The AppLounge is a hybrid space, featuring a selection of well-crafted mobile applications and services. It opens from 15 September 2010, at 100 Wardour Street for coffee during the day and cocktails at night, encouraging people to discover and sample exciting new mobile and tablet applications, digital content, including eBooks, eMags, and useful online services. During the London Design Festival, the AppLounge will also conduct inspiring AppTasting events and AppHealth workshops.

This first-of-its-kind ‘pop-up’ space was has been designed to facilitate discovery, education, and engagement. The AppLounge is an innovative alternative to the traditional retail environment, converging the best of in-store and online retail experiences. This unique collaboration between Digital Wellbeing Labs, Method, App.itize.us, Spotspot, and D&D London, celebrates the best in contemporary design languages from around the world and aims to answer the challenges that retailers face as e-commerce reshapes the retail process and consumer behavior. Says Grünsteidl: “The value of the storefront is changing from one of transaction to experience. We are witnessing a transformation in business models for retailers which is opening up possibilities for convergent retail experiences. The AppLounge is a pilot store that aims to bridge the gap between the in-store and online retail experience. The space is designed to encourage customers to slow down, have a drink, and sample a variety of applications and accessories on display.” The Applounge serves as a conduit between producers and customers and is not necessarily involved in any transactions.

Conceived by Alexander Grünsteidl, together with a collective of design agencies and a hospitality group, the AppLounge proudly presents a new retail concept, bringing together hospitality and the latest in physical and digital products under the umbrella of Mobile Lifestyle. Mobile Apps, accessories and content, like music and iBooks are presented as collections that will enrich daily life and resonate with consumer lifestyles. The first Digital Lifestyle Showroom made its debut during the 2006 London Design Festival to critical acclaim. Grünsteidl has also written a thought piece on the topic of retail convergence, titled “Changing Retail Currency” for the 10×10 thoughts on design series published by Method.

The AppLounge is open from 15 September through to 2 October at Meza, 100 Wardour St, London W1, UK.

Hours of Operation:
Monday – Saturday 12pm – late

Location:
The AppLounge at Meza
100 Wardour St
London, W1F 0TN UK
http://www.mezabar.com

For more information please visit www.theapplounge.com

About the Sponsors:

Method
Award-winning product, service, and experience innovation firm Method proudly sponsors the AppLounge. Method designed AppLounge materials and lead execution, from the brand identity and mark to the website, in-store displays, posters, and promotional material. Additionally, Method has provided direction on marketing strategies, event production, and the retail experience.

Alexander Grünsteidl is the Senior Director of User Experience at Method, and the author of a thought piece for Method’s 10×10 series, “The New Retail Currency.” Learn more about Method and read Alexander’s 10×10 piece at www.method.com.

To get in touch with Method, please email inquiries@method.com.

app.itize.us
Jason Fields founder of app.itize.us is happy to have provided guidance and curation for the carefully selected applications and services available at the AppLounge. Find out more about app.itize.us at app.itize.us.

Spotspot Creative & Engineering
Spotspot proudly participates in the AppLounge concept development and design of the pilot shop. Spotspot creates interactive objects for public and commercial spaces that link physical and digital customer experiences. Learn more about Spotspot at www.spotspoton.com

Meza and D&D London
D&D London is the UK’s leading high-end restaurant group with an annual turnover of more than £70 million and 20 individual restaurants across London, including Meza in Soho, which plays host to the AppLounge this September. www.danddlondon.com.

Most visible has been the demise of content providers; the record stores, the book shops and the news traders. The changing nature of distribution of content and the cost structures around it, have made physical locations redundant… or are they? Airline and travel agents have already virtually vanished and post and bank services are desperately seeking ways to validate their presence.

At the same time the consumer electronics industry has matured to a point that most products are sold as commodities. Retail margins have diminished, partly driven by online comparison engines and sales aggregators, such that is has become almost unfeasible to offer any customer facing sales services in brick-and-mortar environments. Consumer electronic stores and soon most mobile service provider shops will vanish in the form we have known for the past decades.

The high street is a social environment. A place where people go to discover and learn about products and services, up till recently an essential place for contact between the producers and their customers. Sure companies have always been depending on word of mouth between friends and colleagues, mail order catalogues arrived with the rise of the railroads, and a range of advertisement tools have evolved to reach customers in the most appropriate context, but the current changes are not far from a revolution.

What type of retail is still viable in brick-and-mortar setting? Over the past decennium, since the advent of the internet, the diversity of stores has been greatly reduced. An average high street is left populated with fashion and footwear stores, the odd telecom service providers and plenty of coffee-shops. One may argue that there are increasingly less incentives to visit the high-street.

Retailers and sales executives will point out that perishable goods, instant gratification, last minute orders, impulse purchases and cross-selling opportunities remain a strong incentive for maintaining a presence on the high street. We have only just arrived in the Information Society and we can see many online and mobile services in development which will directly be competing with this argument.

Recently the discussion has been heated by the news that some of the large supermarket brands in the UK are successfully starting to compete on the internet with huge online catalogues filled with “convenience” fashion articles.

Still, we hang on to business models which emerged as part of the industrial society. Industrialisation drove rapidly expanding transport and in succession communication infrastructures, followed by new distribution models for goods. Retail, in simplified terms, has always been about trading in demand and supply models, based on scarcity or basic availability, volume or quality. The department store emerged as a direct result of industrialisation, purchasing large quantities of certain products straight from factories and then repackaging these into smaller fractions which then are passed on, at added value to the customer. Continuous and transparent access to the internet in combination with modern, highly efficient distribution infrastructures make the traditional retail models obsolete. In the end online retailers like Amazon will always offer more choice at the lowest price.

We are offered more choice, but within less variety. It becomes increasingly difficult for a customer to find out what fits with their lifestyle. The highly successful iPhone Appstore is a point in case. There are already over ten thousand products on offer. How do you know which one suits you? Do you have time to test all the alternatives? How do you know if the reviewers can be trusted and match your sense lifestyle? Recommendation engines and current CRM systems are a far way off to offer trusted insights into products and allow us to form meaningful service relationships.

Future retail innovation, for example, is predicted to include 3D online shelves, in Second Life type environments, promising to offer a chance to preview, see demonstrations and learn about the use of products in the privacy of your home. Really? Shopping online, in its current form, is a solitary experience, but people are inherently social beings that enjoy shopping together with friends and family.

Only in recent years have broadband connections started offering seamless transitions, user interfaces across product and service touch points have become sufficiently integrated, that for the first time we get a hint of what continuous user experiences will be like in the future.

In this blog we investigate the rise of the experience stores, scrutinise technologies appearing to benefit the customer experience, explore the development of new types of products and services that are offering innovative product development opportunities, discuss new directions in CRM (customer relationship management), or what some call CMR (customer managed relationships) and we will make a case for a new type of lifestyle showrooms.

The High-street is an essential part of our economy and we at dwb-labs are investigating the type of hybrid environments that will emerge to replace the vacancies left by diminishing brick-and-mortar retail.