Report : 3 Retail Trends to watch in 2023
When it comes to trends, knowledge really is power. If you know and understand how trends will inform consumer behaviour, you can use this knowledge to future proof and strengthen your business.
Here are 3 things I believe are going to become increasingly relevant for businesses. Have you considered these while building your strategies for the year ahead?
Community
Brands are looking to promote a sense of community with the customer & beyond. Examples of this include where brands have re-designed their space to cater for these additional community needs – eg creating a gallery / event space within their store or café, where they invite local and up and coming artists to share their work or perform. Or where a brand invites the customer to become involved in the design process, via a personalisation type service. It’s about making the space as immersive as possible – the trick is to deliver a lifestyle style space without focusing on one (obvious) department or room. What you want to do, is encourage the customer to spend more time in the space (your brand), become loyal and convert / transact.
Finisterre is a B Corp certified outdoor clothing brand. They have been making sustainable clothing in Cornwall since 2003. They make clothing that lasts, and they want you to love it from the get go, and to wear and have it for a long time. But they are also raising awareness of how best to re-use, re-purpose & recycle clothing. They do this via a dedicated space on their website.
Selfridges through their Project Earth are aiming to change the way we shop and do business by 2025 by re-inventing retail and challenging the ways we shop and offering new ways to shop. Reselfridges is a new department they have introduced, dedicated to not so new product, specifically selling pre-loved clothing & accessories. They also offer a repair service and a rental service.
Expect to see more examples of retailers and online platforms such as Vinted selling pre-loved, vintage and offering rental & other services which look to extend a product’s life.
Not ready to introduce pre-loved or a rental scheme yet in your business? Take a look at H&M’s Take Care & Repair area on their site – here they share simple tips and hacks on how best to “repair, remake & refresh your clothes so that they last longer”.
Sustainability
Sustainability is the practice of using natural resources responsibly today, so they are available for future generations tomorrow. It deals with what a product is made of, where it has been made and what the customer can do with it once they are finished with it. Going forward, businesses will need to do more with less. This means tackling overproduction issues head on, particularly in the apparel areas. Not an easy task - supply chains have been disrupted, and concerns about running out of stock have echoed around trade meetings on a Monday. However we have seen stocks and supply chains improving and retailers are moving very gradually to demand led, data informed buying processes. And this can lead to significant advantages: reduce your overproduction, improve your sell through at full price, discount in a more strategic way, all helping to improving your margin. And don’t forget this also reduces your carbon emissions and impact to landfill.
So how can you be more sustainable with your business?
Sourcing closer to home, not only allows you to make more informed decisions closer to the buy, but also means you reduce transit time, and consequently reduce carbon emissions.
Look at packaging - the “do less with more” idea mentioned earlier – take this idea and literally apply it to your packaging requirements. Customers nowadays don’t want to see an excess of packaging when unboxing. Clever fit for purpose packaging is a much more sustainable choice & can also help you reduce your costs.
Are there ways that you can recycle or repurpose your end product? Do you offer a service for customers to bring back used recyclable plastics, or electrical appliances that are complex for most people to dispose of? If you are already working towards more sustainable practices, are you letting your customer know? Just because you are doing something internally and think it may be very obvious that you no longer use / offer single use plastic, or that you no longer stock plastic based cosmetic glitter products or that you only stock local or Irish products or designers make sure that you are telling this story, and tell it in a way that is clear to your customer that you are doing your bit for sustainability and building community awareness around this.
Technology
Customers are getting used to technology becoming more integrated in retail. They now have an expectation for continued improvement in this area and they want their shopping experience to be seam free. Don’t expect that having a bank of self service tills will tick this box. Use technology to create zero difference between retail channels. If you can do this, you can attract and retain a more valuable customer. (A McKinsey report has reported that the omnichannel customer shops 1.7 more times than a single channel consumer, and they spend more: Forecasting the future of stores | McKinsey). So instead of thinking of the online retail world as a separate entity to your bricks and mortar store, (especially relevant for BOPIS - buy online, pick up in store) start merging these worlds and looking at what you are doing in both from the customer’s perspective. It’s all about the customer experience and the purchasing journey, and how you can simplify this experience. Think about how you talk about product online, do you make this information available to the customer on the shop floor? Can you communicate this to the customer in a better way? By merging these worlds you can attract & retain more customers.
An excellent example of this is Amazon’s first bricks and mortar store, opened in LA last year: scan a barcode on an item of clothing to send it to your personalised changing room. An algorithm will pick out personalised recommendations for you to try on. And pay via a mobile checkout, without having to queue at any point in your customer journey. Amazon Style managing director Simoina Vasen has described the store as “a magic closet”.
Living through a pandemic has made technology and ecommerce familiar worlds now to so many people, who prior to this would never have entertained this mode of shopping. The successful businesses will be those who recognise that they need to be & stay relevant to their customer and to deliver on this in a transparent and sustainable way (along with making a profit of course). One thing that is becoming more real is the merging of ecommerce with physical store worlds to deliver immersive seam free experiences & create harmony & close the loop between online and on shelf (shop floor).
What will you do to take a step closer to creating a magic closet for your customer?
REFERENCE CONTENT
Well done, you've made it this far. Grab a coffee and have a browse through the video links that I have included below which provide some additional information and context around the points mentioned in my report.
Hot retail trends in 2023
Amazon launches its 1st clothing store l GMA
Amazon launches its 1st clothing store l GMA
Finisterre's Lived & Loved Repairs Service
Project Earth - One Year On
Meet the B Corp community, Debbie from Finisterre, the B Corp UK story so far
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