Virtually Real

By Dan Zuzunaga

Remember the future?  Or at least the future of commerce?  Always Open. Always On. Always Available. E-commerce was going to take the place of the so-called brick and mortar stores providing the consumer with convenient and immediate solutions to all theirshopping needs.  Want to shop at 3am? No problem.  Want free shipping? No problem.  Never want to deal with a salesperson again? No problem.  

When Apple opened its Itunes store we logged on and between 99¢ songs and P2P file sharing sites record stores closed in droves.  We were amazed whenAmazon moved past books into things like garden tools, and people started buying things like rakes online. When Gilt launched lunchtime turned into a mad race of who could get it, (whatever it was), into their “member cart” first with fashion conscious shoppers huddled around their laptops everyday at noon.  

In the last 20 years E-commerce has delivered on much of its promise and for a format that is still young enough to be constantly reinventing itself it represents a sizable portion of the market, with a share that is growing year after year.  So it’s interesting to note that one of the biggest online retailers, Ebay, is continuing with a new approach to the future of commerce this season. Ebay, with the expansion of its holiday pop-up stores into 12 cities, is joining what is probably the second biggest trend in retail, the Experience Economy.  The newest edition of Ebay’s pop-ups is the new Jonathan Adler designed “E-Bay Inspiration Shop” a series of shopable windows that opened in late October at 404 Park Avenue South in New York City.

The Experience Economy lives at the opposite end of a point-and-click spectrum focusing on immersive multi-sensory customer experiences that happen in the store.  While Amazon and the like have been making shopping more convenient to do in your underwear, traditional retailers have been inviting us to spend more time out-and-about, or rather in their stores.  From 300,000+ sf Bass Pro Shops with shooting ranges for “Jr. Hunters” to Gucci’s Artisan Corner where well-heeled customers can watch Gucci artisans in action as the brand “transports the craftsmanship of Gucci directly to a store near you”, the Experience Economy has been busy reinventing retail as entertainment for the last 20 years. 

Traditional retailers have long acknowledged the need to incorporate e-commerce into their strategies Ebay’s continued foray into brick and mortar is becoming a large scale investment by an online retailer into the world of brick and mortar.  To be fair the approach Ebay is taking with is more marketing than business model, this year Jonathan Adler designed “shopable storefronts” join the portfolio of Ebay stores.  Nevertheless as these retail mega-trends continue to merge the space between the virtual and the real becomes smaller.

Dan Zuzunaga is Senior Strategist at WONY.