Sidewalk
Brand Design + Strategy
SVA Masters in Branding Thesis
Futures of Nearness: Retail
Background
Some of the country’s most important companies were launched during times of adversity- General Electric, P&G, IBM, General Motors, and FedEx were all born in times of economic turbulence. Those who returned from World War II formed "The Greatest Generation." Square, WhatsApp, and Slack were all founded around the the financial crash of 2008. Now, as Covid-19 has spread to every corner of the world, we’re again in the midst of one of these moments of profound upheaval. In this moment, we have both the need and the opportunity to seize it to profoundly reshape the future.
How can we then use branding to reimagine a future where connection to each other and to the world at large, continues to fuel our humanity? What is the future of nearness in retail in the post-Covid world? What should we bring with us through this portal and what should we leave behind?
“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.”
-Arundhati Roy,
The Pandemic is a Portal
See the full presentation here.
4. March 2020
Then came March 2020.
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As the country reckoned with an unprecedented health crisis, small business owners had to worry about more than just their health.
Businesses labeled as nonessential were forced to shut their doors almost overnight.
Owners scrambled to quickly adapt their businesses,
were forced to let go of employees,
or close their doors permanently.
This pandemic has exposed not only the fragility of these businesses, but in the inequality of the retail landscape.
This pandemic has been "A toxin for underdogs and a steroid for many giants."
Without a safety net, local businesses were left to wait for support and aid from organizations like the Small Business Administration.
While retail giants were thriving and improving sales by leaps and bounds. Walmart saw sales surge in its first quarter at the fastest pace in almost two decades, and Amazon saw a 26% increase in first quarter sales.
And Jeff Bezos got richer and richer, increasing his net worth by 34.6 billion dollars in just 2 months.
But while Jeff Bezos was profiting immensely during this pandemic, local businesses were unable to make ends meet. Twelve percent of small businesses are at risk of bankruptcy.
And nearly a quarter of them have considered closing their doors permanently.
This would have significant impact on the economy, because small retailers employ 11.6 million Americans.
Additionally, small retailers have significant social and economic benefits to their communities– more so than large chains.
Local retailers are more likely to buy, hire, and source, locally themselves– investing more into their communities than chain stores. 68% of local spending stays in the community, compared to 43% of spending at chain stores.
Today, we can get our goods from places both near and far, sometimes overnight.
The things we want and need are near to us within the measure of time, but not distance.
We often mistake speed for proximity.
And because of this, we have forgotten about the places that actually are near to us. The places around the corner, down the street, or a short car ride away.
These are the shops that inhabit our towns.
Our cities.
And our communities.
These shops have been struggling, because of an increasingly demanding consumer, whose expectations have been incrementally growing over the last 2 centuries.
But it wasn’t always this way. It may be hard to imagine a time when big box stores didn’t dominate the retail landscape, but long before Amazon entered our lives, it was local businesses who were the lifeline to the things people needed.
So, how did the giants become giants?
We let them.
1. Introduction
2. The Evolution
Humans have always searched for better, faster, and cheaper ways to do things.
In the early days of brick and mortar retail in the United States, consumers had limited choice in retailers. There was no big vs. small, chain vs. independent, big box vs. specialized. There were just a handful of stores that were indispensable to towns’ residents.
At these “Mom and Pop” stores, the shop owner knew their customers, their preferences and their needs. They knew the service they provided to customers created significant value.
During the early 1800s, the boom of the Industrial Revolution made manufacturing much easier and more streamlined, and enabled the mass production of products.
And this made way for the birth of the department store in the mid-1800s, which introduced the activity of browsing. This transformed shopping from a transaction into an experience!
Department stores began purchasing directly from the manufacturer (versus a supplier). They purchased in large quantities, and learned how to manage vast amounts of merchandise.
Outside of the cities, small businesses were still the heart and soul of communities. But people in rural areas were beginning to gain access to items beyond their homes through mail-order catalogs.
They promoted value and offered everything: from underwear to kits for building homes.
Prior to 1916, grocery stores employed clerks to gather items for customers– a model which created a relationship between the store owner and the customer.
This changed in 1916 with the introduction of the self-service model. This eliminated the clerk, and put the customer in control of their purchases.
This gave consumers the freedom to browse and compare by price.
The mainstream adoption of the automobile offered Americans an even greater sense of personal freedom. Not only could they travel greater distances to get the things they needed, they could bring home more when they went shopping.
The invention of the shopping cart in 1937 gave people another way to buy more, unrestricted by the weight of a handheld basket; encouraging Americans to buy in abundance.
World War II introduced a time of restriction and scarcity and the government implemented rationing.
After the war ended, jobs became plentiful, wages were higher, and Americans became eager to spend. People moved to the suburbs, started families, and tried to live the American Dream.
Spending was encouraged and celebrated. The good purchaser devoted to ‘more, newer and better’ was the good citizen.
As more and more people moved to the suburbs, fewer Americans could simply walk down the street to do their shopping. Shopping malls catered to this new, car-driving demographic, which offered consumers the experience of one-stop-shopping.
In 1962, Walmart, Target, and Kmart came onto the scene and introduced the concept of the discount store.
in 1970s the internet enabled the Electronic Data Interchanges, and paved the way for modern eCommerce. This new technology has become biggest disruptor to brick and mortar businesses, and has given consumers the power to purchase anything, anywhere, anytime.
In 1995, Amazon launched as an online bookseller and has since evolved into one of the most valuable companies in the world.
The evolution of retail has been shaped by abundance, access, variety, and power of choice, and has simultaneously created a need for these things in consumers.
People enjoy shopping local.
People enjoy the unique products, trying new stores, and supporting their towns and cities.
People expressed to us that it feels good to shop local.
They enjoy the level of curation and thought put into the products.
What we ultimately uncovered from our interviews and research, is that there is something local businesses have, that large retailers will never be able to replicate. People see local stores as people and chain stores as businesses.
People worry about local businesses in a personal way. And they feel guilt when they shop at large chains or big box stores.
Though Covid has created much strife for local businesses, it has also increased consumer interest in shopping local. Comparing March to December, conversation about local shopping was up 440%.
More than half of consumers say they are more likely to shop from local businesses. Of those consumers, 68% say they intend to continue to purchase from local businesses beyond the pandemic.
Big brands like Instagram and Google have also shown support for local businesses during this time.
But ultimately, “Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences.”
And as much as people are talking about their love of local shops, and desire to support them, they are not turning that into action.
This illustrates what is called the intention-action gap. According to behavioral science, this can be a result of our desire for immediate gratification. It can hinder such behavior as saving for retirement, flossing our teeth, eating healthy, and the list goes on. It is the space that occurs when one’s personal and cultural values don’t correlate to their actions. It is the difference between what people say and what people do.”
We talked to expert Dr. Steven Tsao, and he outlines it best. “Awareness is part of it, intention is part of it, but there are so many small things that come into play that impact if you will do something. Think about it like a moving target.”
People say they want to shop local more, and they enjoy it- but when push comes to shove, they take their business to large chains and big box stores.
We see from our interview results and cultural analysis that if local businesses are not around, there will be a profound absence both in the community and the hearts of the citizens. But the desire for something doesn’t always translate to effective action. And action is what these businesses need right now. There is an opportunity to leverage this moment of increased awareness and equip local independent retailers with the tools to bridge the intention-action gap.
When we talk about closing the intention action gap, we’re talking about a behavior change. In order for consumers to change their behavior, we need to address key barriers to change, replacing them with enablers of change. We need to make shopping local personally relevant, We need to show people that others are doing it, We need to show people their progress, and we need to make it easy and fun.
This leads us to our strategy, “We seek to move people to action when it comes to shopping local by highlighting and reinforcing the impact that individuals have in their communities.”
To ensure local businesses survive, we need to move consumers to action. To do so, local business owners need to leverage their strengths and deliver their customers an easier shopping experience.
5. Opportunity + Strategy
Today, we’re still seeing many of the same themes, but they have taken shape in a very different way.
Technology has evolved to create new ways to shop. Devices like Google Home and Amazon Echo make it easier and more convenient than the rural American ordering from their Sears catalog could ever have imagined.
A world of on-demand convenience has been opened up. We are living in an age of convenience.
The contrast from the past to now is how willing we are to give up and sacrifice in the name of convenience. We sacrifice our privacy, our health, our money, and our enjoyment in our constant search for convenience.
And while local stores used to symbolize access and convenience, they have been upstaged. Local businesses no longer play a role in our everyday lives.
And the stores that are part of our daily lives have a measured negative impact on the health of local businesses and their communities.
The Walmart effect is a term coined by business journalist Charles Fishman. It refers to the economic impact felt by local businesses when large companies like Walmart open nearby. One study found that within 15 months of a Walmart store opening, up to 14 stores would close in the same area.
Local retailers worry about their livelihood as big box discount stores, move into their neighborhoods. And their fears are well founded.
Because for the majority of Americans, the appeal of convenience is too enticing to resist.
So if the inconvenient is indeed unthinkable, what does that mean for the future of local retail?
To further understand this, and to hear directly from consumers, we conducted in-depth research and analyzed consumer behaviors, drivers, and shopping patterns.
Our research supported our hypothesis, that convenience is, indeed, an important driver in purchase decisions.
People expressed that the ease, selection, and convenience, that larger retailers provided was too appealing to ignore.
We know that local businesses were already struggling in this culture of convenience. Their limited financial and technological resources make it difficult for them to compete.
The rise in popularity of online shopping has significantly reduced the foot traffic that many local businesses rely on.
It has become harder and harder for local businesses to thrive. We discovered that many owners are just happy to survive: to be able to stay in business, pay their employees, and serve their customers.. But sometimes, that is not enough.
3. The State of Retail
As our spheres and lives have gotten smaller and more confined, we have developed new perspectives and appreciation for the things and people that are near to us, the people at the heart and soul of our neighborhoods, our towns, our communities and our local businesses. The pandemic has provided a moment of pause, an opportunity for us to bring our communities closer together. We cannot waste this moment, we cannot return to “business as usual”— we need a solution to keep these businesses at the heart and soul of our communities. Introducing Sidewalk– the online platform that allows local retailers to join together to unite shoppers as a connected community.
Sidewalk makes to make it easier for people to do what they say they want to do– to shop local…to shop where they matter.
Sidewalk will act as a facilitator of thriving local economies. Just as the sidewalk is the common ground that connects individual businesses to each other and to their community members, the Sidewalk brand will do the same. Sidewalk will strive to make shopping local personally relevant to consumers, moving them from intention, to action.
We surveyed the landscape of brands that are supporting small businesses and saw that American Express has a shop small program, but they are not supporting them in a holistic way. We see a significant opportunity that many brands are missing out on.
These brands are connecting small businesses to consumers, but they aren't connecting them to each other or to the community. We don’t want to just help people support their local businesses, we want to make people want to support small businesses.
In order to bring Sidewalk to life, we are recommending a partnership with Square, a brand that is already living in small businesses. Square has eliminated the barrier of payment processing with user-friendly point-of-sale systems and devices. Their entire reason for being is to level the playing field, making it fair and square so that small businesses have more opportunity to participate in the economy.
The brand has since expanded beyond their initial offering of POS systems, and has a variety of tools and services available to small business owners, such as website building, payroll services, and marketing and analytics. Square already has the technology to equip and empower small businesses. We see an opportunity for them to use their technology to connect these businesses to each other and to their communities.