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Retail’s New Storefront

Mobile connectivity will drive the customer back into the store

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As technology continues to push retail into unchartered territories, the talk at every industry conference, meeting and gathering is about change. But as the industry continues to adapt to a new world order, the one constant is that enticement remains the golden challis of retail. The first department stores knew this well as they employed “The Four A’s,” art, advertising, air conditioning and architecture, as enticements to attract people into retail’s magnificent new mega stores. These were the tools used by all of the early merchant princes, from John Wanamaker and Marshall Field to Harry Gordon Selfridge and R.H. Macy. 

In Chicago, architecture reigned supreme as Marshall Field built a great edifice, complete with massive stone-cut columns abutting the main State Street entrance. So impressive were these architectural elements, that at the time, they stood as the tallest cut-stone monolith in the western world.

As the early merchandising visionaries embraced the new technologies of the day (cast iron architecture and plate glass) which led to the advent of the show window, Field’s hired Arthur Fraser to create magic in the new show windows of the grand storefront. Fraser’s work was so inspiring that his window extravaganzas were used as enticements to the denizens of Chicago for 49 years, from 1895 until 1944. And his work was so effective as that tool that in 1922 the preeminent trade publication The Show Window, which is currently today’s VMSD magazine, honored him as America’s leading window display artist.

Not only has the industry changed dramatically since then, but as we all know, it has changed exponentially just within the past decade. Back in the day, the new found department stores creatively searched for ways to entice people into their establishments. Arthur Fraser’s magnificent show windows stopped people in their tracks. Today, we’re living in a mobile world, and mobile connectivity is retail’s new storefront; it’s the cast iron architecture of the day.

While retailers search for means of enticement in response to e-commerce and mobile connectivity, they must be clever enough to realize that it’s mobile itself that will invite people into the store. Just as the show window in the era of Arthur Fraser was the first point of contact with the customer, it should be understood that mobile is the first point of contact with today’s totally connected consumer. And ironically, the show window is more important today than it’s been in the past decade. While mobile is the new storefront, today’s window displays are the fulfillment of the promise and the realization of the expectation.

The mobile storefront and the brick-and-mortar storefront together will drive business into the store. If the two are in sync, they will stop them in their tracks.

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Eric Feigenbaum is a recognized leader in the visual merchandising and store design industries with both domestic and international design experience.  He served as corporate director of visual merchandising for Stern’s Department Store, a division of Federated Department Stores, from 1986 to 1995. After Stern’s, he assumed the position of director of visual merchandising for WalkerGroup/CNI, an architectural design firm in New York City. Feigenbaum was also an adjunct professor of Store Design at the Fashion Institute of Technology and formerly served as the chair of the Visual Merchandising Department at LIM College (New York) from 2000 to 2015. In addition to being the Editorial Advisor/New York Editor of VMSD magazine, Eric is also a founding member of PAVE (A Partnership for Planning and Visual Education). Currently, he is also president and director of creative services for his own retail design company, Embrace Design.

 

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