Want to enjoy the best of the outdoors without, you know, actually going outside? Then the recently opened London flagship of The North Face is the place for you. The retailer, working with Mood Media, has created an experiential retail location equipped with a large-scale LED visual wall displaying curated content, carefully chosen music and even a custom fragrance, White Pepperwood, carrying the scent of the outdoors through the air.
The store’s centerpiece is its Dome Tent, where shoppers can lay down and look up at AI-generated content that will take them through a 30-minute visual journey, featuring natural soundscapes and visuals to take the viewer from day to night.
All these different sensory elements, including the music playlist, “don’t feel forced; it feels very authentic in the store,” said Jaime Bettencourt, responsible for revenue growth, brand strategy and content marketing at Mood Media in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “For example, it’s complemented with a really well-done custom scent that captures the freshness of the outdoors coupled with warmth and earthy elements. It transforms your whole being.
“Scent is one of the biggest things that draws memories in people,” Bettencourt added. “These little details that someone notices, or not, create that experience by taking you back to a memory and tying it to the outdoors.”
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That transformative impact fulfills The North Face’s goals for the flagship location, which opened on London’s Regent Street in late March 2024. “The store serves not only as a place for product sales and services but as a base camp that should equip and inspire consumers for exploration,” said Martina Cerletti, Retail Marketing Director for The North Face EMEA in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “We want to immerse the consumer in an experience and help them find activities and places to explore, then discover the best-performing products for those adventures.”
Mood Media, which creates on-premise retail experiences at approximately 500,000 locations in 140 countries that reach 165 million consumers every day, relished this mandate from The North Face. “You have to create the ‘wow’ factor that bridges the gap between product showcases and brand storytelling,” noted Bettencourt. “Customers really want this; they don’t just want to buy products, they want experiences. When someone comes into the store they want to learn something new, experience something and feel engagement with a product.”
Help Finding the Perfect Footwear
The North Face wants to do more than create a vibe, of course; the retailer also wants to sell product. To that end it has deployed a digital footwear finder to help solve a common shopper journey pain point.
“We understand it’s not easy for our customers to understand all the technologies, benefits and innovation contained in our product,” said Cerletti. “Consumers know where they want to go, and they are looking for the perfect shoe to reach that place or those results. Using a touchscreen, the consumer selects which activity they want to do with our footwear, which terrain, which benefits, and [then we] work to educate [them] on the different technologies. Step by step a selection from among our full range is made, and at the end the consumer meets their perfect match. There also is a digital tool that allows for comparisons of different shoes for them to make an informed choice.”
The store also features an interactive sustainability zone, reflecting another important element of The North Face’s profile: “As a brand we aim to set the standard for innovative circular solutions,” said Cerletti. “In the sustainability corner we invite customers to extend the life of their product with multiple services such as customization, repair and product take-back. We also promote our Renewed program as an important platform to give our products a second life.”
Immersive Experiences in London to Serve as Template for European Stores
The North Face has seen positive reactions from consumers since the store opened, as well as qualitative positive feedback from surveys. Cerletti said the store has hosted events that “continue to be oversubscribed,” and noted that the store’s “extended window display allows us to create an immersive window experience where we can host consumer activation, capturing the attention from a street level.”
Cerletti described the London store as “an evolution of previous store concepts [that] remains consistent within our framework and fixture design, but the key additional elements and elevation are what really bring it to life.” The immersive activity rooms and multiple consumer experiences are innovations that The North Face will “definitely be taking into more stores across Europe,” she added. In October 2022 The North Face unveiled a five-year expansion plan that will add 300 global retail and partner locations, as well as updating existing stores with a refreshed approach.
“For us the store is a place for curiosity and exploration,” said Cerletti. “We want the consumer to be transported into the outdoors when entering our store; that’s why we have worked on the five senses, and this is key for an immersive experience that can inspire our customer to go outside and explore.”
