The takeaway from PSFK’s Future of Retail Conference: “There’s panic in the C-suites. Everyone’s focusing on DTC. The obsession is real.”

NEW YORK — You could make the argument — rightly so — that Harry Gordon Selfridge was the first merchant to truly grasp the power of experiential retail.

When, in 1909, Louis Bleriot became the first person to fly over water, Selfridge sprung to action, drawing a crowd of over 150,000 people to view a four day retail installation of Bleriot’s plane. On that back of that success, he’d then go on to throw several more events — charity balls, parties, and in-store events — all tied to Selfridges.

This was a man who believed that a department store should be “a social shopping center, not merely a place for shopping.” Walk into any Selfridge’s today and you can still feel that idea at work. It’s very much a place for shoppers to touch and try out products, which can’t be said about all retailers today.

In speaking at PSFK’s Future of Retail conference in New York last month, Appear Here CEO Ross Bailey elaborated a bit more on how retail’s progressed since Selfridge’s days. “Somewhere along the line, retail got really lost,” he said. “[It] went from people from show business running the store — to accountants. Retail has just become really quite boring.”

He’s not far off the mark. Currently, 70% of shoppers start their purchase journeys online, and while DTC brands are winning that game hands down, most existing brick-and-mortar players are struggling greatly with this shifting tide. “There’s panic ensuing in C-suites,” said Ron Faris, GM at Nike’s NYC Digital Studio. “Everyone is focusing on DTC. The obsession is real.”

Make no mistake — retail footprints are shrinking, but people still crave the “human connection, tactile experiences, and product curation” that physical stores offer — not just the seamlessness that you find on the web.

As PSFK pointed out in their Future of Retail report, shoppers don’t think in terms of digital and physical any longer. They simply want to shop in a way that’s most convenient for them. The answer for existing retailers, then, is crystal clear: If they hope to capitalize on this new consumer behavior, they better start making moves to adjust their infrastructure accordingly.

To get a better sense of where things might be going, here are two key takeaways that stuck out for us during the conference:

Old (and new) retailers are still tweaking the recipe. You can see this in action with the emergence of the pop-up as a standard tool in the modern brand playbook. The rationale here is simple. First, pop-ups are relatively easy to set up. And second, brands are using them as live marketing campaigns, rather than just points-of-sale, making them a powerful way for customers to experience the physical manifestation of a brand’s look and feel.

There’s also the fact that these projects tap into shoppers’ FOMO. “People are time poor,” said Bailey. “Millennials have commitment issues.”

When tech is thrown into the mix, it has to also be for a purpose. As Rachel Schechtman, CEO of ephemeral retail concept Story explains, whenever she opts to use tech in her space, she asks herself two questions beforehand: “What experience can’t people get on their couch? And would I stand in a store and do that?” Tech must be a means to that end — not the end in and of itself.

To that point, that’s where sales associates come in, suggested Lionesque Group founder Melissa Gonzalez. “Training the staff [is the] most important touchpoint,” she said, “but [you] can’t truly convey the essence of [your] brand unless you teach them.”

Adding caution, Bailey warned that arming sales associates with tech for tech’s sake is a big risk. “Digital mirrors are boring — no one cares,” he said. “It would be much better to have great service.”

Community was also a huge theme. Retailers have to create an atmosphere for shoppers that makes them feel as though they’re part of something special. Whether it’s a physical space or online, the way to approach this properly is by changing the way we view product.

Liz Bacelar, CEO of open source incubator TheCurrent, hammered this point home nicely: Products have to be more than just products. In other words, they now act as a carrier of a brand’s values.

Nike also offered a great case study here. For them, products are often treated as content opportunities. Take, for instance, their SNKRS Stash app project. For its recent Public School drop, the brand set up its own version of Pokémon Go through the app, and triggered an AR-powered shopping frenzy.

Faris took his camera phone out to capture the moment at Washington Square Park, snapping photos of as shoppers huddled around in groups of two or three trying to find invisible sneakers with the AR-interface — behavior that he predicts could be the “future of lines.” When you found a shoe, an instant shopping cart was unlocked. “The future of lines is not linear,” he argued.

Tying this directly into the community theme, Faris also explained that he thinks of Nike as a “tribe” that leverages the energy of its fans and scarcity of product to galvanize sneakerheads around these live shoppable stories. His theory: enticing influencers to evangelize the brand by rewarding them in this interactive way is a powerful strategy for driving revenues.

“You do less talking,” said Faris. “Your job is to empower influencers as first responders so they can continue to wake up in the morning and waste time with your brand.”