Architecture-Expert Micha Klein sees new "Point of Experience" chances by looking beyond traditional retail

For Micha Klein, Muji is a good example: ‘Gigantic walls made of more than 7500 individual wooden elements.’ The Team Lead Architecture of the content marketing agency Liganova still finds the Japanese stand at the Expo two years ago groundbreaking today.

Visitors were able to take home individual parts as shelves home and combine them with their other modules from the Muji range. Within six days, the metre-high walls were walls were dismantled by 1254 visitors within six days. ‘It was incredibly likeable and accessible. It allowed people to articipate out of the brand DNA,’ enthuses the architect the architect, who has addressed the issue of sustainability through the presentation, the shopfitting, the external appearance.
And things have become much quieter. ‘Moving content is used less often, there are fewer attention-grabbing images, everything is more minimalist and less cluttered.’ He realises this when he thinks about sustainability in retail. The trend is moving away from store walls full of screens, from image films with forests and meadows flickering in an endless loop across huge screens. The focus is on the essentials. The products and the brand identity.

‘The times when sustainability with plants and wood was on show in retail are over. Today, it’s more about an implicit attitude. It’s no longer a marketing theme but a hygiene factor, a basic attitude of companies. And that’s very good.’ Overall, sustainability no longer just means saving CO2 and using more sustainable materials. ‘Sustainability in retail has expanded from inward-looking, number-based sustainability to customer-facing social sustainability and is becoming more and more complex,’ summarises Klein.

The architect sees movements in the most diverse areas. The brand comes to the customer, winter sports clothing is transported to the ski resort with temporary pop-ups. ‘Retail no longer has four physical walls,’ says Klein. Brands are everywhere, no longer just in shopping centres. ‘Retail is becoming more fluctuating, more target group-specific, offers seasonal activations and is present wherever the customer is. It is also about consistent communication on the product, transporting expertise and visualising manufacturing processes. Behind the scenes, preferably in direct dialogue with the sales staff. ‘The internet is overloaded; authentic communication and experience take place physically, between various touch points in the store and through the staff. This is the great potential of bricks-and-mortar stores. Ultimately, it’s about balancing what the internet can’t do with physical experiences in order to create a holistic brand image.’

It needs people, it needs explanations. ‘We all want to understand the connections who sees how a piece of clothing is made is made appreciates it in a completely different way.’ Activations on various topics are important topics. Collaborations to convey content transport content and build sympathy. Barrier-free Shopping comes to Klein’s mind spontaneously. Body positivity; curvy instead of skinny. Wellbeing. ‘Customised offers for integration, equality and fairness can be experienced more intensively in a stationary store than online.’

The Superjuju shop in Stuttgart organises a quiet hour every day from 11 a.m. to 12 noon. The aim is to make everyday life easier for autistic people and people who are otherwise unable to work. The concept comes from a supermarket chain in New Zealand.

The store is transformed from a point of sale to a point of experience. ‘Brands have the opportunity to bring sustainability efforts to life on site. From expert advice that leads to the perfect match between customer needs and products, to a personalised approach and activations that bring sustainability to life in the brand context,’ says Klein, adding that the first step is to create realistic expectations among consumers. Klein mentions keywords such as recycling, upcycling and circularity. ‘These are must-haves that are becoming increasingly established. The important thing here is to steer clear of perfectionism.’ This is why transparent and authentic communication is key.

Klein is active in many sectors. His team worked on the ‘Table Concept’ campaign for Nespresso for almost two years. The result is a new uniform standard for all shop windows worldwide. The changeability and flexibility of the individual modules ensure longevity. A little bit of Muji. ‘All elements are designed so that they can be easily separated and recycled, and we create a recycling manual for each campaign that helps employees in Nespresso boutiques worldwide to dispose of the materials correctly and easily.’

Klein finds collaborative software and hardware development events, known as hackathons, similarly interesting. These are innovation competitions focussing on the development of sustainable products and services. Ecoalf has students at Schiller International University research how they can get consumers to pay attention to sustainability not only when buying clothes, but also in other areas of their lives. Every year at the ‘National Circular Economy Hackathon’ in the Netherlands, H&M challenges young creative minds to come up with ideas for a transition from fast to slow fashion.

Another approach is communities: brands create groups that work together to promote sustainability. One example is the already well-established local repair cafés and swap meets that are supported by manufacturers and retailers, or online platforms where customers can share knowledge and launch sustainable initiatives together. Klein is inspired by the Nike Community Impact Fund, where local organisations from all over the world can apply to Nike employees for grants for children’s sports activities.
Patagonia has created an ‘Action Works’ platform through which customers can find local environmental groups, take part in events and donate to initiatives. This turns shoppers into activists. This creates a sense of community that increases customer loyalty and positions the brand in environmental protection.

Another step for the architect is cultural change. Even if it may sound paradoxical at first, suppliers themselves could shift the focus away from consumerism. Casetify, for example, is showing works of art made from hundreds of thousands of recycled smartphone cases in pop-ups around the world.Liganova himself recently curated an exhibition for Mozilla that was intended to encourage people to ‘reclaim the internet’. Installations in four themed spaces – Reclaim Expression, Reclaim Creativity, Reclaim Wonder and Reclaim Community – were designed to challenge existing norms and encourage people to think about an alternative digital future.

And what does all this mean for medium-sized fashion companies? ‘The same applies here – from the outside in: Optimising your own business model, making sustainability tangible and establishing a safe space that is open to everyone,’ advises Klein. ’Sustainability is economic, ecological and social. After the first two stages, we have now reached the third, which is quieter and less headline-grabbing, but all the more important today. Physical retail in particular offers enormous opportunities here,’ summarises the Liganova expert.

He recommends that retailers and manufacturers do not build up all the expertise themselves, but instead promote a regional network and find suitable partners. For example, Liganova works with Trash Galore on upcycling, a start-up from Leipzig that brings discarded items back into circulation. Festival ecoclos become dance stages, old mattresses become imitation meat in a theatre production, lamps from a warehouse clearance become part of a stage set. A redefinition of waste on a small scale and a new approach to sustainability on a large scale.