What:  Now that markets are about to reopen, the moment to reconsider the raison d’être of a store has come

Why it is important:  Digital capabilities are empowering stores and retailers into making their brand and name richer, in terms of content. But stores do remain relevant in the “digital age”, especially department stores.

It has been now more than a year and a half that the outbreak of Covid-19 started, and its consequences, lockdowns across the world, induced long-lasting changes of customers behaviours:

• Shift to e-commerce for convenience, practicability and fear of crowds,
• Work from home, quasi total disappearance of daily commuting and international holiday travels.

This situation raises the purpose of a store: what is it for, exactly, in the digital age? More than just a distribution hub (which used to use the customer as the last-mile logistician, an approach that is over now that anyone has the possibility to have the product home-delivered), or a place to find a nice curation of products, some retailers explain that stores are now part of a bigger purpose, and contribute to their branding:

• Selfridges sees itself as a theme park, all about having fun.
• Browns sees itself as a platform for experience and connectivity that is not available online.

Self-proclaimed retail prophet Doug Stephens argues that now is the time to put the distribution of experience, not products, at the centre of brands and retailers’ strategies. For him, the store is a stage and a studio, it’s about building and broadcasting experience that is then relayed offline in the other stores, or online on the digital channels. Interestingly, Stephens precises that we are not anymore in “the retail business, but in the show business”.

This is, ironically, a quote that we heard from many CEOs in the department store business over the last decades.

What’s a store for?