Featuring 75 displays of various kinds, the fifth edition of this unique series focuses on the designs involving the merchandise sold at retail stores and related businesses. The projects utilize a range ...
iPods and other technology are changing the way Hot Topic reaches out to music fans
By Anne DiNardo
When Hot Topic, the purveyor of trendy, music-related clothing and accessories, debuted onto the retail scene in the late 1980s, music fans were wearing ripped jeans and bandanas while making mixed cassette tapes of Guns N’ Roses and Def Leppard. Hit the fast-forward button and the scene is all about downloading Fall Out Boy, Fergie and KT Tunstall; listening on iPods; watching music videos on cell phones.
Technology: It’s changed the way people listen to music and it’s also transforming the way retailers reach out to customers. Because Hot Topic is so involved with the music scene, it decided to give its store environment a techno-update, playing up its rich music assortment and reaching the newest groupies – those in the Net Generation who’ve grown up with a mouse or cell phone in their hands.
At the Galleria at Tyler in Riverside, Calif., a 42-inch flatscreen inside the prominent front window displays the Hot Topic logo and moving concert scenes. “It’s a great place to communicate a lot of music,” says Darrell Kinsley, Hot Topic’s vp, visual merchandising and store design. “The screen gives you that hit of music at the front of the store.”
After fine-tuning its display content, Hot Topic plans to use the screen to share video clips, tour information, new release dates, top 10 lists and store events, all the content to be created and managed internally.
“This customer is so familiar with YouTube, blogs and the Internet and the new multimedia element picks up on that,” says Ken Nisch, chairman of JGA, the Southfield, Mich.-based design firm that worked with Hot Topic on this fourth evolution of its store design. “And there’s much more visibility to entertainment and music content.”
The flatscreens are also helping Hot Topic play up its renewed emphasis on the music. Although the brand was founded on rock T’s and concert posters, not all of its retail stores actually sold the music that its customers were rocking out to every night. So its new store format had to relate two messages: that stores now carry an extensive music selection, and that the company understands why that matters. “With iPods, the variety of music open to an individual is unlimited,” says Kinsley. “You rarely see one category on a person’s iPod. It’s a blending of many styles.”