Strategic design. Instant impact. Lasting growth.
At this year’s RetailSpaces conference, Richard Dirstein and Gabe Wilson, former VP of Development at WSS, detail the two-year modernization of the WSS Inglewood store. Moving away from a traditional, high-density layout, they share how a streamlined new design, complete with lower fixtures for better sightlines, defined merchandise zones, and local-inspired graphics, is redefining the brand’s physical footprint.
happy to present to you today. Looking forward to it. You know, this has been a project that has been ongoing um for two years, a partnership from two years. We actually met here at Retail Spaces. So, looking forward to it.
Yeah. So, proof that the the concept works, you know, um we've done the speed dating for a number of years and uh what a great relationship we've managed to have come out of this. in 2024 in Austin had the opportunity to meet um SLD and Rich and um who knew we'd be standing on the stage almost two years later talking about some of the success we had. One PSA I want to say about uh retail spaces at least from a client point of view or a retail point of view is what I really enjoyed about Rich and SLD is when I sat down uh he had already knew done research about who WSS was and he had a clear idea at least had had some opinions on what our pain points were and I really appreciated that and I was like okay there's something here like he clearly next slide is he he put in the work to win the work and it was immediate and we were already really far down the path with another agency Um, and I decided to pull out of that and say, you know what, Rich, let's make this happen. So, glad you did.
Yeah. Thanks so much.
Thank you. Thank you.
It stands for warehouse shoe store. We are primarily located in southwest uh United States with about 70 stores in Los Angeles. Been in business for 40 years. When I came in two and a half years ago uh with the leadership team, we said we need to modernize this brand. About four years, four and a half years ago, we've come in and said we really need to do some things differently.
Obviously, the biggest part of this is what our stores look like. It was like a sea store of footwear, right? Every easy lineal foot, every lineal foot um had a product and it was stacked from floor to ceiling as you can see in these photos. That's great. There's great inventory there.
You've got a size and every skew, but the problem is is that customers can't navigate it. You know, you've got family shopping together. It's really easy to lose a kid.
It was the it was a classic stack it high and let it fly model. So, we really kept it to um you know, what is it? Store design through a human lens. um and what those senses are. And so we came up with these five pillars that we have to remain true to.
A a really interesting data point we pulled out when we were analyzing this is our gondilas were about five foot tall. And then we said the average age of our shopper, the mom shopping with her kids was about 5'1 to 5'2. So at the end of the day like our gondilas were as top as tall as our primary shopper. Like we got to bring those down. And it was really built on function.
why they're so high is because like hey open stock you got to be nine high because that's how sizing works. So when we looked at uh defining success, you know, we put it through our lens and this is our only my only company serving slide. You know, we we use this analogy of think blink. You have a split second to engage your customers to get them to come to your store to activate on your brand. And that is done emotionally.
You know, when you're when you're driving down the highway and you see blue at the corner of your eye, you you realize there's a Best Buy nearby, right? If you see orange, you're probably thinking Home Depot. Um what can WSS do to kind of create a similar effect? So, we've created and leveraged this red on the exterior. We've got the six main subbrands that sit below that.
I talk about moments of pause. Gabe just brought that up. You know, again, with this merchandising of every lineal foot, it's it's like reading a chapter in a book. You know, there needs to be a just a pause where I can set myself up, absorb what I just saw, and then move on to the next chapter. It's important to get the customer where they want to go to.
So, we spent a lot of time looking at the ideal customer journey. We map that out against the different personas of how they would shop the store and create that racetrack. And quite literally we have a racetrack in the middle of the store that gets you through and efficiently fih helps you align to the department you're
and there's there's method to the madness here. What we found is like men that's our primary category. It's most what we spend. Men shop work. So do women.
They also shop work. So there's some connectivity there. But women also shop and kids and so we have that connect connectivity there. Kids shop the team zone. So there's a a thoughtfulness on how all of these are why all these are adjacent how they bleed together.
Pulling this into the future. We chose this site which is um in Englewood. If I'm standing in front of this front of this store, I can see Sofi Stadium. And if I peek over a competitor, I can see into a dome as well. So, we wanted to really stand out at night whenever the blimp's flying over SoFi in certain games, you can actually see the store.
So, we wanted to make it really pop and again modernize what we do from a store exterior standpoint and be able to apply it this apply this at scale on every store going forward.
You know, I also say that even when the store is closed, it's selling. So if somebody sees this after hours, they're going to make a point of coming back here tomorrow cuz they want to see what it's all about. So that whole front of the store glows because we've created it and turned it into a giant uh signbox. So the results I'll start with how much does this cost? This is neutral to what we spent prior.
This is cost neutral which allows us to go quicker on a refresh basis or a remodel basis. is actually lowered in what it would cost us to do a legacy refresh because of all the things that we've inherited um or all the things that we've developed here. Um in terms of how this store has performed over the last 9 months, it's doubledigit comps from where it was um prior. It beats the fleet on sell through. It beats the fleet on conversion.
it beats the fleet on basically every measurable um uh store measure that we that we measure by and um with our customer and and what we've seen from an NPS score is fine, right? I think NPS is it's falling in line with where we see for the rest of the fleet, but the difference here is on the NPS score we have 50 or more percent comments every week, right? people are stopping to make a comment about the store staff, what the store looks like, their experience, and 98% of those have been overwhelmingly positive. And so, we know we're on to something here because we've really obsessed that customer. These are still our customers.
We're also seeing um a new customer base re-engage with us or come shop with us that haven't sho with us as a result of this project. Hey,