On the 18th of October I was SUPER excited (to use Superdry’s language) to read that there was going to be a Superdry pop-up store opening on the 1st of November in the V&A.
Given I work in the online retail space, I went straight into iCal and diarised 09h00 on the 1st of November as the Superdry pop-up store launch. I wanted to be there to see how a big brand like Superdry would handle the customer experience as well as the translation of their online communications into their pop-up retail space.
So 08h30 on the 1st of November rolls around and there is no Superdry Store to be seen. I call up the Waterfront company and ask where the Superdry Store is, guy on the phone says there is no Superdry store. After a bit of coaxing from me and help from someone else behind the scenes I was eventually told yes, they are opening today and they are next to Fabiani. Cool.
But, no wonder I couldn’t find the store, it’s not finished yet. I was their with Steve Jones (@sjcojones) who is the shopper marketing officionado. If he had had this experience just 2 days earlier, it would have been in the presentation he gave at the POPAI Marketing and Retail conference in Joburg, in front of more than 50 retail industry experts. This is important because the topic of his talk was consumer trends, the crux being the only real path for growth is through customer experience. Resonating yet?
When it comes to customer experience the example I’ll use is from a restaurant. The way it works is if you go to a restaurant and the food and service is good, you will go back. If the food is good and the service is bad you will probably go back. If the food and service is bad you won’t go back.
So what’s the impact of something like this for Superdry? Â We have is a great brand, Superdry, providing a bad experience (going back to the restaurant example this would be the good food, bad service one). This could put even the most loyal fan on the fence, making them think about spending their hard earned Rands somewhere else. This is not a good thing.
However the opportunity in the bad experience is to provide a good experience to bring the consumer back. This can be done by replicating and providing individual experience against an individual expectations.
My suggestions would be to have someone at the store letting people know the store actually opens on a different day and when you come next time there will be a gift or discount waiting. The discount being on top of any sale discounts. Second prize would be putting up a poster saying the same and the no brainer would be to out something on Facebook.
Looking forward to when the store really opens.
