Clearly is the world’s largest online retailer of glasses, sunglasses and contact lenses.
Eyewear shopping has historically been a very medical based shopping experience. But our consumer insights research identified that shoppers regard their eyes as one of the most valuable pieces of ‘real estate’ when it comes to defining their fashion style.
With Clearly's first physical store in the southern hemisphere, we were challenged to convert the retail experience from a 'medical' experience to a fun, 'fashion' based experience. Located in the 'Ivy' complex in the Sydney CBD, we were further challenged to create a retail experience that would appeal to both day time office workers and night time revellers.
Using visual merchandising in the form a 2.5m metre high rotating mirror ball, a night lights display visible from George Street, a custom scent, and specially commissioned music, the Clearly store has transformed the eyewear shopping experience into a joy.
The store has has achieved great media coverage, incredibly positive consumer feedback, and regularly draws crowds of people to the windows who are eager to watch the spectacular night time sound and lights show.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Lead Agency: The General Store: Matt Newell (Strategy Partner) Andrew Fraser (Creative Partner) and Madeleine Livesey (Project Director)
Interior design: The Great Indoors: Lee Hopkinson (Director)
Lighting: Benjamin Cisterne
Soundtrack: Jared Underwood
Project Brief
In creating Clearly's first physical store in the southern hemisphere, we we were challenged to break as many optical retail conventions as we could to create a completely new and innovative way to shop for eyewear. Typically glasses are displayed on the walls of optical stores, are categorised by brand, and are tried on in one of the two or three mirrors on offer in the store. We set out to break all of these conventions by delivering a retail experience that didn't feel like a medical appointment, but a fun fashion-based shopping experience.
As part of the brief we also challenged ourselves to deliver a retail experience that would be highly relevant and inspiring to each of the audience types that frequent the Ivy location, namely, busy office workers and night time party goers. The result is a store that, although closed, continues to draw crowds by transforming the visual merchandising feature into the centrepiece for a stunning sound and light show, that delivers joy to passers by after hours.
Project Innvoation/Need
REDEFINING OPTOMETRY RETAIL: TURNING A MEDICAL SHOPPING EXPERIENCE INTO A FASHION SHOPPING EXPERIENCE
Eyewear shopping has historically been a very medical based shopping experience. But our consumer insights research identified that shoppers regard their eyes as one of the most valuable pieces of ‘real estate’ when it comes to defining their fashion style.
Our strategy was to turn eyewear shopping from a medical retail experience (which feels like a chore) into a fashion retail experience (which is more joyful). And in so doing, increase Clearly's customer count, shopping frequency and items per basket.
We used several design techniques to deliver on the ‘fashion experience’ strategy.
Firstly, we created a 2.5m high mirror ball sculpture, which is built out of carefully stacked mirrored boxes, that creates the central visual merchandising fixture. This spectacular sculpture is visible from the street and is big enough for customers to walk inside. The sculpture immediately signals to passing traffic that this is no ordinary optical store.
As well as being staffed by a highly experienced optometrist, we hired a team of stylists who are trained to help customers find the shapes, colours and styles that best suit their fashion needs and face shapes. These stylists assist customers shop from over 500 frames in-store, as well as over 2,000 frames available online via the dedicated digital shopping bar in-store.
And for those customers who don’t want to complete the transaction in-store, we developed the technology to ensure their searches are saved and they can continue shopping seamlessly on their mobile or home computers.
Design Challenge
RETAIL RELEVANCE: CREATING TWO DIFFERENT RETAIL EXPERIENCES FOR TWO DIFFERENT RETAIL CUSTOMERS
The store is located in a premium fashion and entertainment precinct in Sydney’s CBD. This location attracts two discrete customer profiles. By day, the passing traffic consists of busy inner city professionals. And by night, it attracts party revelers on their way to ‘The Ivy’ nightclub.
So we challenged ourselves to deliver a retail experience that would be highly relevant and inspiring to each audience type.
By day, the Clearly store offers CBD customers a calm and revitalising retreat from the hectic rush of CBD life. To achieve this, we used design techniques that slow the heart rate and increase dwell time.
We created a 26 minute soundtrack that combines harmonious natural sounds with relaxed grooves to help create a re-energizing environment. The tempo of the music is set at 60 beats per minute to replicate the average relaxed heart rate.
We custom designed a scent featuring ‘white tea and thyme’, which replicates the smell of a day spa to help trigger relaxed emotional states while customers shop.
Our lighting design is bright and warm, with gentle flecks of moving blue light that reflect in the mirror ball to create a stunning yet calming effect, like a diamond glistening in the light.
But by night the store completely changes to capture the fun and excitement of a night on the town. And although the store is closed, we still felt there was a fantastic opportunity to connect with this very different audience.
As party revellers walk past the store at night, they are meet with an awe-inspiring sound and light installation designed in collaboration with local musical talent, Jared Underwood, and theatre lighting designer Ben Cisterne. The high-energy dance tracks sync perfectly with the light display, which bounces off the central mirror ball sculpture as it rotates on a moving platform. This creates an inspiring display of over 500 products as the mirror ball spins.
Passing traffic is regularly seen dancing out the front of the store, as well as photographing and filming the installation on their smart phones. Customers then share their ‘find’ on social media, which has now delivered thousands of shares across all Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
User Experience
The store launched in February 2014 and (at the time of writing) has been trading for 4 months. The current key financial metrics are:
• 10% ahead of forecast
• Sales sitting at AU$1,000 per square metre
• Brand awareness has increased 12% nationally
• National online sales up 7% since store launch
These results are considered particularly strong considering the store has not yet operated in the peak retail period of Oct - Dec.
The store is proving to be a strong promotional tool with feature articles appearing in leading business press (e.g. The Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald) fashion press (e.g. Vogue, GQ, Harpers Bazaar) and retail press (e.g. Inside Retail, WGSN, Retail Biz).
The store has been incredibly well received by customers. Some quotes from Clearly's Net Promoter Score survey include:
• “This is an amazing store… I’ve never seen anything like it.” Julie
• “The most fun I’ve had shopping for glasses!” Pippa
• “Great store and incredible service. I’ll be back.” Mark
• “Wow! You guys are going to change eyewear shopping forever. So glad you’re here!” James
The Clearly store has received thousands of mentions on social media across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, with people sharing videos and photos of the mirror ball sculpture and the sound and light installation.
Retail Experience
This award celebrates creative and innovative design in the retail environment. Consideration given to attracting, engaging and motivating customers to make purchases, the use of colour, lighting, space, product information, sensory inputs (smell, touch, sound) as well as technologies such as digital displays and interactive installations.
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