Reflection – Learning Launch

Challenge:

I am working in the strategic department of a clothing and fashion accessory company. One of our  challenges today is to drive consumers back into our retail stores which saw a decrease in terms of  traffic and sales due to the significantly increase of our online business. The scope of this project  includes the strategic team, retail and digital marketing team.

Selection:

As we have already went through previous design thinking activities such as consumer journeys,  workshops and ideation sessions we started thinking about setting up a prototype area in one of our  new stores based on insights from consumers and we are ready to move to the small experiment  phase where we would invite various stakeholders to test our approach and prototype. This is an  important part of the design thinking process as it enables us to understand what is working, what  could be improved and what should be put aside for the moment. As this is an iterative process we  are planning to have several sessions, each one would improve the previous feature, based on  comments from the users, and introduce new features.

Application:

We decided to set-up three leaning launch sessions to test 3 different criteria:

  Store setting

  Store functionalities and features

  Relationship with store employees

It is important to note that we did not build all of the features to test them (e.g. interactive changing

room) but we did draw the interface and explained to the consumers all available functionalities  which she could use during the testing phase.

Store setting:

For our first leaning launch, we focused on the setting of the new store. One of the themes that  came out more frequently during our workshops was the fact that it was quite difficult to orientate  oneself in the store and you usually spent time looking for stuff. The below are several actions we  took:

  Increased the lighting as the old environment was a little too dark.

  Each section was easily identifiable (signs, personalized themes for each sections…)

  Moved the cash desk and made it easily identifiable for consumers.

  Cleared the way to make it easier for consumers to move around the shop.

Store functionalities and features:

The introduction of the “try it and return if not happy with no charge” policy drove a lot of sales on  our internet portal but impacted the retail sales. People saw less and less the need to go to the store  when they could easily receive the item at home and try it in their own time. There was truly no real  added value anymore. What we needed to do was to incite consumers to come back to the stores  and offer them a new experience, one they could not get by ordering online. The below are several  actions we took:

  Chilling space for men accompanying their wife / girlfriend with TV, comfortable couches  and a PlayStation 4. Women can now take their time.

  Interactive changing rooms. No need to go out and pick another size if doesn’t fit. Just  scan the bar code on the screen and pic the new size. The store employee will bring you  the item.

  The App in the changing room will give you recommendations in terms of other clothing  or accessories that could match.

  Install beacons in the store that will send you offer you personalized offers on your  phone

Relationship with store employees:

  Employees are not just vendors anymore, they actually provide advises and guide you in  a more personalized way in your shopping experience.

  More friendly and relaxed atmosphere. You can ask for a coffee or a soft drink while a  stylist gives you personalized tips.

  Develop a holistic experience throughout the different touch points (become a member  online but feel the experience in the store). When you enter the store with a connected  mobile devise, the store will automatically recognize your customer ID and will push the  information to the vendor. You will get a truly personalized experience

Insight:

From our design launches we learned a significant amount of things. First of all, by building simple  prototypes and testing them with the different shareholders we were able to get direct diversified  feedback and apply the changes rapidly, it was a truly agile environment. Our results were very  promising and the people reacted positively to the different changes and additions we developed. It  was also very useful to see how people reacted to the different changes and see what was working,  what was not working and what other features we could develop.

Approach:

As we had went through the previous phases of design thinking, the learning launch was ideal to test  our assumptions and see if we were on the right track of bringing back consumers to the stores. In  the future we might ask stakeholders to be part of setting-up the launch learning as we could also  get feedback before testing the approach. These persons will however not participate in the learning  launch in order not to conflict with the findings.

