Further ideas on the trendy fitness customer

I'm working with Saki on developing the business opportunity analysis for the customer group consisting of trendy fitness people. Saki gave excellent ideas in the previous post and I will now try to develop and complete the existing.

Needs

• Trend hunters and surfers. This customer is always looking for the newest and best approved trend and will ride on that trend until the next one takes over. To recognize these trends and to adapt to them is vital for a dept. store. 
• Brands are as important as the newest trends. The customer wants visible brands that are popular in the tribe they belong to. Brand apparel is most often more expensive which means that this customer is willing to spend on purchases that give them satisfaction.
• As Saki mentioned the need for recognition is huge in all channels. Although the live contact and appreciation is of returning importance, social media contact still means a lot. They will seek acceptance and tribal influence from social media which means that we have to be on social media both interacting with and monitoring the customer.

Approaches

• To modernize the sports apparel department and offer the trendiest brands and models.
• Keep other apparel depts. as they are with elegent and trendy apparel this group can use when not at the gym.
• Kids and books sections completely removed. These sections are of no importance for this group and therefore only create distraction and annoy these customers.
• Discount area to remote location. Discount hunters will always go the the discount stand wherever it is located.
• On-The-Go fitness food and lunch. Smoothies on the way to gym etc. 
• Mastering social media. The customer will most probably use Instagram as it allows pictures and following of role models and tribal leaders.
• Co-operation with fitness centers and gyms. Flyers and presence in these venues. Trials or showrooms in these venues.

Benefits

•  Tribal behavior. This group is extremely influenced by each other and will follow tribal leaders. To become the leading option for a few respected customers will bring a constant flow of tribal followers.
• As this tribe is one of the leading ones in society in all (trendy, young, good-looking) other tribes will certainly follow.
• Most customers in this group are young. Influence them now and the will be influenced for life. They will be loyal in future when their income even increases.
• New modern look to the brand. Knows what is trendy and how to serve trends.

 Competition

• Smaller stores in this area exist but offer only too targeted products.
• Stadium is very popular but is too sport orientated.
• The fitness centers themselves offer some similar solutions but cannot compete fully as it not their main product.
• The malls outside city compete with similar offering but the suggested customer group would most certainly prefer service in city center close to their fitness centers and homes.

So what do you think?

/Otto

Learn Walking before Running

Bonjour, Good morning, Buenos dias, Hyvää huomenta,

My parents came this week to see me and visit Finland. We talked about Leaninno course, and obviously about Wiklund-Sokos case. They found this exercise really interesting because we had to solve a REAL problem which happen nowadays. My father is a company CEO for 20 years so his opinion is quite relevant I think.

I asked them to help me, no because I am lost but in order to have new ideas and obtain an external review. So, we went to Sokos and BEFORE all I show them the building.

Unfortunately, when you see this building, this is unwelcoming. Plus, you have few enters, and the left enter (bellow flags) is old and seems abandoned. Sorry for the word but that's true!! If I enter in a welcoming gallery and I am good surprised, I become enthusiastic and I want to spend my time and money. If my first impression is bad, I am going without desire to buy.
Moreover, the building seems old with his gris color, if we repaint him in white, it gives another dimension, youngest and freshest.

We want to find solutions HOW TO ATTRACT NEW CUSTOMERS? Yes, of course we have to think about that. But first, we have to pay attention to the more simple details, like the appearances of our building. If it's not welcoming nobody will enter in Wiklund, you can do what you want inside and spend 1 00000000000 in decoration, it still the same. If nobody enter, nobody spend money.
I remember my last company boss, he was always saying :
"The essential is bring the customer in our store, when it's done, we win. "


When you want to attract customer, your aisles must be impeccable. However, look at the laborious condition of this furniture. It doesn't make you to buy... It's difficult to criticize but we can not close our eyes in front of details like that. And even if the furniture was perfect, the presentation is not attractive. Maybe build real furniture would be interesting and more new, adapted with the news ways to sell.

Sokos Wikland - Turku

Also, I went to Tallinn with them and I took some ideas from Estonian galleries. The big difference I think was the space into the gallery, in Viru (big mall in Tallinn) you can find places where you can sit and have a rest. These malls are spacious and people like that. In a spacious environment, you can breathe and charge your batteries, you feel free like a bird. When you are tight, you feel oppressed and this has consequences on your consumer behavior.

Ulemiste Mall - Tallinn

Forum Gallery - Tallinn

In Galleries Lafayette in Paris, the windows are constantly renovating and improving. They consider  the consumer want news, the society is under permanent development and the decoration has to adapt it to follow this moving. 

Sokos Wiklund might change his windows more often, and work with designer to give a new image of this shop, an image in harmonization with our society, youngest, more colored, more decorated, with music, recentest, more spacious.

Furthermore, a lot of companies try to catch customer with new methods. We keep the royalty program alive but we think to open new possibilities.
For instance, once a week we can do a game with the customer and one customer per week will win a car. This is a constant expense but thanks to that we can catch always more customers and the word of mouth can make us famous. In Galeries Lafayette in France, you have a lot of events organized frequently, with which the customer get a lot of good advantages.

We had though that parquet is better than old tiling and the ceiling may be renovate. Sometimes, we do not have to go too far and search problems about the target (even we can do it and we will do it) but we have to find simples problems and resolve them to progress.

Thomas

1 of 3 main customer personas is forming step by step.. curve after curve :)

Customer persona: Fitness, gym, sports, heathy lifestyle, trendy youngish feeling people

Target group: 4-5 fitness centers near Dept store customers

Customer group needs and interests include:

- Fashion trends, branded and noticeable products, high visual importance, colors, own style and uniqueness but still tribal, wants to belong to group

- Smile, happiness, good mood, value for money and looking for high energy, high motivation and result oriented in general, efficient and targeted needs

- Health, fitness, beauty, body, good look and popularity, will copy styles and seek role models

- Need for recognition, appreciation, look for success, immediate rewards, quick decissions of 24/7 activity in ubique global society, wikieconomy model, peering and sharing of ideas and emotional virtual sharing also

- Need for special things, experience new things, travel and be frontrunner, will change styles regularly, style seekers, follow fashion trends and buy according to their budget.

- Cozy, comfortable, balance, trendy living room feeling, relaxing, life and all things are designed, tech devices and friendliness with smile, sensing and emotional, even higher values becoming important

- Clean, locality, fresh, organic, ecology, vegetarian and nature friendly - these are increasing and coming a future need norm..

Problem solutions (several ways, not just one or two to improve attractiveness performance):

Organizing mainly and these special offers mainly to test the concept first. Low cost, easy to try, focusing on easy to access customer solutions. But few general changes should be taken into action according to our research:

- Distinguish floors by focusing ground for women and 2nd floor for men with more masculine look
This includes getting rid of sales and discounted clothes corner in ground floor (it increases negative feeling and has got negative feedback most compared to other areas) and putting ladies jackets and coats in the front, near entrances in ground floor to promote dept store as a true women and ladies clothes world. More trendiness to all floors to attract young trendy consumers. In shoes more brand marketing and shop in shop style brand world approach to upgrade quality related trend image. Maybe not tattoo shop in shops though, eventhogh they are getting popular and tattoo parlours are opening..

- Special offers linked to fitness center and gym membership, but all can buy the Theme days products. Tattoo pop up stores might not be such a bad idea after all, but let's see later on :)

- More morning coffees (now 2,5 eur offer but not visible and marketing done), power smoothies, vitamin shakes and for example healthy rye bread products. Evenings you can add a whisky sip to boost the taste:)

- Sports salad for lunch, protein evening meal to boost, highly organic snacks to increase GOOD MOOD and freshen up the brainwork. Big portions and very good looking design style salad bar!

- Theme days like: Monday coffees 2 eur, Tuesday Smoothies 3 eur, Wednesday shakes 3 eur, Thursday fitness dept sales for sports people with extra 10 % discounts for shopping, Meet friends Fridays 3+1 drinks with special price, Luxus Saturday sparkling wines and all healthy dinks for 2 at price of 1. Endulge Sunday brunch at 12 eur in 2^nd floor restaurant with A LOT OF FRUITS, VEGGIES AND DRINKS. Fitness salad 7 eur everyday, including weekends in every floor.  Any coffee to go with fresh chosen fruit 3 eur every day. Theme offers can change often, keeping always the most popular going and valid for longer time and there should be many different ones, promoting chosen brands also.

Smoothies with rashberries to pump up the energy levels and keep the Christmas bunnies rocking!

- Visual update to 2^nd floor with more organic, sustainable produced, trendy looking goods and pop up stores, not just clothes but also lifestyle goods. Deeper blue, creamier warm white and wood color.

- Happenings weekly to gather the customer groups, photo competitions and photo gallery, create a lobby nature gallery to old book area, that is beautiful outside towards market square, inform visibly and offer special goods at the same time in several departments inside the shop. Theme costumes.

- Sports goods and clothes area needs an update as it is not very special and not raise strong positive emotions yet, but there is potential to increase it's value with more specialisation and excellent customer and fitness professional personnel. Look and sportiness are assets in that customer personnel and service area.

- Free, clean, modern, elegant and big enough toilets in every floor for customers to use & choose

- Maximize the high in each floor, now part of floor height is not used to bring space, freshen up the colourworld and bring natural OR warm light. Artificial cold lights are not attractive, it increases the customer versus shop distance and is mentally negative. So, more warmth and dept to lightning.

 Proposed funels for marketing:

-          Social media, flyers, word of mouth (viral and peer marketing), posters and wall papers in the entrance area, fitness blogs (maybe not only PAKKOTOISTO.COM though), gyms and fitness centers. Get the tribal leaders in fitness, beauty, sports and health, so called young, trendy, handsome and beautiful come to the dept store and their tribe will follow and then swallow the SHOP TO FIT - MODERN FITNESS LIFESTYLE concept with scandinavian twist. Inspirational leadership with smile and exceptional warmth in customer service ways will create ab extra luxury shopping experience with sustainable, designed and energizing atmosphere and feeling .

 Benefits of the solutions:

-          Dept store becomes a fitness and health oriented lifestyle personas gathering and melting point. It becomes an essential element in the lifestyle, place where to be, where to meet similar persons and sports friends.There are already Turn on factors and benefit points such as good cosmetics area (excellent feedbacks) , pharmacy, fitness products on sale, restaurant in the 2^nd floor, popular corner entrance cafebar and beauty center (good to excellent feedback) in the 2^nd floor. All those could make visual update to meet the needs of this customer and lifestyle group to increase all over attractiveness.

Starbucks to the 2nd floor, it does not affect negatively to the 2nd floor old restaurant, but is customer volume, trendy and young customers adding element?

Would it add value to this creamy look that nowadays dominates? Yep, it would, but other visual solutions could do the same, like a  green ECOLOUNGE by WIKLUND, sports cafe with a modern vibe..

This is the current kind of view - why not sip your fresh morning brew in the exotic new cafe, name could be something really special, but to choose that, it could be worthwhile to ask that from customers? Make it a questionary like: Which one you want to refresh the style and look: JUNGLE BAR, ECOLOUNGE, SPORTSBAR, W-BAR, W-CAFE, W-LUX, MODEL ROOM or CITYLOUNGE?

 How are the competitiors satisfying these customer needs?

- Not much direct competition, except there are many coffee places in downtown compared to the customer volumes. New fitness shops also. Fitness centers are offering ready to made, not made in the spot, food and drink products. There are not many veggie and fitness food restaurants around. Substitutive ways to consume naturally exist.

To be continued and updated during the coming days and still before Wednesday when we finalize our presentation with Otto:)

Saki

Visual communication

Hi! :)

Earlier this fall when we were in Merimasku for the camp we came up with a few different "user personas" and we have now got feedback from the CEO of the department store, who explained the ranking in the following way: the 40+ as most important, the working man as the second and the youth as third. This is a really good starting point for ur. Since the 40+ woman already serves as the biggest customer group our target of young adults seems like the perfect target group to try and reach out to. 

The last week I've been discussing with both young females and males and the main interestpoints at the moment for this target group is health, fitness, visual appeal, ecology and trends. 

The last week I've read a book called "Effektiv visuell kommunikation" by Bo Bergström (in English "Effective visual communication"). The book talks about the huge role of communication but mostly about the role of visually communicating with the customers. The main focus in the book is about visual appeal in commercials and advertisement, but in my opinion this can also be adapted to a store. By making a great combination of colour, shape, sound, text and picture you can make a store more appealing and profile the store. There is a saying that you "eat with your eyes" and the same could be adapted to a store -> "you shop with your eyes". As we have figured out from interviews and discussions with young adults visual appearanc and appeal makes a great deal, concerning both place and product. The existing customers that we have talked with on the other hand has said that the layout in the department store is very confusing and cluttered, so absolutely there is one important thing to develop further!

We had a small task for this Thursday, which was to do a fast experiment by using the Minimum Viable Product. We had thought about maybe developing a great idea for the 2nd floor café in the department store, and as a minimum viable product we desided to show the target group picures of these lovely fruit bowls and ideas of this kind, to ask if the café would be more appealing to them if they served this and if they would be eager to try it instead of another café if they had that sort of interesting stuff. The answers for my part is, that it looks interesting and is visually a really great idea as it looks beautiful, healthy. They would definitely want to try it, but this idea could maybe be developed further...?

ALso what came out from the last meeting with the CEO is how we can make a longterm solution, some kind of a vision of a future department store.... So this last idea might not be quite enough.

/Sarina

The bars without alcohol, the new trend !

    I discover  an article in a specialized magazine to speak about a new innovation which is developping very fast since a few months around the world !!

Innovative, warm and responsible, bars without alcohol create the opportunity to spend a pleasant and friendly moment between your friends or between colleagues in a healthy and relaxed atmosphere. 

For the menu: alcohol-free cocktails but also an atmosphere cocooning and music groups. Zoom on this new tendency !

This new trend allows to answer the needs of new non-consumers of alcohol.

Since a few years, the people are preoccupied by the environmental and the bio trend. This new interest answers a social need: that of a healthy life style, simpler without excess.

These new bars achieved an incredible success already in Chicago, Liverpool, Dublin, London, Barcelona, Paris, Milan...

Is it the loss of points on driving licences? The compulsory breathalyzers? Even in France in traditional bars drinks without alcohol have more and more a success. Often original and delicious beverages are consumed without moderation!

Aymeric

Customer Loyalty

The author of my book, Jill Griffin, “Customer loyalty: how to earn it, how to keep it”, explain “more thought and preparation goes into how to get the telephone to ring (strategy), than what to do once it rings (execution and implementation).” And the customer loyalty is a hard concept and this is not easy to apply in reality.

Chapters are based on key points, including turning first-time buyers into repeat customers, preventing customer loss, and recovering from customer loss. Each chapter offers steps to follow, a succinct summary of main points, and ready-to-use tools for getting started. She uses actual examples to describe whom a company should target, how to find qualified prospects, and how to turn customers into company advocates. She explains also that the business only have two roles, getting new customers and keeping the old ones but sometimes winning them back. This book helps to put in place strategies to detect weaknesses and thus maximize, optimize, and fully realize your opportunities.

So, I think it is a great books to discover and find new strategies and explore new ideas to attract and keep customers whatever the target and the market. Moreover, we can compare what we do and how and the mall with what there is to score in the book and thus find weaknesses and threats but also new things to explore.

Emeline 

Jungle cafe with Ethnic and green style to get new generations attention

 Theme costumes, memorable, special and international customer service style - not exotic dancers though :)

 Natural products to try & sell, can be chocolate, the, fruits and fresh looking goods, not just cigars ;)

 Coffee machines with good selection of beans to try & take home with cakes & fresh baking.

 Natural, green, forest, animals, emotional and wood decoration with posters on the walls, changing photo gallery.

 Wine bar also in the 2nd floor, beers also, fruit shakes and smoothies, with some ginger and spices!

Organic, sustainable, flowers, colors and forest feeling. Forest, bird or changing jungle sounds.. Saki