Scott Galloway is a professor of marketing at the New York University Leonard N. Stern School of Business, teaching digital marketing and brand strategy to second-year master’s students; the author of The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google; and the brand strategist who predicted that Amazon would buy Whole Foods. He is also the founder of business intelligence think tank L2; Red Envelope, one of the first e-commerce sites; and the global brand strategy consultancy Prophet. In our “Retail 101” package in the Winter issue of BOH, we caught up with Galloway to find out what’s next in the world of retail.
What are two important retail trends to watch right now? The first is Ritalin Retail, which refers to pop-up stores that play to a consumer’s sensory systems with immersive, brightly colored and photo-worthy exhibits. They’re basically Instagram with cash registers, charging large ticket prices for visitors to interact with a swimming pool full of rainbow sprinkles at the Museum of Ice Cream, or swing on chandeliers at the Rosé Mansion. The future of retail is going to follow a similar trend with short-term, experiential models—especially in malls, where long-term leases are proving to be more and more inefficient and don’t provide consumers with the right experiences to draw them in.
The second is Sniper Retail—brands who pick one product in a specific category and go after it with a laser focus. They’re extremely skilled startups who achieve the scale and efficiency of a value-based retailer (think: Walmart) while still giving you the individual attention you get with a specialty retailer. These are brands like Warby Parker and Away, which attract consumers from traditional companies by innovating around distribution, product manufacturing and supply chain agility to offer premium products at lower prices.
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