FUTURE OF OMNICHANNEL SCENARIOS IN DIY RETAIL
developing 5 Maker-centric retail concepts across clicks & bricks
3
MONTHS
from insight to management pitch
2
COUNTRIES
of planned implementation
40+
IDEAS
with fellow designers/ makers
5
CONCEPTS
across clicks & bricks
We were asked to develop 5 retail concepts for the “Maker” customer segments in clicks and bricks for 3 store settings (small urban shop, store, megastore) across 2 countries, upon immersive field research about their user needs, trendsearch and a cocreation session.
DESIGN METHODOLOGY:
Following a field study of the target audience’s needs in Open Garages and FabLab communities, we mystery shopped in Brico and Praxis branches in Belgium and the Netherlands, interviewed shop assistants, documented store-specific initiatives and specifications and analysed trends happening in the scene. This was followed by a cocreation session and concept clustering, to converge to 5 concrete ideas, each defined in its context, evaluated by future potential for the client (including the suggestion of potential industry partnerships), 3-phased implementation strategy and customer proposition with regards to the company’s key values, more particularly:
- democratising “making”: making needs to become accessible, independent of previous experience, location, age & gender, ownership of heavy tools, access to FabLabs, tech. affinity, etc.
- finding creative new combinations of existing materials and components
- open innovation, cocreation and engaging in sharing information
- embracing (hardware) entrepreneurship and facilitating passionate people with an idea to build and ship their idea
- inspire with knowledge of new materials, production techniques, products
- tangible: making is about trial and error, building, craftsmanship, physicality – and so should the concepts be
- think beyond the product: what is the end-to-end maker journey, across digital and physical touchpoints?
OUTPUT:
The 5 concepts were pitched to senior management and evaluated against ongoing business roadmaps of Marketing and Assortment to be implemented in 2016.
KEY SKILLS:
- gaining immersive understanding of target audience’s needs and client’s business/ store reality
- turning trends and sector and company analyses into tangible end-to-end design concepts for new customer segments along the customer journey
- visualising concepts in context
- evaluating impact and potential
- management presentation
PROJECT IMPRESSIONS:
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