Experimentation Stores
Bring your innovation programme to life with our Experiment Store Programme
Innovation is an imperative in today’s fast changing retail world. When you have an established physical store portfolio, you need a space to test, learn and innovate that doesn’t disrupt your current consumer or distract business resources from day to day trade. Our Experiment Stores programme enables retailer and brands to bring innovation to life. We create environments specifically designed for experimentation and the testing of new innovations, accompanied by a robust process to lead your teams to push boundaries and experiment with new instore experiences
Test and learn faster, and with less risk
We understand that in a climate of constant competition, large retailers need to start changing; whether that’s trialling new formats for the future, introducing omni-channel elements into their stores, or embedding retail theatre to attract new customers to their brand. But we also know that the wheels of change are often the slowest to turn.
Our Experiment Stores programme is specifically designed to help retailers bring innovation to life in real-life environments. Through our turnkey approach, we build and operate standalone Experiment Stores that allow brands the time and freedom needed to trial new concepts.
Eliciting direct, primary feedback and generating new tests and trials with target future consumers, our Experiment Stores can serve to:
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Derisk the innovation cycle, allowing failures to happen without damaging the core brand
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Accelerate the learning and testing process of new ideas and concepts, increasing the speed of successfully validating ideas and rolling them out into market
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Help teams transform strategies and concepts into retail executions, allowing new ideas to come to life at greater fidelity
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Validate ideas and concepts with real life consumers, giving more certainty of success for future roll outs.
Unique, turnkey solutions
Using our unique, turnkey solutions, we help you improve your in-store experience, developing innovation strategies that get to the heart of what your brand, your customers – and your future customers – want. We’ve helped brands experiment with diverse innovations including:
Digital technologies
Experiential retailing
Concept pilots & experiments
We help create the mindset and environment that's needed to successfully innovate in retail, giving you the time and distance you need to trial concepts before roll out. Finally, our Experiment Stores Programme includes expert support on “Backing Into Scale” – a partnership model that allows retailers to deploy successful new Experiments into core businesses.
Case Study
Introducing innovation with BP
As a retail brand, BP stands on the precipice of change. Where today's customers spend two minutes at the forecourt, the customer of tomorrow will prioritise electric vehicles, and therefore need to spend 30+ minutes at the ‘petrol’ station. This represents a need for innovation.
But in order to understand what the forecourt of the future looks like, before investing further, BP needed a safe, non-intrusive way of testing their propositions. One that would attract customers, deliver a return on investment and offer scale. Agile Retail developed an Experiment Stores Programme allowing us to test new ideas outside of day-to-day forecourt operations. We created “The Café”, an exciting new space where new target customers could relax, grab a bite and enjoy a different kind of forecourt experience. By removing the BP name and testing the proposition in retail environments, we could offer meaningful insights for the brand, unhindered by previous association, and focused on a new target consumer
Your agile partner
We understand that when you’re running a business, innovation can be difficult. It’s time-consuming, cost-consuming and represents no small amount of risk. At Agile, we aim to make the process of innovating in stores easy. With a suite of services aimed at combining effectiveness and efficiency, we outsource your stresses, enabling you to focus on day-to-day operations and developing the concepts of the future.
Our experts work within your team to help you define your innovation strategy, as well as help bring it to life. We bring experience from outside of your operational tramlines, offering creativity that may not have been considered previously – so you can take an idea and make it a reality.
A complete service suite for the future of stores.
Each of our services is designed to solve a challenge for your brand. Wherever you’re at in your physical retail journey, we have the knowledge and expertise to support your business and deliver something exceptional.
Property & Location
Expert retail property services and store location strategy
Design & Build
Designing and building immersive functional retail stores
Retail Staffing
Outsourced retail staffing with maximum flexibility and cost efficiency
Logistics & Trading
Retail expertise covering supply chain, logistical and store management
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