As much as its passing has been heralded repeatedly during the thirty years since the first explosion of E-commerce sites, the Brick-and-Mortar Retail sector has continued to evolve, rise-and-fall-and-rise again, and innovate despite a continued long-term downward trend during that time.
The US, despite the sense many have of it becoming overcrowded or feeling a lot smaller, still has an outsized amount of retail space compared to other developed nations. The retail square feet per person is about 6x the amount of Europe, and according to several industry sources, the trend is moving towards smaller and smaller spaces (something we can all anecdotally see given the numerous local malls we see closed or half-empty).
But whether your favorite local shop or major national chain is looking at how to prosper in smaller spaces or not, they are all looking to maximize their revenues and profits from whatever space they have, however large or small. A recent project we worked on with a client has inspired us to think of one possible innovation that may start as something small but has the potential to be a game changer.
Run Your Checkout Counter Like a Call Center?
For those who aren’t familiar with the typical approach to managing the volume of incoming calls, call centers will typically schedule for a manageable “average” that falls somewhere below what they expect the peak number of calls to be at the busiest hour of the day. The calls that exceed the number of staff on the floor are hopefully going to make it into the waiting queue, where additional phone lines are ready to keep the caller on hold until another rep is available. Beyond that total number of lines, additional callers will get a busy signal and will need to call back (or call a competitor!).
So, what is it about a checkout counter that could possible benefit from this kind of “peak management” strategy? Large retail stores in all sectors currently staff in a similar manner, but unlike a call center, the checkout counter is in the same place where customers purchase their products. The diagram below shows a common layout for many national and regional retail chain stores, with the registers numbering anywhere from 8 – 20 unique POS terminals.
As the diagram shows, and you have undoubtedly seen for yourself on a typical weekday outside of peak season, a very large percentage of registers in most stores were built just to be ready for the busiest 6-8 weeks of the year. While store managers may feel assured they will be ready when peak season arrives (providing they can staff them all), corporate managers crunching numbers might be wondering what the cost/benefit is of hundreds of square feet of space sitting idle – and not selling product – for up to 80% of all the open hours over the course of a year. In this case, what would the call center model tell us to do?
Flexible Floor Plans to Match Flexible Staffing
The disconnect in retail vs. the call center is that while the approach to peak hours and days in regards to staffing may be similar, the cost to the retail store in equipment and idle space is punitive given the typical discrepancy in square footage needed to support each staff member AND the locations that will differ widely in terms of rent (as call centers can be almost anywhere – leading to much lower rents).
But what if a retail store could flex the number of existing POS stations by having only what they need for peak hours THAT WEEK and then re-purpose the space to permit more product to be on display?
There are a lot of variables, as well as a lot of possibilities or limitations depending on season, retail sector, inventory, etc. that will factor into the ability for a store to make this worth the effort, but the math for some will definitely make it an option to consider – IF the effort required to increase the POS stations for peak months is also easy and logical.
Introducing the Mobile POS Flex-System
Now that we have a path to see how to utilize more of our retail space for product display, we can now look at a solution that matches the peaks and valleys of annual foot traffic with both the POS stations needed AND the staffing for them.
If the POS stations were portable – even better, on WHEELS – a retailer would accrue a very solid list of benefits that would be make a great case for almost any other potential investment in equipment or other improvement:
- Unused POS Stations can be stowed or stored on or off-site depending on how soon they would be needed.
- They can be shared or transferred between stores to accommodate differing traffic patterns, sales events or changes in store footprints.
- Mobile POS Stations can also be placed strategically in a retail space to be closer to big-items, outdoor or warehouse spaces or near where quick-moving product purchases may reduce the lines at the main register.
- They might also lend themselves well to leasing options, eliminating the need to own the full fleet of POS stations just for the 2-3 months of the year they are needed.
In this scenario, the retailer can scale back the additional retail space in the previous diagram and recreate the full line of registers they used to have sitting idle most of the year. A matching piece of countertop linking each station converts two or more into a complete “fixed” checkout area.
“But Wait, There’s More!”
In fact, the idea we saw at a client’s location that really inspired this concept was the “More!” part. In this use case, setting up a Mobile POS Station in a strategic layout built around or near the fitting rooms would give guests an opportunity to check-out their items immediately rather than adding to the burden of the front of store checkout line. It also provides an opportunity for the retailer to have a single staff member monitor and maintain the fitting rooms, prep the unsold product to go back onto the shelves and provide a great customer experience for those ready to make their purchases immediately after trying them on.
Similar concepts can be used on a department-by-department basis depending on the need if there is a special sale or season where one area holds a great share of attention due to the nature of that seasonal surge (i.e. Back-to-School products, Halloween items, etc.)
Retail Innovates and Adapts
In the late 90’s, some prophets saw the coming of the internet as the end of TV advertising – but now we seem to have “TV” style advertising everywhere we look, including most websites we use every day. Likewise, they also forecast the “end of retail stores!”, and while some of history’s largest and most innovative E-commerce pioneers have worked hard to fulfill that prophecy, some – like Amazon – have opened up their own stores as well as if to be hedging their bets. As we’ve learned from both established Brands and newcomers in the last decade, many retailers have proven to be both innovative and resilient – in part because they understand there is still a strong like by many consumers to enjoy the “shopping experience” of being away from your chair and your screens and out among other consumers to see things close-up and in person.
