Build-out your best performance 🎫

This is probably not news to you, but since we send these newsletters every week, I basically move through life asking myself how to make this thing I [saw / heard / experienced] into content that at least mildly connects to retail real estate. When I find something that provides multiple angles, I’m thrilled. So thank you, Disney and Taylor Swift, for making the six-part docuseries The End of An Era about the record-breaking The Eras Tour. Also, thanks to my sister who told me I should watch it and that I’d probably cry. She was right about both. 

To refresh your memory, the tour included 149 shows in 51 cities on 5 continents over the course of 21 months. At each performance, Taylor and her backup troupe performed 45 songs over the course of three-and-a-half hours. Over those 210 minutes, Taylor had 16 outfit changes – that’s about one every 13 minutes. The longest outfit changes took two minutes, and most of them took 60-90 seconds. FWIW these are not minor outfit changes – see for yourself.

How does this happen? Well you’d be right to assume that she does not sprint off the stage and through the bowels of the arena to change in her dressing room. Instead, through a series of lifts, trapdoors, and moving set pieces, Taylor exits the stage into pre-set changing areas underneath the stage. She changes into the next outfit (there’s a lot of velcro), runs over to a different hidey-hole and reemerges on the stage in a different spot from whence she descended into the underworld. 

This is all possible thanks to a custom-built stage and backstage infrastructure that is erected, dismantled, and transported to every new arena.

Just like in The Eras Tour, a custom build-out in retail is a strategic investment. It takes a tremendous amount of planning, labor, time and money, but when you’re putting on a show over and over and over again, having your physical space match your dance moves pays off.

Of course, not every performer and not every retailer needs a highly customized space – sometimes signage and simple decor is enough – but when business (show and retail) requires a certain level of long-term execution, there are multiple reasons for making the investment. 

My sidekick Chat says that a performer (or production) invests in custom backstage infrastructure when:

✔ The experience must be consistent at scale


✔ Transitions are fast, frequent, or complex


✔ Failure carries high financial or reputational risk


✔ Human performance is physically or emotionally demanding


✔ The operation must be repeatable night after night

 Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

Retail businesses invest in custom built-out spaces when:

✔ The customer experience must be consistent and on-brand


✔ Transactions need to be fast, frequent, and accurate


✔ Failure carries high financial and reputational risk


✔ Employees matter, and their work is physically and emotionally demanding


✔ The operation must be repeatable day after day, night after night

Let’s look behind the scenes at these:

✔ The customer experience must be consistent and on-brand



As a retailer, every single time you take possession of a space, it looks like (a) nothing because it’s a cold dark shell, (b) nothing because it’s a white box or vanilla shell, (c) someone else’s business because it’s a second-gen space, or (d) something betwixt all of those. One thing is for certain though, it never looks like your business and brand.  

If you have just one location, the physical environment of your space needs to be consistent with your brand promise. A gym like Equinox cannot look like a rec center. Your family-friendly pizzeria shouldn’t look like a museum. Don’t try to sell me a $250 facial package in a space that looks like a free clinic. 

If you have more than one location, each one of those locations must deliver a consistent brand experience. Sometimes multi-unit retailers want very strict design standards and sometimes they’re much looser, but ultimately, customers need to make the brand connection wherever they are. That’s why you can wake up across the planet and know you’re in a Starbucks. 

Consistency is designed and physically constructed every single time.


✔ Transactions need to be fast, frequent, and accurate



Even before we could order things from our phone and have it basically immediately, retail customers have wanted what they want, when they want it, and the retailer’s job has been to anticipate and accommodate this. Furthermore, retail customers are fickle, usually lazy, and they definitely don’t read. Yes, I said that because it’s true – ask any retailer. 

My point is not to judge consumers (we’re all among this group), rather, it’s to impress upon retail business owners that they have to do the extra work to lubricate every transaction – to remove any and all obstacles that stand between “I want this” and “here’s my money.” 

It’s a whole lot easier to accomplish this when you’re operating inside a space that’s been built to accommodate your operation. The “customer journey” through the space is intuitive and clear – here’s where you sign up, here’s where you try on the clothes, here’s where you check out. The back-of-house needs to accommodate everything that leads to smooth and accurate transactions – inventory is tagged and priced correctly, ingredients are stocked and easily accessible, special orders and supplies and soup spoons all have their places.

✔ Failure carries high financial and reputational risk

This one is self-explanatory, yes?

✔ Employees matter, and their work is physically and emotionally demanding

Working a retail job is hard and it pushes your body and your buttons on a daily basis. It is also not usually known for being well compensated. All that’s to say that it’s pretty easy for retail employees to get tired and annoyed…and you know what that means.  

Employee turnover is a part of retail life, but issues with the physical space itself can damage staff morale incredibly quickly. Poorly laid-out spaces are hard to manage and hard to clean. Insufficient storage leads to disorganization and sometimes even injuries. When you shoehorn your operation into a space that’s built for someone else’s operation, your employees pay the highest price.

✔ The operation must be repeatable day after day, night after night

Retail business has retail hours, which means that it’s got to function daily (or almost daily) for at least 2.86 times longer than The Eras Tour. 

Once the excitement of opening the business wears off, all that’s left is to do the show over and over again. That’s so much easier on a stage that’s been engineered to fit.

🎤

One of the most short-sighted and risky approaches to opening a retail business is to commit to a space with a “we’ll just have to make it work” plan. No space is without its challenges, but when you’re signing a long term lease — and committing to a space for five to ten years — your operation should fit easily into the interior construction. 

Nine times out of ten, the space and the operation are not a natural fit when the lease is signed. So that can go one of two ways — either the space is going to have to change, or the business is going to have to change. Once you’re open to the public, it’s the operation that’s most flexible. 

Spending the time and money to customize the design and layout of a space is not an “expense” to be avoided, it’s an investment that returns in your business’ performance. No trap doors or disassembly required.