Blending Digital and Physical Realms for the Future of Retail

Hello, everyone. I'm Melissa Gonzalez, the host of Retail Refined. Also a shareholder and principal of MG two Design, a global design and architecture firm. Since inception in twenty twenty, I've had the privilege of having great conversations with leaders from brands and retailers and retail technology companies. In the past twelve months, those conversations have been as engaging as ever. From Halston and Coach to Ikea forever twenty one, Bubble and more. We've really been diving into not just the future of the consumer. But what does that mean for the future of retail? And I think that difference between physical and and what's digital For me, physical always trumps digital when it comes to evoking emotion. And so start there. Start with your physical environment. Start with touching field because that's why they are going to a physical store. We're looking for brand awareness has the customer you're looking for heard of the brand. You're then looking for brand affinity. So the person you're targeting likes it or dislikes it or is neutral. And then the third thing is purchase intent, which is will they actually pay for it? The customer is telling us how he or she wants to engage with the brand. We are also trying to say, move away from headquarter led, initiatives. To front lid initiatives. This is where we have had been discussing. Let's put an experience lab. Let's put it in the store where you both have the coworkers and the customers to tell us how the experiences should be built. The consumer journey is no longer just I'm in a store or I'm online. The consumer journey, if in the past they used to say that you need three to four times to, see a product before you actually purchase it, Now it's actually, especially on gen zers. It's around nine to twelve. Their futurist thinking. That's that's what I love about them. They're There's not a there's not a moment of, oh, it can't get done. They're gonna get it done or they're gonna tell you how to get it done. How do I make me revenue, sharing new customers and the loyalty perspective as well. And so the number one question we get today is, okay, where do I stop? Right. So one of one of the pieces to that is to think about how you wanna source supply as a brand. And in general, we're evaluating four or five different streams supply as that starting point. These recommendations are all connected to the backroom inventory of each individual store that we're working with. So we're only pulling forward the things that are back there that are gonna fit you well. So if you're at a, like, multi brand retailer -- Right. -- would you be able to identify this is your shoe for for for Puma, for Deepgram. Correct. So it kind of creates, like, a third dimension, if you ask me, like, it's physical, digital, n a r. How is all of it gonna merge together? And I think experimenting that for me is something that we, you know, we're we're looking into already. So I think really the future is about combining all the walls without the differentiation of the three and how they come together. Join us as we embark on another year of retail refined. Where we have engaging conversations with leaders in retail about the future of the consumer and what that means for the future of retail environments.