Samsung's vision for the future of retail is a store that doesn't try to sell you anything — take a look inside
- Samsung 837 is the company's flagship store in New York City.
- The space is designed to let visitors try out Samsung products.
- The store's employees won't encourage guests to buy anything, and the store has limited inventory on site.
- Many of the store's installations are designed to be shared on social media.
Samsung 837 has been called a store that doesn't sell anything, but that's not quite true.
It's true that the New York City store's employees won't push guests to buy any Samsung products, and the space has only a small amount of inventory on site, but the store is selling something else: the idea that Samsung will make shoppers happier than any other tech company.
Shoppers can lounge in one of the living room displays pumped with holiday-themed scents (we noticed cinnamon during our visit) and consider how nice that 60-inch flat-screen TV would look in their home. Or, they can come to a free Luke Bryan concert held in the store and send Snapchats to all of their jealous friends.
Take a look around:
"We wanted this space to be the truest expression of the Samsung brand," Zach Overton, Samsung's vice president of customer experience and the general manager of 837, said in an interview with Business Insider.
Overton was hired to run the store in November 2015, three months before it opened, after working as the COO of the HIV/AIDS charity (RED). While the building had been chosen and the interior space built, Overton had to decide what to put in the store and how it would operate. From the beginning, he knew that he didn't want employees to drone on about Samsung products; he wanted visitors to experience them firsthand.
While the store's installations change each season, its current iteration includes two stationary VR rides that tilt and shake in response to the visuals in a headset, a glass DJ booth that plays top-40 hits, a variety of holiday-themed selfie stations, and tables full of laptops, phones, and tablets.
"We moved away from talking at people about products, features, and tech specs and things like that, into really engaging in a two-way dialogue with them about how our technology can power the things that they love to do," Overton said.
Employees won't try to sell visitors any of the products they use, but if the space works the way Samsung hopes, they won't need to.
Upon entering the store, guests have the option to borrow a Galaxy loaded with an app that's part map, part product guide, and part cash register. As they walk through the space, the app identifies the nearest installation and gives them the option to learn more about the relevant products or buy them directly through the app. And if they'd like, they can take pictures that they can later email to themselves.
One of the reasons the store has so many photogenic features is that Samsung wants visitors to take pictures and videos and share them with their friends on social media.
This is a reinvention of Samsung's experiential retail strategy, which used to focus on grabbing consumers' attention at third-party events like football games and music festivals. Now, Samsung wants potential customers to engage with the brand on its terms.
If you think booking Luke Bryan is a waste of money, for example, Overton will point to the one million streams the concert drew online.
In order to achieve that balance, Overton needed to hire the right kinds of employees to guide visitors through the store.
Rather than looking for traditional sales skills, Overton wants candidates who are passionate about technology and culture. It doesn't matter if they love fashion, cooking, basketball, or music, they just need to be so excited about their passion that visitors will become excited too.
"The first question I usually ask when I'm interviewing someone is 'What do you do on the weekends? What do you do in your downtime? Are you a DJ? Are you a fashion designer? Are you a cook?'" Overton said. "It's really about finding people that are authentically impassioned about technology ... and have other cultural interests as well."
Employees also need to have a discerning eye so they can spot the visitors who want help and those who wants to be left alone.
Overton noted that interacting with locals is often different from interacting with tourists.
"New Yorkers typically only want to be engaged with if they have a question and they need you, versus a tourist who needs a little bit more hand-holding," he said.
All of this personalization and interactivity is geared toward making guests believe that Samsung understands them, and so will its products.
If the company has its way, you'll never walk into an Apple store again.
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