Welcome to J.C. Williams Group’s Retail Innovations Blog Series where we celebrate global retail innovation, concepts, and trends! This series is based on our annual publication Retail Innovations, developed in partnership with our affiliate members from the Ebeltoft Group. We’ve taken the four hot trends (Smart Shopping, Interactions, Brand Intensity, and Responsibility) identified in Retail Innovations 12 and have split these up into 4 easily digestible blogs that will be released over the course of the summer. Enjoy!

Hot Trend #2 – Interactions

Interactions focus on what the internet struggles to provide: interaction with products (test, customize, make), interaction with staff (human relationships, personal shopper), interaction with the company (co-creation), and interaction with other clients (communities). The following case studies demonstrate the Interactions trend.

Vita Mojo (St. Paul’s, London, UK)

Vita Mojo is a health-focused take-away restaurant offering customizable meals. Customers choose any desired combination from among five proteins, 14 starches and vegetables and five sauces in order to create a meal that is suitable for their nutritional needs and preferences.

Vita Mojo is the city’s first entirely cash-free restaurant. Customers can choose and pay for their meal online via the restaurant’s website and, at the same time, select a convenient time to pick it up at the store. Payment is either online or through a contactless card. For walk-ins, the restaurant provides a row of permanently installed iPads for immediate ordering.

Ebeltoft POINT OF VIEW

Vita Mojo’s innovation is its seamless integration of technology into the process, removing the need for communicating complicated orders and significantly cutting wait times in-store, while simultaneously managing to provide high-level nutritional information to an increasingly health-conscious customer base.

VOID General Store (Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

VOID General Store is a multi-task, multi-brand enterprise combining a convenience store, bar and content developer (music and videos).

VOID started as a lifestyle magazine covering skate, surf, fashion, music and night life. After almost 100 issues, in 2014 VOID became a general store in Leblon, Brazil, where millennials and Generation Y get together to have fun, listen to music, buy cool stuff and share drinks. It’s a totally new store concept, combining lifestyle online and offline. It’s also an extremely active social media domain conveyed and shared via videos and photo content, using platforms including YouTube, Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. VOID General Store curates the latest brands of beer, including the primary Heineken product from Rio de Janeiro, attracting customers who have confidence in VOID’s selectivity and good service. The bar and the store perform very well together.

Ebeltoft POINT OF VIEW

Since launching its first store in 2014, VOID General Store has opened six different locations with the same proposition: Create an environment where customers enjoy shopping and gathering for fun. This innovative success is based on the perfect combination of entertainment, in-store activities and online presence. This strategy allows VOID to create and maintain a huge personality among customers and create a long-term conversation with its customer community, which would be difficult for competitors to replicate.

Ikea Kuchnia Spotkan (Warsaw, Poland)

Ikea Kuchnia Spotkan (in English, Ikea Kitchen Meeting Point) provides a space in the center of Warsaw where customers can book one of two available rooms to gather, cook and eat together in a fully equipped kitchen. Customers provide their own food, or can order from Ikea’s online grocery store partner.

An attractive environment in which to cook, eat and spend time with friends.

Two rooms with fully equipped kitchens.

Ebeltoft POINT OF VIEW

Ikea always has been a leader in offering customers a genuine experience in its stores, presenting entire room sets to enable customers to imagine how their own home might look. The Kitchen Meeting Point is a natural extension of this, freeing the brand from the potentially artificial feel of a room set in a store, and inviting customers to experience the world of Ikea in a more authentic setting. The association of the brand with positive social experiences is likely to drive a positive predisposition to the brand and to purchasing, provided the strategy can get customers through the door for more than just the novelty of the experience.

For more information on global retail innovation, download Retail Innovations 12 from our www.jcwg.com

Real Estate & Community Master Planning

Your vision for a thriving business is integral to any economic infrastructure; your customers are at the centre of all planning and decisions. Creating a clear and concise roadmap that factors every facet of the customers’ experience is crucial for success. Your plan must consider vendors, tenants, landlords, developers, government agencies, and other facilities that your retail space will benefit or affect. Your collaboration with the JCWG team will ensure a detailed master plan that includes clear objectives supported by extensive research that considers every component of your business community.

Resources and Techniques:

Retail demand calculations
Trade area analysis
Market gaps and opportunities
Zoning and space requirements
Retail supply audits
Trade area psychographics and demographics
Pedestrian and traffic counts

Expert Witness & Advisory Services

There are many moving parts in a customer-centric business, and you may encounter legal setbacks and disputes at any stage of your business journey. Your collaboration with the JCWG team will provide you with expert reports and testimony in trials and hearings while advising legal counsel to ensure that you have the necessary resources required to manage and support litigation impacting every aspect of your case.

Resources and Techniques:

Discovery
Expert report preparation
Trial testimony
Business strategy review
Determination of damages

Concept Development & Space Planning

Concept Development services include background research, branding, right-sizing, capital budgeting all the way to detail design. JCWG can work from an idea or join a design process to enlighten, validate and support implementation. A vacant property can also be best filled from a concept development exercise.

It may be your idea, our research results, or both. Once a potential retail concept is identified is needs to be developed and validated. The JCWG team has the capacity to develop the concept characteristics from aesthetic & functional planning, design standards, location requirements, capital requirement and validation through demand, trade area and benchmarking analysis.

Resources and Techniques:

Functional planning and programming
Concept design and development of design standards
Detailed design services including base building requirements
Marketing plan and strategy execution
Management and staffing selection
Tenant mix and product curation
Short term and long term KPI definition and monitoring
Operational audits
Expertise sourcing and partnering
Site selection, design development and project enduring, operations human resources, start up inventories, and capital costing
Physical programming and concept design

Branding & Marketing

Winning brand equity must happen on so many platforms in today’s retail world with a consistent message and quantifiable return. JCWG understands comprehensive internal and external brand messaging that identifies the uniqueness and market advantage of a retail busines. Your collaboration with the JCWG team will strengthen your marketing strategy to build stronger connections with your audience through your brand.

Resources and Techniques:

Brand assessments
Unique selling proposition, noble purpose, and differentiation authentication
Brand and marketing implementation
Communications plans
Insightful transition to row market share from research
Customer feedback and product evaluation

Research & Insights

The amount of data available to customer-centric businesses can be overwhelming. Understanding the metrics’ influence on strategy is imperative to success. An experienced eye can save a lot of time and misguided investment to provide relevant and actionable insights.

The JCWG project team collaborative approach provides access to unparalleled experience to mine and capitalize on.

Resources and Techniques:

Custom market studies and benchmarking
Market sounding and listening
Case studies
Global resources through our International partners, The Ebeltoft Group
Demand assessment and market share analysis
Daytime population data, tracking, and analyzing where consumers are and when
Quantitative consumer data gathering, both published and unpublished, from various external sources and our personal database gathered from industry projects
Qualitative data gathering and insights
Interviews (consumer and executive), focus groups, online surveys, and social listening
Employee and customer motivational metrics
Research validation and interpretation to insights

Retail Strategy

JCWG supports retail-related businesses with a proprietary approach that is based on a strategic model developed through nearly 50 years of experience guiding clients. Retail strategy must translate vision into a plan which addresses the client’s resources to implement. JCWG focuses on delivering strategies with vision and is supported by a ‘nuts and bolts’ approach to operationalizing. JCWG applies strategic thinking processes and market research to develop or revitalize your strategy.

Resources and Techniques:

Definition and prioritization of client goals, needs and wants
Thought starter and results oriented workshops to enhance planning team input and integration of JCWG research and expertise
Current situation snapshot, trade area analysis, market gap, and competitive audits (physical and digital)
Tenant and product curation, clustering, and right sizing
Tailored processes to match client cultural, operational, and financial needs
Productivity metrics and comparisons
Active, fun, and energized learning, sharing, and strategizing experiences
Financial modelling incorporating research findings
Risk analysis and mitigation
Threat and opportunity analysis
Omnichannel platform harmonization
Stakeholder and financing approval support

Retail Innovations Blog Series: Hot Trend #2 — Interactions

Hot Trend #2 – Interactions

Vita Mojo (St. Paul’s, London, UK)

Ebeltoft POINT OF VIEW

VOID General Store (Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Ebeltoft POINT OF VIEW

Ikea Kuchnia Spotkan (Warsaw, Poland)

Ebeltoft POINT OF VIEW

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Real Estate & Community Master Planning

Resources and Techniques:

Expert Witness & Advisory Services

Resources and Techniques:

Concept Development & Space Planning

Resources and Techniques:

Branding & Marketing

Resources and Techniques:

Research & Insights

Resources and Techniques:

Retail Strategy

Resources and Techniques: