What’s New New York?
Noisy, active and innovative, it is not surprising that New York is the epicenter of shopping! At the end of 2018, several brands have launched new sales experiences for the customer and new concepts that change the way of seeing the classic store.
A quick tour of these new concepts that break with the usual rules of the store and the customer experience.
Intersect
Intersect by Lexus opened in the heart of the Meatpacking District in New York in November 2018. The three-story space includes a restaurant, café, cocktail bar, lounge and gallery. This is the third place of its kind developed by Lexus after Tokyo and Dubai.
Intersect is a meeting place for people, ideas, design and culture. A place to be inspired and stimulated by art, beautiful books (as Gucci does in Manhattan) technology and gastronomy.
We enter a minimalist café. Open for breakfast and lunch, the venue is stylized with communal tables for guests.
In additiond there is a temporary space to accommodate designers or the latest Lexus concept cars. You can also find design objects for sale, from the notebook to the coffee machine, created by or for Lexus.
On the second floor, Intersect offers a full service restaurant, bar and lounge. The space harmoniously combines comfort, top service, design and culinary masterpieces visible from the open kitchen. With the Global Chefs-in-Residence program, a new chef will take control of the kitchen every 4 to 6 months, offering guests new experiences and allowing them to taste all the flavors of the world. It was the French chef Gregory Marchand who opened the ball of culinary tastings.
This space is actually reminiscent of the Cadillac House where you can buy designer items, relax, cultivate or work with the added gastronomic aspect.
Showfields
The end of the year is usually the right time for the launch of pop-up stores in New York. Much of the demand is fueled by new native DTC (Direct-To-Consumer) brands that want to develop a physical presence and connect with their customers.
In the midst of the 2018 end-of-year pop-up stores scattered throughout the city, a new type of aggregator opened in December 2018, promising to offer a new retail experience for customers and businesses. offering a different sales model for brands.
Showfields began his activities in a historic building dating from 1913, and has the ambition to be “the most interesting store in the world“.
The store consists of a labyrinth of brands selected in the form of curation by Showfields CEO Tal Zvi Nathanel. For some brands, it’s their first and only physical presence such as bedding company Boll & Branch. The sales area is an open space in which we circulate along a corridor that allows access to different sections of the place, while taking the time to discover artistic works, available for sale depending on the case. Each Showfields mini-store is thus revealed to the liking of the consumer’s walk in this place.
Ultimately, the store will be spread over four levels – from the innovative retail store on the 1st floor to the community loft on the 4th floor, with a varied parade of workshops and events designed to keep the building buzzing. So we walk in the corridors to discover the dozen brands on the first floor and test the products presented, which range from the brand of bed sheets to the connected toothbrush.
For the brands present, Showfields is designed to be a turnkey solution, allowing them to set up an online space and then arrange the physical space that will be animated by the Showfields staff, all for a monthly fee. All technologies are part of the contract, including data sensors that show how many people have entered the store space of a brand and tablets serving mobile outlets.
The space is of course conducive to share on Instagram the most beautiful photos of consumers visiting the place, such as the beauty area: no worries for fans of shopping to dive into the bathtub to take a picture.
The concept is interesting because Showfields offers a turnkey sales space for companies that do not necessarily need a large area to offer their products. The size of the mini pop-up stores perfectly matches what the brands are looking for: a space to create a direct human relationship with the potential customers, who then have the choice of buying the product online, seen and tested in the store. .
The Camp
The Camp is a new kind of toy store located at 110 Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District of Manhattan. At the entrance to the point of sale, everything seems to indicate to customers that they are in a toy and candy store. But everything changes when we discover what is happening behind the huge secret door …
Welcome to a center of activities and attractions for families with children of all ages!
The Camp was launched by Nikki Kaufman, former CEO of Normal, the company that offered custom earphones from 3D printers. After the birth of her baby, she quickly realized that there were no commercial places for the family in NYC.
She partnered with BuzzFeed (American online media) and consultant Rachel Shechtman, creator of the store “This is Story” (The concept of the store is to tell a different story around a brand or product all two months), to launch the concept of The Camp.
Children, accompanied by their parents or nannies, can discover a room with bunk beds, with a slide that provides access to the next room in a disco music atmosphere.
Children can also play on a musical wooden bridge (each wooden board of the bridge produces a musical note), use the games present on site or read books with their parents or nannies.
Children can also participate in CAMPitheatre activities with eclectic programming that reaches all ages. Magic shows and craft classes are also offered.
This park has many shopping areas for games or toys. Many employees are there to assist parents, participate in events or help families register for paid activities in the area. We can also privatize space to organize birthdays.
The theme of this store will change every 8 to 12 weeks and The Camp is likely to be popular with children who have few spaces like this in Manhattan. The sustainability of The Camp will of course depend on the propensity of parents to go through the box “purchase”, access to the place is free.
Article published on February 14th 2018 by
Bertrand LESEIGNEUR
US Retail Innovation correspondent for Echangeur
