A few weeks ago, my wife pulled me into a big name department store to look for an engagement gift for a friend. I rarely set foot in department stores anymore and I thought the experience might be nostalgic, even fun. Within seconds I was full of regret. Trying to navigate floors and floors of haphazardly organized, uncurated stock in search of a specific product wasn’t just frustrating, it was defeating—second only to the difficulty in trying to flag down an actual salesperson to help us out.
There’s no excuse for a shopping experience like that any longer. We all now have supercomputers in our pockets. We’ve come to expect a limitless catalogue of products, immediate insight into functionality and user reviews, comparisons with related products and, in some cases, same-day delivery. Responding to these expectations, progressive retailers—online and offline—are finding increasingly creative ways to raise the bar and put an end to the one-size-fits-all approach to retail. Just putting stuff on shelves no longer cuts it.
