A few customers walked into a Macy’s store to shop for swimsuits. Using their phones, they scanned the barcodes on the tags of styles they liked, and the sales associates picked them up from the stock room and dropped them off at the specified fitting room through hatches.
This might sound like a fitting room from the future, but it’s not.
It’s part of an ongoing effort by brick-and-mortar retailers to take a lesson from the online retailers entering the physical retail space.
With fewer selections on the sales floor, the Macy’s outlet in Manhattan Beach, California, got rid of the sea of hangers that typically make for a common sight at most Macy’s store locations and saved its customers multiple trips to the fitting rooms to find the right size.
The new approach, variations of which can be seen in different retail stores across the country, is an experiment to find solutions to better manage the eCommerce operation and the vast store network without using two sets of inventory, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The Bonobos stores, which exclusively sell menswear, have taken a twisted approach to the Macy’s style. At Bonobos, one might see a range of styles and sizes like any other ordinary store, but customers cannot walk out with the merchandise of their choice. They instead are made to order it online.
“The stores are about getting the right fit and having good service,” said Andy Dunn, Bonobos founder and executive chairman, in an interview with WSJ. “We remove the thing that complicates that — the stock.”
As a result, the men’s store cycles through its inventory four times faster and carries just about a fifth of the inventory — cutting down costs associated with maintaining an extraordinarily sized on-site inventory, which is often the most expensive piece of the retail chain.
The approach allows the store chain to use a centralized distribution network as if it were just an online business.
Retail giant Target used a similar approach at 29 of its store locations around Denver, Colorado, this spring. The company cut down on the costs of transporting and stocking heavy patio furniture at its store locations by displaying floor models that could be bought online from shoppers’ personal devices.
The approach allowed the company to display more expensive models and boost sales by a percentage gain, which was twice the chain-wide average, according to WSJ.
As more stores across the country experiment with digital fitting rooms and on-site ordering services, the idea of futuristic retail stores might not be as far from reality as once thought.
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