CBGB's in 2008, offers free rock concerts and drinks the first Thursday of every month.
"It's not enough just to get traffic to your stores. You need to make shoppers excited, happy and leave feeling that they want to come back," said Mr. Varvatos.
The article claims that purchases increase during in-store shindigs, although it didn't explore whether they justify the added costs.
Other
stores pushing the envelope on in-store events:
- The Dressing Room on the Lower East Side in Manhattan features a boutique upstairs, a vintage-clothing exchange downstairs, and a full bar.
- Elsa in New York's East Village is a tailor shop by day, bar by night.
- Saturday's, in New York's SoHo district, is a surf shop that serves coffee and beer in a back garden.
- Catherine Malandrino added a café in front of its new Los Angeles boutique.
- French boutique agnès b.'s 15,000-square-foot concept store in Hong
Kong includes a florist, restaurant and chocolate counter.
"The [retail] industry's been flipped on its head," Robin Lewis, a freelance retail consultant and the former executive editor of Women's Wear Daily, told the Journal. "The store used to be at the center. Now stores have to go to the consumers. For stores to get them, they must give them an experience, a destination."
Discussion Questions: Is the rash of in-store bashes a clever differentiater/traffic driving strategy or a bit far-fetched? What are the pros and cons of such in-store events?