Bricks Meet Clicks
Those retailers who manage to integrate “Bricks” (real store) with “Clicks” (Internet)
will have a decisive competitive advantage. In doing so, it is of major importance
to present one face to the customer: your USP (unique selling proposition) must be
highlighted in a coherent and harmonious way.
Mystify Your Luxury
There is a new philosophy of luxury, which abandons any kind of showing-off. In
times when information overloads nearly all our senses, no matter if it is in real life
or via the Internet, people have learned to ignore. In the future, the key to your
customers’ attention, therefore, will not be a “More” but a “Less.”
Storytelling and Having Fun in Retailing
Shopping is fun! Happy, smiling customers are much more ready for spending their
money – even if they just want to have a little souvenir reminding them of the nice
time they spent at your location. Your customer has to have a convenient feeling
when entering your shop – then he or she surely will return. Humorously designed
interior elements support this perfectly.
gia expert juror Wolfgang Gruschwitz is the owner and managing director of the
Gruschwitz GmbH, based in Munich, Germany, with another office in Moscow, Russia,
offering full-service visual merchandising expertise to retailers. He serves high-profile
clients such as FC Bayern, Red Bull, Mango and the Inditex group (with its well-known
brand ZARA). In 2005, Gruschwitz gained international recognition by discovering the
brand world within Munich’s soccer stadium, Allianz Arena. For more information, visit
www.gruschwitz.de.
Gourmet Business is the exclusive sponsor of gia USA (online retailing). The gia Global
Innovator Award program honors housewares retail excellence and innovation in close
to 25 countries around the world. Its global sponsor is the International Home + Housewares Show, which will honor this year’s gia winners at its fair in Chicago, March 10-13,
2012. For more information, visit
www.housewares.org./gia.
