Marketing Challenge

Following our creation of a new brand positioning and TV campaign for Sharps – ‘Created with you’ – we were given the task of redesigning the shopping experience at their flagship showroom in Baker Street.

The challenge was to take the principles of the new brand and use it to develop and enhance the customer’s in-store experience. With the ultimate goal of driving design appointments and converting sales.

Approach

Our Retail Safaris are a tried and tested way of observing best practices and seeking inspiration from a variety of retail sources. It involves the client and agency teams experiencing a range of retail environments to observe trends and innovations through the eyes of the shopper.

First-hand observations and experiences cannot be undervalued. However part of the power of the Retail Safari comes through the analysis of the findings and how they can be interpreted in the context of the brand.

To do this job, we use our retail communication tool (SHOP), which reviews and defines what is needed to inspire a shopper to act. The areas considered are Personality, Education, Product Engagement, Social Engagement, Navigation and Promotion. 

Using our knowledge of the retail landscape, we created a tour of central London covering direct competitors including Hulsta, Sliderobes & Hammonds; the broader category, including IKEA, John Lewis & CP Hart; and out of category including Nike Town, Audi City, Argos, Boxpark & House of Hackney

Following the safari, we held a full day’s innovation workshop to collate the insights using SHOP to describe the key retail trends and best practices that we observed.

Transformation

The final output was a bespoke version of SHOP for Sharps, that defined the store concept and informed us of ways to inspire, engage and convert. The result was a store that flowed seamlessly through the Sharps story, using brand heuristics to build brand memorability and adding positive friction points.

For example using 90 shoe boxes to demonstrate the amount of space you can have, which allowed colleagues to start conversations with customers about space in a natural way.