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The new retailer wants to make shopping for home appliances an aspirational adventure.
Most consumers head to a home improvement or warehouse store when they need a new refrigerator or plumbing fixture. But in Southern California, a new retail experience allows shoppers to add a cup of artisanal coffee and a shower to the experience.
Fixtures Living in Costa Mesa, Calif., is out to change the industry paradigm, which is “obsolete and irrelevant,” according to ceo Jeffery Sears.
Replacing the common rows and floor-to-ceiling stacks of merchandise, Fixtures Living has created what it calls a “joyful journey” – inviting, informative, inspirational and, most of all, interactive. Not only can shoppers learn about convection cooking, they can participate in actual cooking and grilling projects. They can even take off their clothes and wander through a private, secluded line of high-end shower heads, immersing themselves in the product features and benefits of more than 30 different styles.
Sears says they have shifted the experience from need-based – as in “my refrigerator is broken, I need to replace it” – to want-based and aspirational.
Why aspirational? “Because these products don’t just deliver food and water,” Sears insists, “they deliver experiences, memories and a better way to live.”
The journey through the 21,000-square-foot space begins at the wide and open entrance, where customers are handed a fresh cup of coffee from a La Mazocca brewing machine.
Open sightlines guide shoppers to a series of kitchen, bath and patio vignettes, then to well-appointed consulting rooms where the details are finalized. “We developed the journey into four phases: Fantasize, Experience, Realize and Utilize,” says Christian Davies, executive creative director at Fitch (Columbus, Ohio). “It’s designed to be an intuitive voyage, from developing your dream to installing it at home.”
The “experience” part of the store is the merchandise presentation in its natural habitats. Lifestyle displays aren’t new to appliance and electronics retailing, of course. But, says Davies, “nine times out of 10, you’re standing in a 50,000-square-foot big box with 40-foot ceilings and fluorescent lights and asked to imagine that this is your kitchen. Here, the ceilings are a more manageable 14 feet, the lighting is residential and the materials palette is what you’d see in your own home.”
The journey is gently driven by a system of signage and graphics, some meant to inspire (“There is no greater love than the joy of discovery”) and some to inform, like wayfinding departmental demarcations and plasma screens that show loops of product features and demonstrations.
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