What can e-commerce learn from mall culture?
Remember shopping malls? They seem to be dropping like flies these days and it’s kind of sad. I know, I know…as a founder of an e-commerce business, maybe I’m partly to blame, but there was something more to malls than just a building with a lot of stores in it, there was a culture that allowed shopping malls to be — at any given time — the perfect snapshot of your town.
Race. Gender. Age. Political affinity. It didn’t matter. To be in the mall was to be an active member of your community.
Growing up, I had two older sisters.
My dad worked some serious hours so when my sisters and mom went shopping, I was dragged along. It wasn’t all that bad until I hit 10 or 11 years old and then I cracked. I had enough of it. I couldn’t do it anymore. I was too young to be left at home. I was too old to spend all day in the women’s section and not be an embarrassed, pain in the ass about it.
But, I was old enough to break off and go wait at another store…a store that didn’t smell like a weird combination of vanilla and French onion soup. Some of you might know about a store called Champs.
My home away from home in the late 80s.
Ahh, Champs. Good ol’, reliable Champs. For those of you not familiar, Champs is an athletic apparel shop. Mainly shoes, but also shirts, hats, jerseys, and other stuff. I got to be good pals with the guys that worked there and they always let me choose the videos they’d play on the TV at the back of the store. It was always the “NBA Superstars” video or Michael Jordan’s “Come Fly With Me.”
One time, after a particularly long shopping session by my mom and sisters shopping for who-knows-what, the guys were nice enough to give me a free poster for coming in and spending my day at their store. I’ll never forget it and how it made me feel. I literally did nothing but hang in their store all day and they were cool with it.
I like to think that they understood my predicament and took a little pity. As I left, the manager told me to choose a poster and it was mine. I chose the Akeem Olajuwon one (NBA nerds: it was Akeem and not yet Hakeem).
Ya damn right I still have it. Pictured below…bam.
Get that weak stuff out of my kitchen!
Lessons to learn from mall stores.
As malls — and their inherent culture — slowly become obsolete, it’s important to try to learn from why they meant so much to people. As online stores become the go-to, the medium has changed but can the experience still be the same? It’s hard to say.
When building Magic Room Brand, I’ve tried to make it a place, and not just a thing. If you can be whatever your customers and visitors need you to be, that’s a win in my book.
Yes, it’s harder for online shopping experiences to have character and be a “happy place” in which people can just hang out. But when focus is first put on visitor experience and not “closing the sale,” that line can be pleasantly blurred.
Thanks for stopping in and hanging out.
#bewhatyoumake
