A showroom renovation can do much more than refresh the look of your retail space. As the retail landscape changes, business targets and consumer behavior are changing. You have to move fast these days to keep up!
Our clients are recognizing this and our design team is taking showroom design in a new direction.
The focus:
Attract the next generations of shoppers: millennials & Generation Z
Create a destination
Be distinct from the online shopping experience
In order to create showrooms that hit all these points, we predict that showrooms will move towards designs with open plans, simplicity and overall minimalist design.
A showroom with millennial buyers in mind can work on combining sensory experiences with on-trend aesthetics. Inspiration for style, color and design can be found on millennial Instagram accounts and by searching for photos of restaurants and hotels frequented by younger generations.
Noting that bold color and style choices are important to millennials, we are looking at new ways to add color to a showroom. Instead of using vignettes and lifestyle graphics to add texture, pattern and color, we are moving towards color-blocked areas.
Using color in bold and novel ways will certainly draw a shopper’s attention and interest! Also, the chromes, golds and whites that characterize decorative plumbing products look stunning when set off by colors like coral, teal and spa-like blues and greens.
Showrooms looking to attract younger customers should include multi-functional areas for classes and community or customer-oriented events.
Millennial Snapshot
Among the new clients entering the home improvement market are millennials, a generation born between the early 1980s and the mid-1990s. They currently have the most buying power of any current generation, spending $200 billion a year. They are savvy shoppers who know what they want.
Considering the ease of shopping online for everything from faucets to design services, the only way to get millennials off their computers and into a physical store is to deliver an experience. Younger generations of shoppers value real-life connections over price.
They will pay for quality and service and appreciate on-trend aesthetics.
Creating a carbon copy of a trendy space should not be the goal of a showroom looking to target millennials. A showroom has to stay true to its mission of offering quality merchandise and helping homeowners find what they need. Despite wanting unique experiences, millennials aren’t looking for a plumbing showroom to be like Disneyland.
They appreciate sincerity, excellent service, good value and expertise.
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