Identifying the ideal retail destinations for fashion brands can help you optimise profitability and set up for long-term success.
Retail destinations satisfy a range of consumer desires simultaneously. A retail destination could take the form of a walkable area, or even an entire city.
The basic concept is to position yourself close to complementary businesses or relevant competitors, to create a destination that is more likely to entice customers than an individual retail location or service.
Key models for identifying retail destinations for fashion brands
These are some of the models you could use to identify ideal retail destinations for fashion brands:
1) ‘The Primark effect’
The Primark effect is the most straightforward model.
Simply put, the sheer volume and variety of customers likely to visit a Primark store in any given location have persuaded many fashion brands to position themselves close by.
2) Premium shopping districts
This model involves positioning similar premium brands (e.g. Gucci and Versace) close together.
Such a step provides convenience for customers likely to purchase similar products, as well as enhancing the experiential and novelty aspects.
Consider Philipp Plein and Moncler, who have just opened major premises on London’s New Bond Street.
This location – alongside Bond Street, Oxford Street and Regent Street – encompassed the most successful retail destination in the world in 2016.
Total turnover for this destination was £8.8bn, and this is expected to grow by 27% to £11.3bn by 2020, demonstrating the potential of strong retail destinations for fashion brands.
3) Cross-disciplinary composition
Other fashion brands are looking to diversify their offering to enhance their credentials as part of a retail destination.
In-store, this means providing an experience more valuable than the convenience of shopping online by using inspirational or informational features.
This could also mean partnering with other brands to offer complementary in-store services (e.g. clothing alterations/cafe), or even out-of-hours events that would appeal to key customer personas.
Alternatively, you could position your brand as the fashion component of a ‘day out’. This would mean positioning yourself close to amenities (e.g. restaurants/cinema or other entertainment venues) that chime with your target audience.
Use Periscope® to choose the best retail destinations for fashion brands
Companies have been dissuaded from cultivating this level of insight due to the associated financial and time-related costs.
However, with Periscope® you can deploy a host of company and demographic data to quickly calculate the relevant variables. Then, you can plot them on your own secure, corporate version of Google Maps to visualise the most relevant destinations.
With Periscope®, you can calculate:
- Known/potential customer and competitor locations
- Typical levels of education/disposable income
- Product and/or service preferences to choose location type and manage stock
- Purchasing-method preferences (e.g. in-store vs click-and-collect)
- Convenience of location with regard to your distribution network
- Social media sentiment relating to your brand
- Why customers visit specific areas (e.g. as part of a commute vs dedicated visit)
- Means of travel (e.g. car or public transport) and related travel times
- Other brands that demonstrably increase your profitability when positioned nearby
You have so much to gain from finding the right retail destinations. And, with the efficiency of Periscope®, you now have little to lose in terms of time or investment.
Discover retail destinations with the ideal composition to help increase the profitability of your locations. Request a 10-minute demo today.