A new look for Times Square
California’s Quiksilver has upped the ante for signage in New York’s Times Square. The surfwear giant’s Quiksilver Boardriders Club store is decked out with three 6-ft. by 13-ft. plasma screens above the entrance and a floor-to-ceiling video wall made up of 63 screens. Quiksilver hired the multimedia designer behind U2’s Zoo TV tour to produce frenetic, nonstop loops of gorgeous skate, snow and surf footage. The streetside emphasis is on lifestyle portraits of surfers and riders – sure to stand out in Manhattan.
The theme extends to the 3,300-sq.-ft. interior, where shoppers can play video games under a ceiling made of 60 suspended surfboards.
Food exclusives
People laughed when the upscale grocers at Urban Fare in Vancouver’s trendy Yaletown offered $100 loaves of bread flown fresh from Paris daily, but they sold three or four loaves a day. Now Japanese department stores are battling revenue slumps with similarly exclusive food items. Major chains have made luxury foodstuffs available in the cafés and markets that traditionally inhabit their lower floors. One department store partnered with a restaurant in Paris. Many items are offered on a ‘limited-edition’ basis, and it seems to work. In some stores, café sales have accounted for up to 25% of revenue. In others, store sales went up by 15%.
Boutique bars
Upscale New York boutiques are sweetening the deal with liquor. According to USA Today, fashion retailer Nicole’s has a ‘long, luminescent bar where you can get close to your invariably stylish neighbors.’ Decollage has its own bar, which the owners hope reminds patrons of ‘Paris in the ’30s. We want you to feel like you’re in someone’s home and we want it to be very intimate, but everyone eventually ends up having a drink in the kitchen.’ Men’s clothier Alfred Dunhill is offering four kinds of scotch to go with its members-only smoking lounge. On a different theme, eyeglass boutique Lunettes et Chocolat has a ‘Cacao Bar,’ offering candies and espresso.
Listening booths go high tech
Music retailers are hoping product sampling will help lure Web users back into stores, reports The Wall Street Journal. New York-based Barnes & Noble is already using technology that allows users to take any CD to an ‘advanced listening post,’ scan the barcode, and listen to 30-second excerpts from the album. Shoppers can also call up samples from CDs the store doesn’t have in stock. Meanwhile, Ann Arbor, Mich.-based Borders wants to jazz up its listening booths with features that let customers register preferences for help in choosing CDs on their next visit. It’s also hoping its customers will soon be able to buy as they try by swiping their credit cards while sampling.
New York’s MusiKube LLC thinks it has the answer for smaller retailers. They’re offering a service that lets users interact with any album they pick up in the store. Key to the service is a handheld device that lets shoppers listen to excerpts from any album just by scanning the barcode. A trendy record store in London, U.K. already uses it. Now AltiTunes Partners, of New York, is set to unveil the system in 24 airport music stores across the U.S.
If that’s not heady enough, MusiKube has another plan. It’s working on a telephone service that will help customers find out the name of the song they can’t identify, just by holding up the phone to the radio or TV. The service will promptly deliver a text message with the song title, artists, and guess what? …information on how to buy the album.
