Ep.133/ MYTHOLOGY
Designing Immersive Retail Experiences with Mythology’s Head of Retail and Partner Ted Galperin
Ted Galperin, Partner and Head of Retail at Mythology, and Mariah Parsons, Host of Retention Chronicles & Head of Marketing at Malomo, discuss crafting immersive design. Ted’s work on the American Girl store in Dallas emphasizes the challenge of fitting a large experience into a 5,000-square-foot space. Key elements include a life-size dollhouse, a premium salon, and a cafe with a doll-sized door. Galperin also highlighted the importance of nostalgia in modern retail, citing examples like Vacation Sunscreen and Olipop. He shared insights on Warby Parker's retail strategy, focusing on creating a library-like atmosphere to enhance the customer experience. Additionally, he discussed the Sonos store in Soho, which used sound-attenuated pods to showcase the product's audio quality effectively.
Episode Timestamps:
2:28: American Girl Store Project Overview
10:24: Nostalgia in Retail and Market Trends
19:06: Mythology's Multifaceted Approach
22:25: Warby Parker's Retail Experience
32:29: Sonos Retail Store Innovation
36:30: Balancing New and Returning Customers
40:17: Retail as Marketing and Awareness Tool
Ep.133
TED GALPERIN
TRANSCRIPT
This transcript was completed by an automated system, please forgive any grammatical errors.
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
brand, retail, doll, glasses, store, space, nostalgia, built, customers, great, place, years, e commerce, idea, feel, real, experience, wore, sabrina carpenter, warby parker
SPEAKERS
Mariah Parsons, Ted Galperin
Mariah Parsons 00:05
Greetings and welcome to retention. Chronicles, the podcast with learnings from expert e commerce brands and partners. I'm your host. Mariah Parsons, if you're here, you're either on a quest for E commerce enlightenment or you accidentally click the wrong link. Either way, I am thrilled you stumbled into our corner of the internet, and I hope you'll stick around. We've got pearls of wisdom for everyone, whether you're running a multimillion dollar business or simply just starting out on your entrepreneurial journey, get ready for insights, chuckles and perhaps a profound realization or two, with this newest episode of retention Chronicles,
Mariah Parsons 00:47
Hello and welcome back to retention Chronicles Ted. Thank you so much for being here today. I'm very excited for it. I know it's early in the morning for us as well, so I am bright eyed bushy tailed ready to dive into this conversation, but I will introduce you first. So we today have Ted Galperin. He is partner and head of retail at mythology, and I am so excited to have you on today, because we met at Rice, which was in Chicago, we've had a couple of guests on from just like different interactions that we had at the conference, and it was a great one. There's going to be a lot of crossover between your retail experience and my E commerce one. And I think a lot of brands who are listening are going to find that they find themselves in the omni channel experience, and they're going to be able to, you know, plug and play and take bits and pieces and relate it to their brand. So I'm very excited for it today. And before we get started, Ted, I'm going to have you say hello and give a quick intro background on yourself.
Ted Galperin 01:46
Yeah, great. Hi. I'm Ted Galperin. I'm as as Mariah said, partner and head of retail at mythology. I've been a designer by trade for the past 20 years, and really specialize in conceptual retail customer experiences, and so that's sort of the focus of my work, and something I'm really excited about.
Mariah Parsons 02:19
Love it. Okay, beautiful. So a little bit more background for our listeners on the presentation that you gave at Rice, which is the retail innovation conference of Expo. For those who aren't familiar, you were presenting with American Girl doll, and you were talking about how you all built out one of their new storefronts. And so I was sitting in that seat extremely nostalgic, because, as I just shared with you, I grew up in New Jersey. So it was an annual trip that my mother and my sister and my brother, if my if my mom was dragging him along that day, if we would go into the American Girl The American Girl doll store, and, have, you know, like, a birthday celebration. Usually it was one of the best days. Just like, going into the city feeling so adult, right? Like, that's, that was really what the, I would say, like, one of the biggest takeaways was, is you go into this, like, adult looking world where you're like, having tea and you're like, quote, unquote, taking care of your doll, right? You're like, assuming a um, assuming a caretaker role, but you're still a little little girl, um, or little boy playing with dolls. So very nostalgic for me, when you were presenting and talking about just like, how you are crafting that experience for a consumer to have. And I'm very excited to dive into that. If you could share a little bit of the overview, I think that would be great just to give kind of our listeners the same, I guess, one on one experience that I was getting in that room, because just the way you all were thinking about building out the retail experience and all the dolls of, like, doll world, or, yeah, doll world, and then like, the real life world were just fascinating, of like, the staircase and the railing and, like, just all the play, all the ways that you play into, like, the space in between. Is it was great.
Ted Galperin 04:17
Oh, thank you very much. Mariah, that's so nice to hear. I'm glad it resonated. Yes, yeah, I would say, you know, a little background on the project. It's a American Girl store in Dallas, in Park Lane, which is a shopping complex there. They had moved from a different location to a smaller footprint, but they wanted to pack in as much excitement and and and sort of imagination that they had in the bigger space into the smaller space. So we were sort of challenged to figure out how to do that in about. 5000 square feet. And what we really tried to do was think about this. You know, the brand itself started about 30 years ago and was built around this idea of giving girls the ability to imagine themselves outside their own world. And there really wasn't that many things for girls like that, especially at that time. So, you know, we really just as a as a brand value that just felt incredibly important and something we really wanted to dive into. And then at the same time, they were saying to us, you know, it's owned by Mattel. How do we make it relevant for a new audience? You know, the the original brand was really built around, you know, paperback books and lots and lots of words and storytelling. And, you know, the world has just changed. So how do we kind of get those same feelings that you had growing up, but do it and tell those same stories for our modern audience? And so quickly we came around to this idea of what you what you were saying, where it's sort of this adult world for kids, and really making a space that felt like kids had permission to enter, and it was their space. It wasn't an adult world they were living in. It was for them. But with that, it's not some crazy explosion playground, you know, with ball pits and things like that, you know, not that kind of kids place. It's this sort of refined place where you're saying to little girls and boys like, you know, you get to live out your fantasy of what it's like to be a grown up and and to bring your doll along with that. And what we also loved was that this is the only place where, if we're imagining ourselves as the point of view of the doll, it's the only place where they can get their hair done. It's the only place where they have accessible seating at a cafe and they can have tea and everything is their size. So how can we put ourselves not only in the little girl's shoes, but in the doll shoes as well? And so we thought about this shift of perspective, from doll to from doll to girl to mom, and then repeating the process, because a lot of the moms bringing the their daughters in today were the millennials who grew up with the brand. And so there's a really nice kind of harmony and sisterhood to that that we wanted to celebrate. So we had to, sort of, you know, without any visuals, we had an interesting kind of condition with our space that had kind of this platform surrounded by two atriums, and in that, it was really at the heart of the space. And so what we did was we put in that space on the first floor and the second floor, this two story doll house, but that is life size. So instead of the typical American Girl world says, Take something life size and shrink it to doll what we were doing is taking something from the doll world and blowing it up to the human scale. And that really was the sort of center point of the experience. And we also wanted it in both of those spaces is the premium services that you get only at American girls, so for instance, salon. So we also wanted it from a sales perspective and a customer engagement perspective, for it to feel a little bit like a VIP area, a place where you want to you're dying to get your doll's hair done, not just because you want it done, but because you want access to that space. You want to spend time in that space. You want to have that feeling that is beyond just the store shopping experience. So we did, we did that. And then that also I mentioned the two atrium spaces. On the left side is the cafe on the first floor. So it has this sort of, it sort of presides over this beautiful cafe space and really becomes the anchor point from all the different places in the in the space. Additionally, we did details like at the front facade. Not only did we have our our actual doors, but we actually built a door that was girl sized. And so there's this, you know, smaller door to the right of our entry door that is specifically designed for a little girl to go through. And the girls, when they come there, they just their face lights up. They have to use the door. It becomes this real, you know, like a rite of passage, that that feeling of you've made it. And one of my favorite parts after, you know, we went through about a year and change designing this space. But when I first got to go there and see, you know, real customers there, the look on these girls faces when they came in and they went to the door and they saw the dollhouse. Was that sort of payoff that we really had designed for? And yeah, so I would say that's that was sort of our big idea, this idea of scale and shifting scale, because that's the magic of dolls. In a lot of ways. It's all the things that you know and love shifted down to a doll size. And so how could we kind of play with that and make this space this, you know, you know, true, one of a kind place,
Mariah Parsons 10:26
yeah, yeah. I love it. And I feel like people will, hopefully they'll be able to look it up, right? But like the visual component of just like imagining what that could look like is so cool. So I urge all the listeners to go and actually look it up. Because, just like, even down to, I remember, like, the patterns that you're choosing for the chairs, and like, all that is like, it is intentionally selected to, like, bring out emotion or to make sense in this XYZ way. And it's so interesting because, and I want to see if you are noticing the same thing in the market of just like, nostalgia is so at play right now. Like, it's so trendy, it's so in and I don't know if this is just something that is, you know, it like, maybe comes and goes in ways, right? Like we always say, like, fashion, like, it'll be back at some point, right? And so, like, Why 2k look at that right now, right? It's resurfacing. So I don't know if there's like, some component of that right now, but I am just seeing like, from a lot of different areas, even in marketing right from, like, Sabrina carpenter and her like promotional videos right now. Which Sabrina carpenter is a musician, for anyone who doesn't know. So, like, the music industry of she, like, released an old, like promo commercial, right for her new album. And then there's, like, I'm seeing nostalgia in just, like, e commerce so much. And then just like, like Taylor Swift the air is tour, like, again, music like, playing on this, like, girlhood, femininity bringing it into, like, the adult life. I think there's a lot of different reasons that we find ourselves wanting to be nostalgic right now. But just while I was listening to you talk about your project with American Girl doll, I was just like, This is so prevalent right now, and just like so many different areas of you know of the universe that at least I exist in. And, yeah, I was just curious, like in this conversation, I wanted to find out, are you seeing like, the same, I guess, like, push for nostalgia? Is it something that you would say, is new, or is this something that, you know, you're always kind of finding a way to weave that into the retail experiences that you all are building out with brands?
Ted Galperin 12:49
Yeah, it's a really interesting question. I think I'll start with the, like, cultural part of it. I, for me, I think it's something that goes in waves, you know, I think it relates in my, you know, an expert opinion. I think it relates to people's feelings about the future, ironically. So I think, you know, we're coming out of the pandemic, and we're sort of, you know, and politics is up in the air, and I think people don't know what the future really holds, and so they kind of try to hold on to the past and and I think that's where you're seeing a lot of that stuff. I I think, for me, there's brands that do it really well, like, I think vacation, sun, tanning oil, like, all our branding is really, really, you know, nostalgic, but it's done with real expertise and and sharpness. But I think as as as far as our work, I think American Girl is a specific case where it had this 30 year heritage one, and then it's also a brand that's built on these historical characters which are nostalgic for, you know, a time, you know, 20 years ago, 50 years ago, 100 years ago, 200 years ago. And so I think there, there needed to be a way that we brought in history. I think there's both history and nostalgia, but do it in a specific way. So for instance, you mentioned the chairs earlier, they're all based on the girls the store, girls clothes, their dresses. So a super fan is going to pick up on that, and someone who's not is just going to it feels of this world. We also did the staircase you mentioned earlier. We did this kind of family album that ran down this big, big staircase. And you know that they had 30 years of illustrations from books and catalogs and all that stuff that we were able to incorporate into that world. So I. So, you know, I think you have to if you're going to use something that, I think there's nostalgia, which is sort of sometimes like a pastiche of the past and and, you know, like your Sabrina carpenter reference, it's like, it really is referential. And that's the point. I think there's one bucket, and I think the other bucket is, how can you take references like that, but rather than just copying them directly, you build and create something new with them. And I think that is the harder challenge for a designer or for a creative but I think is ultimately what's going to keep culture moving forward? And so I think that's a lot of what I try to do is to take something, you know, take something popular or or sort of standard, and make it feel special, or, you know, just always juxtaposing two ideas to make it feel new, and it doesn't always. It's not always the easiest, but I think, you know, helps to keep things modern and not feel like the past, like I think of, you know, after the 2008 recession, you know, you saw a lot of like, antlers on the walls and mustaches and people wearing flannel and what you know, and workwear. And this sort of return to a more like a less sort of, you know, tech global feeling, and more of this sort of like my what my grandfather wore, and, you know, real hard work and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, but then I'll eventually that gets dated and it looks and when you're copying something that's already old, it looks even worse, yeah, so you have to be careful to sort of not get stuck there, because then it just, you know, it truly will feel dated, you know, and not anymore, yeah,
Mariah Parsons 17:08
no, I love that example, and I think it's a great one of I love that you like, categorize, like, referential nostalgia, of just someone who is like, this is going to be funny, right? Or it's going to be for the bit, maybe not as long lasting, like, it's just more like, I think about it with marketing, like campaigns, versus your branding, where it's like, this is a campaign that maybe feels nostalgic, but we'll see if we keep it right, versus like, the branding of, you know, vacation, or even like, I think of ollie pop, where it's like, they're trying to, you know, make You think of like grabbing a soda at the diner with family and friends or whatever when you were younger, right? Like, so I love that difference. And then the example you gave to of like, but there is a certain point, or there is some, I guess some, I don't want to say like danger, because it's not a danger, but there is just some element of you could also look dated if you don't do it in a creative, fun way with the times that we're currently living in.
Ted Galperin 18:10
I think your eras tour is a good one, where, if Taylor Swift had in each of those chapter, each of those eras that she does in the concert, wore the clothes that she wore from that when she was recording that album, it would look dated, it wouldn't look interesting, but instead, she recontextualized each album for today, and that's what makes it so captivating, and what makes people people want to go because they that album reminds them of their first year of college or whatever, you know, list goes on and on, but it feels fresh. So it doesn't just feel like someone doing their greatest hits, you know, because we've all a concert, you know, you probably saw one on the Jersey Shore of some old time musician reliving the you know what it is? Yeah, yeah, it does. You know that that's not interesting, but doing it in this sort of modern way really resonated, yes,
Mariah Parsons 19:05
and to, like, changing those outfits and it being like a surprise, and, like, we could go into a whole thing, of, like, the gamification of that, of like, which 1am I gonna get? Type thing, like a mystery box, right? Like, totally. I could have a whole, yeah, I could go on for hours and hours, hours about, just like the smart business play is there? Um, but I
Ted Galperin 19:26
will, I will podcast on that.
Mariah Parsons 19:28
I know, I believe me. I just, I it's taking restraint. I've already sold myself that I could do that. Um, but no, it's, yeah, it's, it's those things that it's like, and when you see them in retail versus e commerce, and that's why I think it's going to be a really interesting discussion as we move more into, I guess, like higher level thought processes around the retail customer experience. Because, as you know, that's what mine. Nine to five work is in is like the post purchase customer experience, right? There's like, a specific niche in which the software company malomo I work for does that, but it's all the same realm of the customer experience. So before we dive into that, can you give a background of mythology for our listeners? Because it's not just retail design that you all work in. And yeah, give us a little bit of background before we dive into your area of expertise and kind of get into the tactical side of things. Sure.
Ted Galperin 20:28
So mythology is, you know, we call ourselves a creative company based in New York City and, like, kind of Noho area where, you know, 30 plus people, and we do three different things. We do traditional advertising, so if, like, one of our big clients is target, and so we'll do, we'll do back to school, we'll do all their limited time. Offer stuff like the Diane BAM Furstenberg collaboration, all of those kind of designer collabs will do all of the work around that. Additionally, we do branding. So for target, again, we named, I'm blanking on the quantity, but all the big in house brands, cat and Jack pillow for Project 62 spritz. It goes on and on so so we'll not only name it, but we'll do the branding and all of the brand identity, and make it feel like a real brand inside. One of the anecdotes target came back to us with that is they people want to know where else they could buy cat and Jack because they thought it was a brand that moved into into Target. So we do that, and then so that, and then branding things we do, like Harry's shave, we named that brand, we did HIMS, all that kind of stuff. So we really see ourselves as people who like truly understand brand. And then the last thing is the retail, which is what I do. And so a lot of the past 10 years or so have been about these direct to consumer brands, like a Warby Parker living online at first and then saying, Well, what if we did retail and then helping these brands that people only experience online show up at retail, but not just feel like any other eyeglass store or, you know, insert the blank. And so that's really been my focus. Yeah,
Mariah Parsons 22:35
okay, that's great. So that's actually I sometimes it gets hard to like talk about hypotheticals, so I would love to like use the Warby Parker experience of especially because this podcast is mainly focused in E commerce, and use that kind of like a case study, or just like walking through your thought process as you're building out the retail customer experience. So if a company like Warby Parker or someone who has an online presence is coming to you and is like, we want to build out something that is different, but don't know how to do it, where do you kind of, like, how do you I'm going to call an audit? I don't know if that's the right term, but like, how do you kind of look at their whole company, and then take their ideas, and then pepper, you know, start to start to break down and like, pepper in your thoughts, here and there and elsewhere, to arrive at the store that we all know as Warby Parker today. Because I think that would be, I'm always so interested in, like, the thought process behind the execution of something that, like I'm seeing as the like the consumer, I'm seeing the finished product, right? But like the road, the roadmap, of how you actually get there. I think that would be really, really curious to hear from, from our listeners,
Ted Galperin 23:53
sure. So with Warby, you know, they were this disruptor brand. Obviously, there's a company called Luxottica, that owns every sunglass brand under the sun. And they really were like, Well, why do glasses cost this much, you know? And so they really, they, you know, created this disruptive brand that was able to sell glasses for $95 but what we wanted to make sure was that the brand, even though the offering was inexpensive that it didn't feel cheap. We didn't want to be. You know, there's, there's cheater brands now that sort of reference Warby, but say like, and we're even cheaper than that, you know. And they don't have any, you know, for lack of a better term, soul to them, they don't
Mariah Parsons 24:37
have a brand presence the way, yeah, Warby Parker might Yeah.
Ted Galperin 24:41
And so what we what we helped Warby do, even before we did retail for them. And again, that's kind of where the three different departments come in, is that some things come in as a retail project, some things leave as a retail project. They sort of are coming in from all these different angles. But we really helped Warby create their brand. Voice, and one of the big platforms was this idea of the literary life, well, lived, right? Because you're wearing glasses, maybe you're reading and there, and we all have those. Back to the idea of nostalgia, these references of, you know, reading a great book on the beach or seeing in a movie you know, someone just, you know, with glasses on reading a book, or just the idea of, like, going to school and studying, and it just feeling like glasses are not something that makes you nerdy, but something that makes you cool, and having so it's like
Mariah Parsons 25:34
a symbol of, like, education and stuff, yeah, yeah. And just being
Ted Galperin 25:38
cultured and and, and and not being, you know, vapid, you know, for lack of a better term, like, you know, just it's like glasses are part of this, you know, lifestyle. So once we had that kind of platform, then we said, Okay, well, where do glasses live? And obviously, one of the places that came up for us was libraries. And libraries are great because they're places to learn, but they're also for everyone. They're inclusive, they're, you know, they're beautiful, but that beauty is not just for a rarefied, you know, few, it's for everyone. And so we really took a lot of that visual language. And again, that's back to the idea of like, not nostalgia, but referential. Is like we we didn't just make it look like a library and say it's a library. We use cues of a library to recontextualize it for them. And we did special, you know, elements like so again, back to the idea of like, not wanting it to feel elevated, even though the thing for sale is inexpensive. We did, you know, beautiful terrazzo floors and all this incredible millwork with with books that were different colors, and we put all of the glasses. You know, usually go to a glasses store, and since they're $400 plus, they're behind glass, and someone has to stand there and look at you while you try them on. We put everything out in the open. Also worry. Parker and Instagram were born the same year, founded the same year. So there was this whole new way of people socially shopping that really hadn't been eventing it. Now that's deregur that someone's going to, you know, take pictures of themselves trying on clothes, saying which one's better? Or, you know, doing halls and all of that stuff. But that really hadn't existed yet. And so we put these every 36 inches, put full length mirrors so that you could really try on. You know, in a typical glasses situation, you have a little hand mirror that just shows your face. Now, it's part of your outfit. Maybe you're buying four pairs because they're so inexpensive, because you want to be able to match different you know, your fashion that you that you want to express. So it really became this world where you had the kind of foundational esthetic of a library, but became about sort of self expression.
Mariah Parsons 28:06
I love that. Yeah. So the, like, all the little details, I feel like that's something that in retail, maybe as a consumer, like, I'm not even picking up on that, like, just being like, oh, that's like different. But you kind of like, skip over that step and you just think it's cool, and you're like, using it anyways, right? You're not really like as a consumer. I would say maybe it would be different, because now I'm in this space of, like brands and, you know, having to think more intentionally about the customer experience. But before then, there was just so much that I know I was, I guess, like, in the I was in the mindset of being a shopper and not really thinking about, like, Oh, this is a really intentional placement, or like, cross sells and upsells that would get me at, you know, like, the when you're exiting a retail store, usually, especially if they sell a lot of different products in a lot of different areas of your life, there's, like, the gum or the candy, right? Like, a grocery store, they're, they're cross selling different products that you might not think, like, oh, I need to go get this or this magazine or this book or whatever it is, right? But then you're standing in line, you're like, I did want to read that. Or, like, I, I'm gonna need gum later at some point, and then you just throw it in your basket, right? So I, I apply that only to say that the experience now of being in this, of being in this industry, is so interesting, like, it's so fascinating to me, and to see, like, full length meters, like I remember, I don't wear glasses, but my, my sister does, and there's, like, an outdoor it's not fully outdoor, but, like, you could walk outdoors in New Jersey, and there's a warrior Park, Parker there, store there. And I remember my mom taking my sister, and I just to let go. And I was just kind of like, there, because, right, like, my sister needs glasses, but she was the one who was like, actually trying them on. And I remember she was like, so. So just having so much fun, like seeing what kind of style she wanted to bring out. And I think there's with glasses, especially as we were talking about, like, the symbolicism of them, of like either nerds or like intelligence or reading or libraries, or like, there's, there's just so many different characters that have, like, worn glasses through the years that we've seen in media. And so it's something that I think to to, what's the word I'm looking for to like, revolutionize, or like to innovate on the space and do so in a way that's like, subtly, like, okay, the mirrors, we don't need it just to be this little, little, little handheld mirror you can, like, go and have the full customer experience or with with the example of not having the glasses behind actual, like, tempered glass for security reasons. My question to you is, like, is there anything that you know your brand has or like your company is pitched, or, like, seen, where it's like, maybe, I guess, some fear on the brand side, because my, my train of thought is, like, with innovation, there obviously comes risk, and so, like, it's an easy parallel to draw, okay, the security risk, right? That someone's going to run away with with these with these glasses, even though they're they're affordable. Is there anything that you all have seen like, Okay, this is maybe, like, quote, unquote, a riskier thing that we might be suggesting or might be employing, but has paid off in like, dividends once you actually see the customer response. Because I think, like in retail, I parallel this to a lot of brands might see something and be like, Oh, I don't need that. Or like, that's not important to my consumers, just because they've never done it before, or they don't they've never seen other e commerce brands who are like, implementing this part of the customer experience. Or like, they think that like, subscription is a great example of this, of if you give customers the ability to adjust their subscription program. A lot of brands are rightfully so think like, oh, they're just going to cancel because I have so much flexibility. But it's actually the inverse of that, where it's like, brand or customers are like, Oh, my God, I love that. I can customize this to my life. And now there's like, that movement. So it's a long, long winded way of saying, Is there anything you've ever seen that has been like, okay, we're like, really excited for this. It's risky, but we're gonna, like, hope that it pays off and then it does in the end. Or has there been, like, things where it's maybe it didn't pay off and then we have to adjust?
Ted Galperin 32:33
Yeah, it's a great question. I would say the first one that comes to mind is a store we did for Sonos. What you know, wireless home audio system in Soho. And they had never had any of their own retail they had only been in places like Best Buy and target and things like that. And obviously, speakers sound works by bouncing off the environment it's in. So testing a speaker's quality in the middle of a Best Buy where there's tons of other noise and there's wall the next wall is, you know, hundreds of feet away. It's just a subpar experience. So, but they wanted a store that, you know, was high volume sales and and all of that. So we suggested, you know, we really wanted to, they really wanted to connect Sonos to the idea of home. And we suggested actually building these sound attenuated pods that were in the shape of a house, and each one sort of had a different look and feel, but they basically all were these mini demo stations where you really could understand how amazing Sonos was. And when you were in there, like your heart started racing, because when the sounds came on, it was like being at like a symphony. But, you know, to get there, we had to we built the whole store in a warehouse to really test. We had users come in and test all the different, you know, experiences. And we really, really tweaked all of that. There was also a UX component with an iPad, that connector tablet that connected you to be able to operate the system. And it was incredibly, incredibly complex, and they really had to kind of believe in the idea, because it was a big undertaking. But when we opened, finally in in Soho, it was, you know, really revolutionized retail, and it got a, what, a lot of awards for that, because it was seen as like a real shift, and it really answered the client's brief, which was, how can we get people to really experience this audio? And if we're going to do it, we have to do it right, because common sense would be like, Okay, we'll have some displays, and maybe there's wall. But, like, you kind of can hear one from the other and, you know, but instead, we really, like, you know, know that we want people to imagine what this, their homes would be like with these audio equipment. So, yeah, I think that was a, you know, a leap of faith, but one that paid off.
Mariah Parsons 35:19
Yeah, yeah, that's a great example. And I love that you brought up. Like, obviously, in retail, right, you want to have an experience that is going to convert and you want, right, like, there's the business element of it takes a lot of time and money and resources to build out an actual retail experience, especially if it's the first one a brand is building out right, like it can be there's a little bit of adrenaline and a little bit of fear that's mixed, and a little bit of excitement that's mixed in all of that. And so I love that you brought in like you want it to be an experience that is that serves the product well, but you also want it to be something that someone can, like, really, truly see the product, and hopefully, you know, purchase Sonos for their home. So obviously, this podcast is called retention Chronicles. It's something we focus on a lot, and retail, I think, serves both acquisition and retention quite well, just because you are obviously acquiring new customers who are just walking into your store, maybe coming because they heard about the Sonos experience and they were like, That's so cool. I just want to go see what like there's a curiosity element there. Um, but you're also getting customers who you know maybe want to purchase, they have a second home and they want to purchase again, like you can get, you get returning customers as well. So I wanted to ask you, is there an element of thinking through like, Okay, this is something that'll serve like new customers well, this is something that'll serve returning customers well. Is there an overlap between like, Okay, this will serve any customer well. In How are you talking about acquisition and retention to those brands even before you're building out the store and, you know, seeing if you convert and whatnot,
Ted Galperin 37:07
yeah, you know, in retail design we, you know, we have something called customer journey. I mean, it's not germane just to us, but that's a lot what we talk about. And when we design in those early stages, a lot of times we'll show on the same floor plan, the customer journey for a new customer versus returning customer. And usually the new customer engages with all of the education and storytelling that we build in you know, they're falling in love with the band brand for the first time, and they're learning about the materials we use, and the, the the, you know, the values of the brand. And you know, we really try to, you know, sort of romance, all that, but a returning customer who's already loves the brand, they want efficiency, or they want to feel special in their own way. And so it's really about sort of designing those elements in, I would say, for American Girl. The great thing is, we have, it's a store with food and beverage. So, you know, you can go there, not only for a special day with your mom and grandma and sister, but you could also have your birthday there. And then you can have, you know, and that becomes sort of a rite of passage moment and so. And then lastly, like they have the care center or the doll salon. So even if you only own one doll, or two dolls, there's lots of reasons to come back with those dolls, to have experiences, even if you're not just going there to buy yet another doll, I think, with Sonos, you it's a, it's a, it's a little bit of a gateway drug, for lack of a better term, when you buy one Sonos, you realize, oh, my God, it would be great if I had two, because then they could connect. And then I realized, oh, I want my I need a new home theater system. So it is a little bit of a building block thing, plus it has its own operating system. So you really get kind of hooked on just the familiarity with the UX. I mean, right now, they're going through a tough time because their UX is had a big issue, and they're trying to repair it because it, you know, customers aren't happy. But I think for for a while, it was, you know, it just was this reliable thing that, you know, allowed. I mean, I use it. I still, to this day, I'm an addicted Sonos person, because it's just so nice to be able to play the same music throughout your whole house and not have a super fancy wired system in the ceiling and all of that stuff. You know, you can move with it. There's a lot of advantages. So I think we, we really feel like retail, you know, you guys are e commerce experts, and I think people's attention span online is incredibly short, and so a lot of that storytelling about why. Why this product is different, especially when you're doing a disruptive brand that is the new toothbrush or the new sneaker or the new luggage or the new you know, fill in the blank. You want to be able to tell your customers why yours is different and why you need to get rid of your old one, because this one's so much better. It's better for the for you, it's better for the environment. It gives one back to people in need, all of that sort of stuff. And retail is just a really nice place to do that. It's sort of a temple to your brand. And you get, you don't have the noise of them clicking out of it, or, you know, or being distracted, or leaving something in the card. When we from a customer retention strategies standpoint, the sono store we found, you know, because the product is quite heavy. The subwoofer is, like 50 pounds. So you might not want to walk out of the store with it, because it's just now you're in Soho carrying around something 50 pounds. We found that that store was a tie that lifted all of the online sales. So as soon as that store opened, you saw huge bubble of sales around that zip code. And so, you know, I think that's another way that we're sort of looking at retail for brands right now that are like, hey, we want that awareness, but we don't know how you know, like, what the KPI should be. It's sometimes it's retail. Can be marketing. It can be this interactive billboard that you don't need to have some high pressure sales desire from but instead becomes this place to bring awareness to your brand and also be able to sort of have a backdrop to tell your story in a clear, coherent way.
Mariah Parsons 41:58
Yeah, yeah. I love that. I love the I won't call it juxtaposition, because obviously sales and marketing are so related, but I love reframing a retail experience to be something that is marketing focused, and then, like the example of people don't want to carry around 50 pounds of a subwoofer, so going online and buying it, especially in New York, and so I think That's a great place to round out this conversation. There's so many other questions I want to ask you just about, like other collaborations that you've done and partnerships, but maybe we'll have you back on just to go into that, because there are many and there's a lot of awesome things. And I think retail is something that E commerce sometimes seems a little more distant, just because it's like you are shopping. And so the brands, you can personalize that and personalize, well, they they, they last, right? But retail is something that has been around for for much longer. And so I think it's way more relatable, way more personable experience, just from the get go of just the nature of like you get to interact with a brand in their store and their temple, which I like that you said the temple for their brand. So thank you so much. Ted, this has been an absolutely phenomenal and such an intriguing, intriguing discussion. I can't wait to get it live. So thank you for taking the time early in your day to make it happen.
Ted Galperin 43:17
Happy to get me nice and fresh. Thank you so much. Mariah, this was a real treat. You.
