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Page 18 — Retail Properties Quarterly — November 2017
T raditionally, retail design pre-
dominantly was an execution
of market-driven formulas.
Location is critical, access is
slightly more critical, visibil-
ity is key, parking needs to be at the
front door and everyone makes des-
tination trips based on which mer-
chants they can access conveniently
so they can execute a purchase.
These formulas tended to simplify
design to a functional exercise and,
for years, designs reflected these
principles.
Truthfully, it didn’t take much
creativity to plan a site that made
parking convenient and a sign vis-
ible. While formulas still inform suc-
cessful design solutions, the process
of understanding what the formulas
have become is like translating a
language you speak casually. Market
forces are changing daily, requiring a
new view of retail design.
Retailers are reinventing their tra-
ditional models of existence, a trend
attributed to online shopping and
internet browsing. The dinosaurs
of the industry are dying, and the
darlings are reinventing themselves.
Omnichannel shopping where cus-
tomers research the product they
want at home, touch it in a brick-
and-mortar environment, then buy
it from their phone online is turning
traditional retailing models upside
down. Merchants are diversifying
their online presence, consolidating
their brick-and-mortar presence and
reinventing their distribution chan-
nels to reflect the new expectations.
Contrary to emerging thought,
pure online shopping is actually
a challenged business model evi-
denced by the lack
of successful pure
e-commerce retail-
ers. When Amazon
purchased Whole
Foods, the com-
pany demonstrated
its commitment
to a brick-and-
mortar presence in
groceries that fuel
its e-commerce
model. Untuckit
found that it
needed a brick-
and-mortar show-
room to enhance
its e-commerce
presence. Like
Athleta, Warby Parker and other
similar brands that began as pure
online retailers, many are add-
ing value to their business model
through physical brick-and-mortar
locations. E-commerce now informs
our brick-and-mortar retail experi-
ence. Traditional retail layouts often
are oversized for these new physical
locations.
The majority of the top 10 retail-
ers in the U.S. are brick-and-mortar
concepts. These include Walmart,
Kroger, Costco, Home Depot, CVS,
Walgreens, Target, Lowe’s and Alb-
ertson’s. Add Amazon to the list and
you see the reliance on a brick-and-
mortar presence that will not fade
away.
While younger consumers spend
their free time online, they gener-
ally prefer to shop in an experiential
rather than a digital environment,
according to research by CBRE and
Accenture. As baby boomers age,
they are being replaced by millen-
nials, which contributes to the need
for different experiential environ-
ments.
So, what do these trends mean to
retail design? The basic formulas
of location, access and high-quality
concepts still rule in any market.
However, we see many aspects of
consumer behavior that are con-
stantly changing, and most of these
changes point to a more interac-
tive model of the environments we
design. The experiential aspects of
entertainment uses, restaurants and
pedestrian amenities coupled with
the need for flexible “plug-and-play”
building formats require a skillful
mix of form and function for a retail
environment to succeed.
The technical challenge becomes
placing and creating interesting
buildings that offer these interfaces
while still creating flexibility with
the design. For years, we placed
multiple junior-sized anchors in a
row, often referred to as a strip cen-
ter. Now we find that smaller-format
buildings bracketed by secondary
uses gathered around highly ameni-
tized outdoor space allows our cli-
ents flexibility for courting multiple
retail concepts and the synergy they
offer to a tenant mix.
Design
Bruce
McLennan, AIA
Principal and
national strategy
manager for
commercial
development,
Farnsworth Group
Inc., Greenwood
Village
Farnsworth Group Inc.
After years of strip centers, now smaller-format buildings bracketed by secondary uses gathered
around highly amenitized outdoor space are gaining in popularity.