Month: June 2022

Books + Folk, a collaboration between the Folk market in Detroit’s historic Corktown, the local coffee consultant and roastery Caffeehaus, and Assouline books, will host its grand opening today in the Somerset Collection South on the second floor near the skywalk.

Books + Folk offers an array of coffee, teas, pastries, and grab-and-go sandwiches and salads. There is also a selection of best sellers and gorgeous coffee table books available from Assouline, a luxury publisher in the fashion, design, travel, and lifestyle spaces.

In addition to Folk, Luke Kirtley, owner of Coffeehaus, has been engaged to support the design, training, and product curation for the shop. Micky Mardirosian, who for over 30 years has owned cafés and shops in downtown Detroit, manages the operation.

Every purchase at Books + Folk runs through The Detroit Shoppe, the philanthropic arm of The Somerset Collection that celebrates and supports the people, places, and products of Detroit, with 100 percent of proceeds benefitting charity.

As part of the grand opening, Somerset Collection has also commissioned Detroit artist Mike Han to live-paint an original eight-by-twelve-foot mural titled “Together we Rise” at the entrance of the store.

Hahn is a Korean-Detroit artist and designer whose creative practice has been cultivated by exploring the unresolved tension between graffiti and architecture, creation and destruction, and his identity as a first generation American born with Korean heritage.

The Somerset Collection is located on the corner of Big Beaver Road and Coolidge in Troy.  A 700-foot-long glass enclosed moving skywalk spans Big Beaver connecting Somerset North with Somerset South. Anchored by Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Macy’s, the Somerset Collection is home to more than 180 stores and restaurants.

Before the May 25, 2022 grand opening of Amazon Style — the retailer’s initial venture into fashion brick-and-mortar retail — some thought the Los Angeles space at the Americana at Brand would be dominated by technology and devoid of human interaction. But on the contrary, while there are plenty of digital tools based on AI-powered algorithms that help customers shop the store, these features support hundreds of associates who contribute to the omnichannel experience.

By adapting its AI machine learning techniques to a brick-and-mortar space, Amazon is doing more than just providing the goods customers want. The retailer also is using technology that could increase per-visit profit margins by presenting cross-sell and upsell options of additional products that guests didn’t know they wanted (but are relevant to their preferences). The technology also persists beyond the in-store shopping trip, affording shoppers online access to items they scanned during their visit, thereby allowing guests to continue shopping the store at home.

Amazon Style plans to open a second brick-and-mortar location later in 2022 at the Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio.

Enhancing Physical Retail with Digital Tools

Upon entering the bright, airy space, which features colorful social media-ready areas and fashion-focused installations, customers are greeted by a sign featuring a QR code that they can scan to begin the shopping experience. A group of human greeters are available to help with technology troubleshooting, answer questions or simply discuss fashion with guests.

Prompts by the Amazon Shopping app request customer information such as the sizes they most often wear, body type and the styles they wish to shop from Amazon’s in-house brands, such as the carbon neutral Amazon Aware and other labels including Allegra K, Champion, CK, CRZ Yoga, Good Man, Joie, Levi’s, Steve Madden, Tommy Hilfiger and Vince. Associates are also tasked with checking on customers as they shop the floor, but this assistance is afforded at a balance that is helpful — not overwhelming — to shoppers.

Within the customer-facing area of the approximately 30,000-square-foot space, shoppers will find only one piece for each item, except for a few displays showcasing jewelry and beauty items near checkout points to promote impulse purchases. Beyond the sales floor, Amazon Style’s stock area holds every size and color option for each item until a customer requests it. By scanning the piece’s QR code and then choosing a size and color, shoppers don’t have to browse racks of clothing to find their preferred pieces. Scanning the product QR codes also allows shoppers to read reviews of items before sending a request to stockroom employees, who deliver it either to the pickup counter or a fitting room.

Throughout the store, shoppers also can find physical installations with outfit recommendations organized by influencers. Named Lookbook, this merchandising method brings to life recommendations in the physical world that are complemented by digital suggestions shoppers can find on their phones as they shop.

Fitting Digital into Physical Fashion Retail

Customers who want to try on items start by entering a virtual queue, alerting back-of-house employees to select the scanned items and place them in a fitting room. Once a room is ready, the Amazon Shopping app notifies the customer, who has the option to snooze the alert and continue shopping until the guest is ready to try on items. When the shopper goes to the fitting room area, she or he gives a waiting associate the assigned room number and is greeted by name before being directed to the space, which is unlocked via a phone prompt.

All requested items are neatly arranged within a closet inside the space, in addition to items suggested by the machine learning algorithms used by Amazon Style. Using the touchscreen mounted to the fitting room wall, a customer may request additional sizes, colors and styles, or shop style recommendations generated by the feedback entered on the device.

These items are delivered to the fitting room via a secure closet door accessed from behind the space, while the door from the fitting room to the closet remains locked. A red light on the closet door inside the fitting room illuminates as employees stock the closet, and goes off once the items are in place. A notification displayed on the touchscreen shows that items have arrived, while the frame of the closet door illuminates in white light. Store associates in the area remain on hand to check on shoppers.

Expanding Checkout Options Beyond In-Store Shopping

At the checkout counter, payments may be processed via Amazon One, the company’s contactless, hover-enacted palm-identification technology. Customers may also pay using an existing credit card that is connected to an Amazon account by scanning the In-Store Code within the Amazon Shopping app. Shoppers who prefer traditional payment methods may choose credit or debit cards, cash or Amazon gift cards.

Customers who have purchased items online prior to their store visits can pick up their purchases at the Amazon Style pickup lounge and try them on before leaving. If customers change their minds after trying on items, Amazon Style will process it as a return.

Amazon Style continues its connection with shoppers even after they leave the physical premises. All items scanned by customers during an Amazon Style visit are saved within the Amazon Shopping app, allowing customers to potentially buy them online at a later date. At home, shoppers can also explore more items from brands they liked and scanned in the store.

Edouard Ambelouis, an Hermès leatherworker, stands squinting at a tiny seam along the top handle of the leather handbag occupying his work station. He then re-stitches it with a precision gained from 16 years spent returning worn and well-loved pieces to their just-purchased glory. On most days, Ambelouis restores Hermès leather goods from the seclusion of a private workshop. Today, he and his fellow artisans are pulling back the curtain for me and other visitors to the latest Hermès exhibition.

“Hermès in the Making,” a traveling experience currently open in the Detroit suburb Troy, is the closest one can get to the 52 Hermès workshops scattered across France without actually setting foot inside one of them. Four interactive sections highlight the generations of artisans behind every silk scarf and Kelly bag, allowing clients old and new to see what makes Hermès, Hermès, up close. It’s a limited engagement that runs through June 15, with a rarity mirroring the house’s own legendary pieces. The exhibition will travel to Austin in October, and also make stops in Kyoto and Singapore later this year.

Taking up one cavernous space, the show includes winding open-concept displays along a pathway resembling a workbench, decked out in Hermès’s brightest pigments. In addition to broadcast snippets of Footsteps Across the World, a series produced by documentary filmmaker Frédéric Laffont, and sculptural displays of Hermès’s most iconic products, scheduled demonstrations take visitors inside the construction of saddles, timepieces, and more. (And for little ones, there’s the world’s chicest coloring station with paper prints of Hermès scarves.)

“Time” defines a section spotlighting watches and repair work, but the theme is threaded throughout the placards, videos, and glass-encased Birkins throughout the installation. More than once, copy in the exhibition tells you that Hermès respects time and treats it as an ally. This approach comes to life in the cutting and measuring of lambskin for a perfectly fitting glove; in a lineup of porcelain plates in various stages of completion, each decorated in gentle brushstrokes; in the length of the tenures on-site demonstrators have spent working at Hermès itself. In an era when most of fashion wants to hit the accelerator to its own detriment, some commotion for taking it slow feels borderline revolutionary.

Visitors can interact with “Hermès in the Making” at their own pace, but the patient route is the one most aligned with the Hermès pace of craftsmanship—and more than worth the time.

Take a section of “Hermès in the Making” dedicated to the art of silk printing. For an hour, I am hypnotized by an artisan painstakingly pouring and spreading dye onto mesh frames to illustrate an Hermès silk scarf, layer by layer. The end result is worth the wait (and the standing): a vibrant printed silk scarf, transformed from what had been a bare white canvas 60 minutes before.

Before I take a second lap around the exhibition—some things deserve an extra glance—Ambelouis tells me about one of his most memorable projects. An Hermès client had somewhat recently brought a bag in need of touch-ups to the Manhattan workshop: production year, 1920. It was a true heirloom, used and handed down through just more than a century. With careful attention and all the technical expertise from years of training, he tells me, it was restored to be passed down once again.

There’s a magic to taking things slowly and deliberately. This is the essence of Hermès, now on display.

For many consumers, the metaverse is a vaguely futuristic concept, perhaps just now catching their attention. Retailers, however, can’t afford to be that relaxed about the metaverse. It is speeding our way and by the time the holiday shopping season rolls around, this new world will actually be here. Retailers need to know that laggards may not fare well in 2022 — and realize that the time to prepare for a virtual future is now.

Successful brands have a vibrant presence not only in the physical world, but also online, on mobile devices and on social media. The metaverse is simply the next extension of that presence. By embracing virtual reality, retailers can enable customers to interact with their brand in a unique immersive environment that tells a brand’s story and sets it apart. Richly detailed, interactive 3D spaces encourage shoppers to linger longer than conventional websites or mobile apps ever have.

Imagine the impact that exciting virtual spaces can have on holiday shoppers and it’s easy to see why online sales — along with customer engagement and brand loyalty — are bound to raise the bar during the year’s hottest shopping season.

Fashionably early

The fashion industry has been among the first to stake a claim in the metaverse; luxury brands in particular invite shoppers to explore and play in innovative virtual spaces:

• Gucci has promoted a virtual handbag on the popular and well-established gaming platform Roblox and sold it for $4,100, way above its physical price tag.
• Louis Vuitton created a virtual game to celebrate the founder’s 200^th birthday, packed with trivia challenges, prizes and surprises meant to draw young customers.
• Dior Beauty created its own holiday virtual store, highlighting gift options and limited edition products in its Atelier of Dreams.

“Marketers, store designers, merchandisers and more will have to begin thinking very differently about what a ‘store’ is,” Maghan McDowell writes in Vogue Business. “In a world where any experience is possible, why on earth would we use our industrial era version of retail as a template for the future?” Virtual stores offer the possibility of “a third mode of shopping that resembles neither stores nor websites,” she notes, but rather combines “the best of both the physical and virtual worlds.”

Data matters

The metaverse is young, but data analysis offers a good indication of where it’s going. Calling it “the next big technology platform,” Bloomberg reports that the metaverse market is on track to approach $800 billion in 2024. That represents a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 13%, compared to a market of less than $500 billion in 2020.

At the moment, gaming hardware, software, services and in-game ad revenues are the primary revenue generators in the metaverse, projected to reach $413 billion in 2024, up from $275 billion in 2020. But online game makers that seize the opportunity to create virtual worlds within their games (remember Gucci and Louis Vuitton) could earn an even greater share of future gaming sales. In total, the metaverse market is expected to exceed the current gaming market by nearly three times.

And looking ten years ahead, a February 2022 Credit Suisse report predicts that “even modest metaverse usage” could drive the CAGR for internet traffic an additional 37% over the current 30% rate — multiplying current data usage 20 times over.

At the user level, consumers have been found to spend more than 14 minutes, immersed in 3D virtual shopping experiences, in contrast to less than two minutes on static 2D ecommerce sites. That boost in customer engagement translates to a 70% increase in conversion rates — and retailers offering a virtual shopping environment like a metaverse have seen ROIs grow by 450%.

Beyond that benefit, retailers who leverage today’s advanced virtual reality technology have access to data analytics based on user interactions in the metaverse, which can help optimize product placement.  Marketers can not only determine which products are most popular, but also analyze traffic and track user activity, essential steps toward increasing customer engagement, brand loyalty and, ultimately, sales.

Spread the brand story

Unlike retail spaces in the physical world, virtual experiences have very few limitations. They’re never hindered by construction costs, crowded showrooms, inconvenient locations, or the wrong time of day. In the metaverse, even the most fantastical visions can be brought vividly to life and made accessible by retailers to all consumers.

It’s also possible to manage 3D virtual reality stores with software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions that give retailers full control, without requiring technological expertise. Once they’ve established a strong presence in the metaverse, brands can update their product offerings, store decor and narratives quickly and easily. This allows brands to align virtual stores with other channels like physical stores and websites, as it’s crucial to ensure that the brand narrative is cohesive across all sales channels, making for a perfect omnichannel approach. Virtual stores may also be integrated with ecommerce systems already in place, facilitating inventory management and direct checkouts.

The metaverse can be an exciting yet comfortable space where customers leave their everyday reality behind and connect with brands on an emotional, personal level.

What’s still to come

It may be a while before the metaverse substantially changes how we work and play and communicate and learn, according to WGSN Insights’ senior strategist, Cassandra Napoli. Still, there are many “entrance points” that retailers should be thinking about now, she says: “Brands must begin to wrap their heads around these immersive virtual spaces and plan their corporate metaverse strategy or run the risk of falling behind.”

The Robin Report neatly sums up the significance of the metaverse, predicting that it will become “a new way to experience the internet,” and represent “an opportunity for any brand ready to meet customers where they are–whether in this world, or one that has not yet been created.”