Showering Shoppers with Experience

I recently interviewed Jeffery Sears for a profile that will appear in the February issue of VMSD.

He’s the ceo of a retail concept called Pirch – more about that name in a moment – that sells household products, mostly kitchen and bathroom appliances.

I first interviewed him and wrote about his concept three years ago, when he opened his prototype store in Costa Mesa, Calif. Designed by Fitch, it was a big, open, shiny showroom in which bacon sizzled on the stovetops, exotic coffee brewed in state-of-the-art percolators, the aroma of burgers wafted from high-end grills and water flowed through designer faucets.

Cooking classes, product demonstrations, special events.

The big “gimmick” of the store was a series of shower stalls in which shoppers could actually sample the array of showerheads. That’s right, doff their clothes, grab a bath towel and take a full shower.

I put gimmick in quotation marks because I want to make it clear that I don’t think any of this is gimmicky. Rather, it was a “retailer” considering what a consumer might want, need and be attracted to when investing thousands of dollars in such purchases. Would she want a lineup of washers, ovens and refrigerators standing mutely in a line, shoulder to shoulder? Or would she want to see and feel how these products would actually change her home and her life?

I put retailer in quotes because Sears was not a retailer. He sold carpeting, then other household commodities, to the trade. Rather, it was his experience as a shopper that made him decide this should and could be done differently.

I think that’s important. Retailers, brought up in a world of sales-per-square-foot, profit margins, the cost of real estate, negotiating with suppliers, etc., have a certain mindset that calcifies in their brains. Thinking about what would excite the shopper isn’t always among their top 10 priorities. Even if they know in their hearts that it should be.

It’s a timely conversation to have because right now retailers are doing their normal amount of wound-licking as e-commerce takes an increasingly bigger bite out of holiday sales. How can we get people to want to come back into the store? Offering live showers is only one option.

Sure, Sears’ concept was fine for a one-off in tiny Costa Mesa, but how practical is it if you have a chain of stores? Well, ask him. He has expanded into top-flight malls in Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago, Rancho Mirage, the San Fernando Valley and New Jersey, and is about to open a street-side store in Manhattan.

His obsession is to offer the same “experience” consistently across the country. And I put experience in quotes because, well you know, you’re getting tired of hearing that term.

Oh yeah, the name: He started with Fixtures Living, but decided it sounded too much like lighting. Perch means roost or nest, but it also sounds like a fish. So it became Pirch, which means nothing, but it gets your attention.

And Sears was already taken.

As a journalist, writer, editor and commentator, Steve Kaufman has been watching the store design industry for 20 years. He has seen the business cycle through retailtainment, minimalism, category killers, big boxes, pop-ups, custom stores, global roll-outs, international sourcing, interactive kiosks, the emergence of China, the various definitions of “branding” and Amazon.com. He has reported on the rise of brand concept shops, the demise of brand concept shops and the resurgence of brand concept shops. He has been an eyewitness to the reality that nothing stays the same, except the retailer-shopper relationship.