Trends & Insights

Experience first

How retail spaces become community and experience spaces.

Canadian outerwear retailer Canada Goose has a new store in Toronto that doesn’t sell any coats. Instead customers can try on a coat before being invited to the ‘Cold Room’ – a -12°C room with real snow.

 

This room can be accessed via a glass walkway that mimics the sounds of cracking ice as you walk across it. Once in the room, you will be met with floor-to-ceiling screens which display arctic landscapes.

 

With consumers pushed out of stores, retailers are coming up with creative ways to reimagine the instore experience and use spaces more efficiently.

 

Experience stores, which were once community education centers and and meeting places, will have to be reimagined for the COVID 19 era.

 

In London, Samsung‘s KX store in Coal Drops Yard has been transformed into a film studio, hosting events such as lunchtime listening sessions and a Halloween AR treasure hunt.

 

In Chengdu, China, O-Shop is a cafe by day that sells a curated selection of lifestyle items and designer furnishings. At night, it turns into a bar, diversifying its customer base.

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