The Tiger Goes Underground

One of the things that a European (and particularly a Brit) tends to remark upon when visiting the U.S. is how little retail advantage is taken within airports and rail stations. There are, of course, exceptions: The mini-shopping mall in LAX (Los Angeles Intl. Airport) or, obviously, New York’s Grand Central Station stand out, but for the most part, travel retail in the U.S. often seems to be little more than a Hudson News and a couple of bars.

Compare this with shopping in a U.K. airport, for instance, Terminal 5 at Heathrow (London), where the traveler is confronted by a full-blown shopping development with everything from Prada to Paul Smith, by way of Harrods and WH Smith (the British equivalent of Hudson News). Now, even the subway system is no longer sacrosanct.

Tiger, a general merchandise retailer with outposts in the U.S. trading under the name Flying Tiger, has just opened its first store in a London tube station. It is small, about 700 square feet, and while it is, on first glance, similar to a high street Tiger store, it has a different merchandising system with walls used for displays in place of the graphics that characterize its sister stores.

A very large number of people pass through St. James’s Park tube station every day, and they are all in a hurry. With this in mind, the store is about get in, get it and get out, and prices are pocket money-style – no time for wondering if you can afford something if your train is waiting. The Tiger in this station is, in short, perfectly adapted to its environment and will succeed in attracting time-pressed customers.

Tiger is not alone. Travelers in London are about to see a surge in shopping underground as retailers realize the potential of this largely untapped footfall resource. So why can’t it be like this when we visit the U.S.? It’s surely a missed opportunity.

John Ryan is a journalist covering the retail sector, a role he has fulfilled for more than a decade. As well as being the European Editor of VMSD magazine, he writes for a broad range of publications in the U.K., the U.S. and Germany with a focus on in-store marketing, display and layout, as well as the business of store architecture and design. In a previous life, he was a buyer for C&A, based in London and then Düsseldorf, Germany. He lives and works in London.