5 property centred organisations that need to change in a virtual society

By Tom Weaver on August 29, 2010

Blockbuster announces bankruptcy

In an increasingly virtual society, a number of organisations or organisational types with large property portfolios or physical presences on our high streets and in our malls are struggling to adapt to the new order. With the news that Blockbuster is preparing for a “pre-planned” bankruptcy in September, Fastcompany have posed the question:

How should it restructure? Should Blockbuster become an all-digital service? Should it focus on kiosks? Should it close down all of its physical stores?

We think a similar question applies to a range of organisations that have to answer a very large question. If your competition is increasingly online, but you have significant physical assets, what can you do to compete?

The answer is to look to the things a physical presence can bring that technology cannot, as yet, achieve. Just as businesses are beginning to realise that if you can work individually (or collaborate online) from any location, the workplace needs to be redesigned around physical collaboration, so too do these organisations need to realise that if you can buy products, or take a course, more conveniently online, the physical environment needs to be redesigned around a different type of customer experience.

Here are five organisations that are either currently facing these challenges, or will face them in the next decade, and our thoughts on some of the things you could do to radicalise the customer experience if you are to retain a physical presence. Of course, to properly solve these issues is a project in itself, which needs to be worked through h in a systematic and robust way, but these are some broad brush ideas.

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The Client Is Always Right: The Importance of Engagement

By Tom Weaver on August 27, 2010

The Owner of the DIY Store looks on as Mary Portas talks to his staff

Earlier this week, we posted an article about five local or global organisations that had redefined the customer experience, from a cinema chain to a grocery store. A number of people subsequently contacted us to ask whether we had seen the BBC series Mary Queen of Shops, and whether it was similar to the work we do.

We searched out the series and sat down to watch an episode, in which retail expert Mary Portas from the Yellowdoor retail marketing consultancy is parachuted into failing, local shops to turn them around, in the process of which she looks at their business model, store layout and service design: all elements we would indeed look at. What differs, very much, is the approach taken.

The episode we saw involved Portas working with a DIY store in Lightwater, Surrey, that had seen profits plunge 60% and had become more of a glorified pound store than a local DIY expert. Portas very quickly perceives its flaws and some quick fixes that can be made, but also encounters a bottleneck in her mission: the reluctant owner, pictured above, highly resistant to her ideas. She eventually gets most of her way, rebranding the store (with a name, Fix It Factory, that she decides on and the owner hates), redesigning it to be more customer centric, retraining and engaging the staff, and it does indeed look hugely different and to the customer eye, much better.

It is clear, however, that the owner, Tony, is not happy with a number of the changes, and within three weeks following the reopening has begun to dilute the branding away from Fix It Factory back to Lightwater Homecare, and is slowly beginning to recrowd the shop with non DIY product lines such as greetings cards. Portas shrugs this off with a “I did my best, it is probably the wrong person running the business”.

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