Filed under: content communities, Digital culture, Innovative retail, Innovative stimulus, Nice Design, Nice products, unbusiness | Tags: pop up retail, Rachel Shectman, retail ideas, retail interior, STORY retail concept
(Photo courtesy of Story)
Part retail visionary, part editor, Rachel Shechtman wants to make shopping fun again. Her new Chelsea, New York-based concept store, Story, isn’t just about shopping. It’s about the experience at the store, which changes its theme every four-to-eight weeks — merchandise, decor and all. Of course, the gorgeous gifts inside don’t hurt.
How did you get involved in “concept” shopping?
I’ve always been fascinated by the creative side of things, and the business side of things. [I got to thinking that] there’s been all this innovation online, but we live in real life. And other than the Apple store, it’s hard to really think of other innovative retail experiences. The concept [of Story] is pretty straightforward. I describe it in simple terms as a magazine that comes to life. Our version of editorial is the merchandise that we curate around a certain story, and the events that we also host during that story. Our publishing side of the business is our sponsorship. Benjamin Moore was the sponsor for our “Color” story, General Electric [sponsored] our “Making Things” story. Our holiday story will be in partnership with Hewlett-Packard and Quirky.
When will the holiday story begin? It opens November 14.
It’s called “Home for the Holidays”—the store’s going to be designed like an apartment. The whole concept is a gift guide that comes to life. So our dining room will be “something for everyone.” Our playroom will be for the kids. In the men’s study, you’ll have a pool table. We’ll have a hot chocolate stand on weekends, and [you can] make your own ice cream.
What have been some of your favorite concepts that you’ve done so far?
My favorite one is whatever the next one is, because all we’re doing is snowballing our learnings and our experiences from each story to become better storytellers. People always say, “who’s your market?” And I always say I only have two rules. Every story needs to appeal to someone between the ages of 5 and 80, and there has to be something for sale that’s $5, and it can go as high as $5,000.
Why do you think pop-up shopping resonates with sponsors and with consumers, especially at the holidays?
If you think about it, we have our mobile devices, and our iPads, and everything around us, and we get new content every two seconds. Everywhere we look, there’s news and there’s information. And yet, you walk into a store on a Monday, and you walk into a store on a Friday, and it’s the exact same experience. So I think what works and resonates for us, is that we’re always changing, even within a story. We will put in new items in week three that weren’t in week one. The truth is that all we’re doing is mirroring behaviors and patterns in other parts of people’s lives in an experience that no one has delivered yet. And I also think that as people have less time—and the ultimate luxury on the planet right now is time—they want more out of their experiences. In the past, you could compete on price, quality and service. I think what people compete on now is surprise and delight, and the experience factor. For us, I think that’s what makes people come back.
As both a retailer and a shopper, what are you seeing for the holidays that is a bit different this year than in years past?
With all this change—you have an election, a horrendous natural disaster—the focus to some degree becomes less on material luxuries and more on the luxury of time and place and people. I think products and experience related to that
will become important.
Source: Huffington Post
Here > http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/concept-shop-story_n_2103800.html
Filed under: content communities, creativity, Digital culture, Emergent media, geek, Research Methods, Social media, steal or borrow info, unbusiness | Tags: Content curation, curation, matt langer, Neil Perkin, noah brier, Only the dead fish, Percolate
I was trawling through my usual channels of content this morning and came across these posts on curation. Certainly a lot of conversation in the bloggersphere has been stimulated by the posting of the curator’s code. The code states that we should “keep the rabbit hole of the Internet open by honouring discovery”.
Not only should we be honouring original sources, but we should be honouring the people who find interesting stuff and re-tweet or re-post it. We should celebrate not only the creators and authors, but those that distribute, magnify and amplify their work. The connectors, so to speak.
This concept of curation is being bandied about a lot lately. We talk about websites and brands curating content; using third party content as a jump point for new conversation. We talk about brands and retailers curating product, filtering out the rubbish and selectively choosing niche or narrow channel products that are centred around a particular interest or cultural space.
In my other life at Eco Outdoor we talk about curation being one of our key focuses and we’re in the stone business. When we say that we’re talking about curation in the most traditional definition of the word – we select the most interesting and unique product (sometimes you don’t know why its interesting or unique unless you’re in the stone game), and we organise it in a way that inspires people to use it differently or create really unique design form or pairings. We tell the story of the product, how it fits into the world from whence it came and why we think its important or significant or special. The focus here is that we travel the
world looking for and selectively choosing what we present and how we put it together.
I guess you could say that Innovation Feeder curates content, although really it’s just sharing what takes my fancy. I started it when I was working in the social trends / innovation space as a way of collating data, organising other people’s thoughts that I would want to refer back to and even organising my own. It was like an online memory and imagination bank.
So when is a blog not curating? When it writes all its own content I guess. There are some that believe it better to write original content than re-post, and there are scales and a spectrum in re-posting itself that differentiate between gathering tidbits like a bountiful bowerbird and scattering them amongst the pages, versus your classic “Look what I found mamma” straight re-post of content. Is there a hierarchy of one over the other? I think in this age, conversation flows on many different levels and if the content is relevant and engaging, who cares on what level of the spectrum it falls? And as Matt Langer points out, is it curation or simply sharing our thoughts and discoveries online? Is curation merely the act of sharing and distributing (albeit selectively)? or must it have some ontology or semantic continuity?
Traditionally curation has been used in the realm of ‘art curation’ where art is selected by an art historian who selects significant pieces and places them in context to identify why they are significant and to what extent. Who ‘places’ the art in context and helps us understand the story and content surrounding it. The term curation has long (well long in online terms) been used outside of the realm of art, but the question remains > What do we define as curation in the online space? By identifying our act of sharing as selective, by filtering (with our own self supposed good taste) the good from the bad – is that curation?
Some other links to check out:
Curation is the New Search is the New Curation
Anyway, as usual online, I digress. Here’s a great collation of opinions on the topic by Neil Perkin. Regardless of whether you agree with the definition or not, I love Percolate‘s idea of stock and flow of content. The flow of ideas and conversation being the currency by which we remind people that we exist versus the stock we create from the realms of our own minds and imaginations. It gives credence to these different modes of conversation and the ways in which they operate uniquely for different purposes. Following here is Neil’s collection of opinions and ideas, re-posted.
Filed under: Emergent media, Lifestyle trends, content communities | Tags: treadlie, Melbourne bike magazine
The Melbourne crew have done it again and gone and launched a brand new magazine way ahead of the rest of us. While Sydneysiders are still arguing over whether Clover Moore’s bike lane through 2010 will serve anyone other than the ‘sandal wearing muesli crunching’ [as Paul Keating so eloquently put it], the Melbourne peeps have just bypassed such ridiculous time wasting and moved straight in for the kill. Enter Treadlie. A brand new magazine by the guys at Green that promotes, encourages, explores and connects those involved in bike culture. And by the looks of it, this movement extends way beyond hippies in hessian or sociopaths in spandex. How refreshing.
You can check it out online here
Filed under: Brain stuff, Community, content communities, Digital culture, Future of Media, Geek stuff, Innovative stimulus, Looking for insights, memes, Mind candy, Social, Social media | Tags: Gavin Heaton, memes, Servant of Chaos, thinking blogger, thinking blogging
- If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
- Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
- Optional: Proudly display the ‘Thinking Blogger Award’ with a link to the post that you wrote
So here are my nominations:
Filed under: Borrow this, content communities, creativity, Digital culture, Emergent media, Future of Media, Futures, Geek stuff, Gen M, Gen Y, Innovative stimulus, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, Social, Social media, Trends stuff, Work Futures | Tags: business week, experience the message, online consumer trends, online stats, online trends, US online internet usage
I tend to take in information best with my peepers, I’m not great at listening [although I try very hard] and I really like to see things mapped out rather than a huge truckload of words. Which is why I love a good model, a good graph, schematic display – anything which represents information in a stimulating visual way. So here’s another one. This one comes courtesy of Business Week, spotted by one of Max’s colleagues & posted on his blog Experience The Message in the middle of last year. It’s a stormer for presentations & workshop stimulus so eat up friend.
You can check out Max’s original post here
The original Business Week article can be found here
Filed under: beta, Brand, Community, content communities, creativity, Digital culture, Emergent media, FMCG innovation, Future of Media, geek, Geek stuff, Innovation, Innovative marketing, Lifestyle trends, Macro trends, neophiliac, new product, Nice Design, Social, Social media, Thinking, Work Futures | Tags: beta, Beta-culture, Facebook, Forrester Consumer Forum, Google, Innovation, MySpace, Radiohead, social networking, trends, Twitter
The idea of being in beta has become a broad cultural phenomenon. Many new products never make it beyond trial stage, and the trial and error beta-approach that helps Google and other alpha innovators to out-fail and thereby out-innovate the competition, is as much an attribute of successful organizations as it is a sign of our time.
But it’s not only analysts and conference organizers who are switching instantly from micro to macro, picking up nascent trends and elevating them to a must-deal-with core competence that transcends the current fad (just see all the Facebook conferences that are mushrooming right now). What I find even more interesting is how the media and blogosphere deal with it. If everything’s in beta, the public doesn’t have the patience anymore to wait for the alpha. As the media are increasingly forced to immediately widen the scope and view every innovation in a larger context as it occurs, the boundaries between reporters and commentators, bloggers and industry analysts are fading.
Some examples: Not too long ago, Twitter was all the rage, and it was stunning to see that just shortly after the initial coverage during SXSW in March, reporters were already elaborating on the concept of micro-blogging, wondering what the new “radical transparency” meant for business. Nowadays, there is a great chance that you will stumble upon a Facebook story when you open just about any publication: It’s Facebook vs. MySpace, the implications of social networking on the borders between work and personal life, reflections on the “Facebook economy,” Facebook vs. iTunes, and maybe a philosophical piece on Facebook “as a post-modern book” or the future of social networking, which, for TIME, equals the future of the Internet. It is only a small step from MySpace to the “MySpace generation,” and from Facebook to the “Facebook generation” and then to the “Fakebook generation.” Similarly, the recent buzz around Radiohead’s “pay what you want” online release has instantly led to the coining of a “Radiohead Generation” and praise for the band “as a pioneer of the digital revolution.” And there are hundreds of articles discussing if Radiohead’s decision ushers in the definite end of the record industry. The stories about the radical distribution model appear to eclipse the actual music on the album–in this case, too, the reviews are in before the story is told.
Evidently, the media need to cope with the current while also putting forward a vision for the up and coming. The time between observation and conclusion, between description and prediction, however, has shrunk to almost zero. There are no more lapses between news, analysis, background story, industry trend story, and intellectual dissection; they have become one and the same, at the same time. Not only is beta the new alpha–beta has gone meta.
Filed under: Community, content communities, creativity, Future of Media, Geek stuff, Innovative stimulus, Looking for insights, memes, Research Methods, Social, Social media, unbusiness | Tags: 5 blogs that make me think, meme, my media week, thinking blogger awards
Gavin tagged me (thanks Gavin) on the current meme sweeping the sphere – ‘My Media Week’ – the meme that gets you thinking about your own media consumption rather than everyone else’s. So here goes:
Reading
I have one red paperclip on my night table which a friend loaned me. It has been there for quite some time (sorry Kes) but doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. i.e. It’s certainly no closer to getting in bed with me & a cup of tea than you are. I love the idea of someone who swaps a red paperclip for something else, then swaps that for something else, yada yada, you get the picture. Eventually this guy gets a house. I like the idea of the story, I’m just not loving the story so much.
So what I’m actually reading is “How would you move Mount Fuji : How the smartest companies select the world’s most creative thinkers” by William Poundstone. It’s basically a commentary on Microsoft’s notorious grueling interview process which has been copied by companies everywhere who are seeking to separate the most creative thinkers from those who are merely brilliant. It’s got a bunch of puzzles & riddles throughout which are generally making me feel reasonably uncreative, let alone brilliant. Lucky I’m not trying to get a job in the valley I suppose.
I flicked through my usual monthly Futures magazine yesterday but I don’t think you could call that ‘reading’ with any integrity. They come in the mail, I flick through them & then make them at home in my bottom drawer. You see, I don’t have to actually read them, just knowing they’re close is enough. Oh and I read Who Weekly to get the update on Britney Spears’ fight for child custody. Are we supposed to omit the trash consumption?
TV / Video
The other night I watched a documentary on Australia’s most feared creatures, followed by an episode of “shark attack : I shouldn’t be alive”, both served to reinforce the threat of swimming at any beach in Sydney as one could be taken by an animal of the sea at any time. I’ve also been following the US election coverage with interest together with my usual diet of cable news & Sunset Tan when it’s on. (Sunset Tan is a top quality show on cable which follows the lives of people who manage a chain of tanning salons in L.A. It’s no West Wing but gee it’s close). Again, should I have omitted that?
Music
On iTunes play during the last week was Joan as Policewoman, Josh Rouse, James Blunt & a bit Pink for the angry woman moments. There have been plenty of those this week for no particular reason other than my computer has been rather temperamental.
Next Up
Next up I tag Erin aka Dora the Explorer 
who is on my daily Google Reader , Amanthaville to encourage you to start posting again!, Coolz0r whose blog is always jam packed with great examples & analysis, Katie whose site I love reading regularly for a brain top up, Weird from Slacker Nation whose blog is always an incredibly good read & Greg at Grassroots Innovation which I also check out regularly.
Filed under: Community, content communities, Digital culture, Emergent media, Future of Media, Geek stuff, moblogging, new product, Social, Social media | Tags: beta, mobile blogging communities, mobile gaming communities, mobile social communities, moblogging, playyoo, spotblogging, technorati, youtube
Playyoo a brand new site based out of England has just launched in beta this week. Billed as a ‘YouTube for mobile games’ by Technorati, the site offers users the chance to create, share & download games & game content for their mobile. It allows users to create their own content, interact with others and even get recommendations based on their user preferences.
This is an interesting space, especially beyond just mobile gaming. Mobile social communities and mobile blogging communities are increasing in numbers. According to the Wireless Federation Research there are currently over 45 million members engaged in ‘mobile social communities’ worldwide (including mobile gamers gamers), a number that is expected to reach 175 million in 2012.
These communities also have the potential to generate big revenue. A new study by Jupiter Research states that revenue from user generated content is projected to increase from $572 million this year to $5.7 billion by 2012, about half of which will be coming from social networking. Moreover, membership of social networking sites is projected to grow from 14 million this year to about 600 million by 2012. Perhaps mobile content management & social software will be the next killer apps.
So what is “moblogging” exactly? Well, mo-blogging is blogging via a mobile phone, or a PDA via a mobile connection with a real IP – GPRS or 3G. It’s friendly cousin “Spot-blogging” is mobile also, just not via a mobile phone. “Spotblogging” refers to blogging via a PC through WiFi. It’s called SpotBlogging because you need to be tied to a hotspot of some sort, whereas real moblogging can be just about anywhere.
Anyhoo, Playyoo is an interesting site – check it out here
