Experience Centres / Stores: Brands pitch experiences

Brands pitch experiences, hope for millennial buy – in. From furniture and mobile phones to fashion and lifestyle, experience stores are opening up new paths to customer engagement and retention.

What does it take to sell clothes, mobile phones, furniture, bikes, cars and all else to millennial customers? Engaging them with the right experience say brand custodians at Fab India, Royal Enfield, Pepperfry, One Plus, RedMi and many others.

Over the past year and more several brands have experimented with their retail outlets or opened up new ones to serve up a range of experiences–café, wellness centers, children’s playrooms, reading corners and what have you-apart from their core offerings. The brand promise, they say, is increasingly about values and emotional connections as much as it is about a product or a service to meet a need.

Ajay Kapoor, President-Retail at Fab India that has opened 11 centers over the past year or so said that experience centers mark a shift from transactional exchanges to a more experiential and interactive retail experience. Fab India plans to go for 30 more centers in the coming months. “As per the industry norm re-developing a store leads to 6-7% sales growth whereas with experience centers we are experiencing a jump of up to 30%” said Kapoor.

Brands are interpreting the millennial rush for experience in different ways. Some see it as a need to entertain the customer, others look to align the brand to specific tastes and expectations. Royal Enfield stores for instance are built to push the feeling of camaraderie among bikers, to create an ambience where enthusiasts can share their passion about riding, said its spokesperson. The centers offer a glimpse into the brand’s history and its position within the shared heritage of the world of biking and adventure. The Royal Enfield Garage Café in Goa, for instance, hosts a motorcycle museum, customization area, a café and a retail store.

Brands such as Pepperfry, born and bred in the digital universe, look at experience centers as physical outposts that help bring customers into the fold. Customers want to touch, feel and interact with furniture, said its spokesperson. Pepperfry Studios helps the consumer choose the right type of furniture and have a conversion (customers to footfalls) ratio of over 50 per cent. Pepperfry will help its customers with the choice of materials designs, textures, fabrics etc. They would help the customer with the choice of tapestry, upholstery and many other products. If I was the store manager, I would increase the footfall by adopting these strategies. I would improve on the display, ambience, out of the box customer experience inside the store. I would then look at the layout and there would be spaces inside the store where there would be interior designers who would sit with the customer and help them with the selection of furniture, fabrics and give them an overall fantastic experience. Also helping with the designing of the house and making it the best place to live in. There are different technologies like 3D floors, different technologies for the wall and so on.

“The average ticket size of a studio order is three times that of an online order. Studios contribute 30% to our topline and we have seen catchment sales go up by 90-100% in areas where we have launched a studio.” the spokesperson added. The company has ramped up its offline strategy significantly, going from 29 studios at the end of FY 2018 to 52, end of FY2019. The company said that it was targeting an increase in their contribution to the topline from 30% to 45%.

One plus that started with an online-only presence and set up its first experience store in Bengaluru has now expanded to Chennai and Delhi. Vikas Agarwal general manager, One Plus India says Indian consumer prefer to touch and feel the product before making their purchase. Besides premium buyers look for a value added experience woven around their core purchase. Hence Agarwal added, One plus serves gourmet coffee and creates an ambience of exclusivity in its centers.

Rival brand Xiaomi has five ‘Mi home’ stores across Chennai, Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai. The centers are a way for the brand to reach out to customers directly thereby removing multiple operational costs and inefficiencies said the company’s spokesperson.

For home décor and lifestyle brands experience centers are a long tradition K E Ranganathan, managing director, Roca Bathroom products said that they help provide a seamless retail experience. For some it is a way to showcase the diverse set of products in its fold and establish an umbrella brand,Vasanth Kumar. managing director, Lifestyle International said they are setting up large (50,000 square feet) centers where its products will be retailed.

However, experience centers are much more than retail showrooms. They are not about products or pricing, but a place where one can relax and enjoy the entire shopping experience says the brands that are working on creating such centers. For bike brand Jawa, experience stores create a warm brand experience, said Ashish Joshi chief executive Classic Legends. Here buyers can walk in, read about bike Czechoslovakian origin, dig into motorcycle folklore or buy T-shirts and accessories or browse around the small library of books located in the space. The art of retail it would appear is all about the art of mastering the subtle sales pitch.

1. What is your take on the strategic routes that the brands have taken to position their products?

2. How do you think that pepperfry can improve its footfall in its stores If you were to head a store as store manager how would you increase and improve the footfall after pepper fry has taken the steps in this case?

3. a) What experience do you get in Royal Enfield garage café in Goa?
b) What do you understand by experience centers? Give examples

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