Retail Embarrassment is Worse than Cost Overruns

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Going over budget or missing a target date for completing a major retail project is bad. But there’s a far worse endgame: embarrassment.

What’s that? It’s a retail project that when complete — even on time and on budget — not only fails with customers, but it also diminishes your brand.

Cost overruns are tracked and can be corrected. Or at least they can be reviewed so they can be corrected next time. Customers, however, don’t see your budgets.

They see your stores. They see poor execution and experience poor engagement. In the age of social media, that makes it public, perhaps newsworthy and potentially part of your brand’s permanent record.

Let’s consider the most likely causes of retail embarrassment and how to avoid them.

In this blog, we'll discuss:

1. What "retail embarrassment" looks like

2. The critical retail priorities

3. Why do retail embarrassments happen?

4. So... how do you prevent retail embarrassment from happening?

What “retail embarrassment” looks like

Some “retail embarrassment” is just bad luck: plumbing issues, teenagers sabotaging displays for social media kicks, an employee dramatically losing their temper or a truck full of manure breaking down in your parking lot.

That’s life. And, by the way, you should have structured reactions/solutions for incidents such as these for store associates and managers to execute as directly as possible.

What we’re considering here is:

• Inconsistent branding and signage across locations
• Neglected digital screens with outdated content
• Fixtures or graphics that don’t match the brand
• Displays that are installed incorrectly
• A beautiful concept that becomes a confusing mess during and after rollout

Do these miscues trigger Shakespearean tragedy? Probably not.

But if a shopper begins a video with, “I used to love Retail Store X, but look at these signs. Three different shades of red? And this digital display looks like a 1970s TV. And where is the product? I needed one of these but there’s nothing here!” That could start an avalanche of negative publicity, which could become viral online or even big enough for a TV news program to raise an eyebrow. And then it pops up on all your shoppers’ social feeds.

Not good.

The issue: the gap between vision and execution. And follow-up.

The critical retail priorities? Your customers and your brand

Cost overruns are bad. Losing brand value, marketplace respect and customer trust are retail disasters.

Consider the above issues. Inconsistent branding can confuse customers, both at product and storewide levels. It also looks cheap and undisciplined. Customers pick up on that both consciously and unconsciously.

That moment of “meh” creates a hesitation when you want to instill shopping confidence. That diminishes both dwell time and conversion.

The in-store experience is where customers fully engage your brand. You want your brand to communicate in a positive way and instill trust and emotional connection.

That doesn’t happen when your stores are inconsistent, shabby or confusing. You can correct these problems. But the initial embarrassment lingers and reduces your standing vs. your competition.

Why do retail embarrassments happen?

It’s valuable to understand how things can go wrong. So they don’t.

It’s about neither establishing nor maintaining a detailed understanding of the connection between retail design and retail execution. Both are important, but poor retail execution makes any retail design fail. And could lead to embarrassment.

Potential pratfalls.

• The lack of an in-store branding playbook that establishes all aspects of branding, including logos, colors, fonts, images, primary and secondary slogans, verbiage, etc., as it pertains to your interiors, signage, wayfinding, specialty fixtures and more.
• Strategy and execution teams that aren’t aligned
• Design that isn’t developed with production realities in mind
• No prototyping or pilot programs to ensure design and execution alignment
• No clear quality control across locations during and after installation
• Scaling wasn’t built into the plan or understood across all stakeholders and vendors
• The risks inherent during handoffs for an end-to-end process, from concept to rollout

Many of these put pressure on retail rollouts both large and small, whether it’s about an entire store fleet refresh or rebrand, or it’s about specific new displays, décor or fixtures.

So … how do you prevent retail embarrassment from happening?

Great retail design and execution require an end-to-end understanding of store development.

It’s about fostering a process that integrates creative, strategy, technology, production, procurement, installation and follow-up.

Your engineers understand your creatives and vice versa. Your production and warehousing teams know the details of installation, so their kit packing and delivery process minimizes delays and go-backs.

Your design and prototype with scaling and rollout are always part of the discussion. A complete understanding of this complex process means quality control is always present, ensuring branding consistency and rollout and build standards are maintained, both in-house and with vendor partners.

Of course, there is an efficient and stress-reducing solution to avoid retail embarrassment and, instead, achieve ROI. You work with a brand experience partner who fully understands the end-to-end process of delivering customer environments built for scale.

Click here to learn more about such a partnership.