y tour of the globe. “Experience and efficiency are the new winning positions,” said Lin. Too true, and when they work together to the benefit of shoppers, it’s an awesome combination. Physical retailers need to be transformed digitally, and sellers who started out online need to become more physical. Somewhere in the middle is actually what the shopper wants. For the bricks and mortar guys, it is about living up to what Jon Stine of Cisco calls “internet-shaped expectations”; the desire from customers for infinite range, access to information, visibility of product availability, transparency of pricing, and ease of purchase. Those retailers that embrace this idea are enjoying disproportionate returns. We saw how UK department store John Lewis does it particularly well, by consistently extending its physical offer with a clear invitation to check out more online. Iconic UK department store Selfridges is equally enthusiastic about linking physical to digital, with its major commitment to click and collect communicated everywhere at its Oxford St store in London. Meanwhile, for digital merchants, it’s all about supplementing high tech with high touch. E-tailers have discovered that it’s critically important to (literally) get the product into the hands of customers. We have seen many examples in our travels on this year’s Study Tour. In New York, we witnessed how both eyewear brand Warby Parker and men’s apparel seller Bonobos have evolved from selling purely online, to having showrooms attached to their head offices, to simply having stand alone stores. In Los Angeles, I ventured to Venice Beach to see how Toms Shoes, which started online, has launched a shop and community hangout. And in London’s SoHo, we saw and heard how luxury cycling brand Rapha has gone beyond the web with a hub for bike enthusiasts, by offering the chance to purchase product, have a great coffee, watch big races live, and join regular rides. (Watch this space: Rapha is on its way to Australia soon too.) The ultimate case study in clicks and mortar is still the Burberry store on London’s Regent St. The Westfield group received a guided tour, and we learned how Burberry has modeled the store on its website – fluidly linking the physical and virtual. Enough has been written about the Burberry space already, but for me walking through the store and hearing the philosophy added a different dimension. In lots of ways, it’s a bold experiment on where retail needs to go, with innovations like RFID-embedded garments that trigger useful videos when you hold them close to a mirror. So the future of retail is not either/or, it is “and”. Fuse clicks and mortar together successfully, and you end up with the best of both worlds. * Jon Bird is currently travelling on the Westfield World Retail Study Tour, along with Inside Retail managing editor, Carla Bridge. When he’s not out visiting stores, Bird is CEO of specialist retail marketing agency, IdeaWorks (www.ideaworks.com.au), and chairman of Inside Retail’s publisher, Octomedia. Email:jon.bird@ideaworks.com.au Blog: www.newretailblog.com Twitter: @thetweetailer This article first appeared in Inside Retail’s digital weekly, for subscription details please click here. To trial a three month subscription (12 issues) for $99, click here.