Retail Fitout in the Age of Smart Stores and Sensory Tech

Once upon a time, to brief a shop fitout company was to agree on finishes of the floor, arrangement of fixtures, steaming of the lighting and where the cash wrap would go. These decisions, however, no longer stand alone. The small that was previously submitted to a retail fitout company has grown to include network facilities, location placement of the sensors, power supply of the digital devices and backup planning to the facilities where the technologies cannot be found in such scale commercially. The physical build remains the base, however, the support that the build has to bear has also shifted significantly.

The retailers that continue to perceive fitout as a construction project and aesthetics exercise will be in a challenging situation in several years not because their store will be inappropriate but because the infrastructure under it will fail to sustain the next activity.

What a Smart Store Really Needs?

The smart store is used in general terms to the extent that it has become somewhat vague. To initiate a conversation about a fitout, it is worth being definite. A smart retail store is the one in which physical infrastructure, digital systems, and data collection are connected to work as a single system, which enables the retail store to notice customer behavior, respond to it, and present the most relevant content (or deals) at the appropriate time. The technology layer contains motion sensing, proximity beacons, IoT-capable shelving, smart lighting, interactive display walls, ambient sound management and in more premium deployments, computer vision and AR.

None of such technologies perform well as retrofit. Each of them imposes conditions on the physical construction which must be sorted out at the design phase, rather than afterwards when the walls have been built. Routing of wiring conduit, locations of network access points, structural restoration of wall based display hardware, displays of floor boxes where power will be distributed and the grid patterns of ceilings of sensor arrays should be considered as part of the layout of the retail store at the outset.

The Unseen Layer that determines the Behavior of the Customers

Sensory technology in the retail business is functioning mainly below the consciousness of the customer and that is how it becomes efficient. Ambient sound designed to the rhythm and demographic characteristics of the shopping atmosphere have dwell times effects that customers would not ascribe to sound had they been asked to. Colored lighting systems, which vary in color temperature and intensity according to the time of the day or the flow of traffic, influence the mood and perceived quality of the products, without speaking to us. Beacons that can activate contextual content on the phone of a customer the closer he/she is to a specific fixture are providing an individualized experience that does not seem intrusive but intuitive.

Thinking Like Lego and Future-Proofing

The development of the trend toward a modular design is one of the more practical changes in the approach that has been made by experienced retail fitout companies to a smart store project. The premise behind this is the following: the technology will develop more rapidly than the physical construction, and therefore the physical construction will have to be versatile enough to change without the need of demolition. Modular shelving systems made with in-built power and data partitions enable changing the setting of a given fixture when product lines or category plans evolve. Flexible partition systems imply that zone layouts are free to be altered by a structural intervention.

Such foresight can only be discussed at the briefing stage in a different way. It is not just what the store has to do on opening, but what it may have to do in 3 to 5 years and can the fitout as planned sustain that change. Many retailers that invested in their modular, future compatible retail shop fitouts are discovering that the cost of change is much less than that of the competitors that built to a complete specification and are now facing the huge capital investment to add new technology.

The Economic Case Is Standing Tall

It can be argued reasonably that smart retail fitouts are a more expensive upfront expenditure and that is an excuse that is utilized to postpone investment in technology infrastructure frequently. The counter argument that the data is proving to be more accurate in is that, the overall cost of ownership is in favor of smart-first fitouts when compared to the static builds that involve incurring constant capital cost to be competitive.

The process of promotional refresh cycles explains the argument quite satisfactorily. A network of digital screens with a cloud-based content management in a store can refresh the promotional messages on all the estate in a matter of minutes, at almost zero cost, and without on-site personnel. A store that uses static signage requires printing, shipping, and installing a new item every time there is a change in a promotion, and this costs at every stage and creates a lag that cuts down the commercial window available on each promotion.

The Fitout as Living Infrastructure

The retail leadership team that appears to apply the most beneficial thinking with regard to fitout investment is that the physical store setting is no longer a fixed asset. It is the infrastructure of an experience that still shall keep developing, and the quality of the development shall be limited or facilitated by the decisions made during the build stage. Commercial returns will be continued through an integration into senses only after capacities are built through a fitout of a retail store that has a modular flexibility design, strong network and power infrastructure, and purposeful integration of sensory technology. A fitout that was made to specification only on the day of opening will only start demonstrating its constraints earlier than the depreciation schedule indicates it will do.

When it comes to the time that your organization is looking to open a new store or do a refurbishment, or indeed an expansion, the discussion with your fitout partner must have a real technology integration discussion at the very least design. The choices that will occur during such a discussion will define what the store will be able to offer during the lifespan of its commercial activity.

D'Art Design, a global retail design agency, has developed a global reputation for creating amazing environments that people experience completely and deeply.