As the elegant glass door yields to your push, you find yourself in a brilliantly lit, aesthetically sparse room. Enveloped yolk-like in an atmosphere of serenity, you glance around, admiring the delicate flourishes of a skilled hand and thoughtful mind; tasteful light fixtures, reclaimed shelving, an Eames-inspired chair, and it. ‘It’ being the object in the centre of the room to which your attention is irrevocably drawn.
The sparseness of the room acts as negative space, framing ‘it’ and making your decision to look at it an inevitability.
So, you buy it. It is a book.
And, you feel good for having bought it.
Why? Curation.
Before we proceed, I must tell you something. What you’ve just read isn’t the feverish working of this writer’s mind. No, it’s the description of a real-life curated retail experience.
Tucked unobtrusively down one of Ginza’s many winding backalleys, Morioka Shoten is a bookstore that stocks only one book (but sells multiple copies thereof) each week.
The store’s owner, Yoshiyuki Morioka, carefully selects the title which will be presented to the buying public each week. And, his choice is trusted.
Conscious consumers trust curators such as Morioka because they have spent time and effort developing their expertise.
What had previously been something confined to the art world has bled into the realm of consumption more generally. Morioka previously ran a conventional bookstore in Kayabacho for over a decade and is steeped in literary knowledge. His previous store would typically stock over 200 titles.
Yet, Morioka found, time after time, that shoppers were either visiting the store for a particular book, or were visiting with the aim of finding something new to read and being hopelessly overwhelmed by the amount of choice on offer.
In this scenario we can see parallels with other things that we consume.
There’s so much content on Instagram! Who should I follow?
There are so many dining experiences I could try. But, which one is right for me?
Plus, as the Internet is flooded by a firehose of AI-generated content, discerning what’s good and what isn’t is more difficult than ever…
There are people (we could call them aspirational consumers) who want to consume the very best of whatever medium or content they are focused on at that moment. But, determining what is ‘the best’ is a challenge.
How do you achieve aspirational consumption in a world that offers so much, with so few filters? How do we sort the good from the bad when we are all so time-poor?
Morioka’s answer is curation.
Curation acts as the filter, the arbiter of what is and is not representative of the good.
Curation isn’t merely personalisation. Instead, it is more akin to ‘wise selection’. But, even that explanation falls short. Curation is an abstraction - but one that is recognisable. Consider Saint Augustine’s appeal - “What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know”.
You know it when you see it - is perhaps a less pretentious, but less fun, way of describing curation.
What does curation look like in practice? Let’s turn our attention back to Morioka’s Ginza bookstore.
Morioka has transformed the book buying process into an immersive experience. He enhances the literary experience by bringing to life each book of the week.
There is a performative aspect to Morioka’s book sales.
Does the book on offer feature a scene in which the protagonists bond over a mutual love of lotus flowers? Then Morioka will quietly slip a preserved lotus flower between the pages of the book as he sells it.
On other occasions he will display art on the walls of his shop that plays a central role in the book that’s on sale.
These sort of touches aren’t for everyone. But, that’s rather the point.
Curated consumption experiences are for those who don’t want to traipse around Waterstones or H&M for generic, commodified products.
And, that’s the underlying drive behind curated consumption. The avoidance of commodification.
As a brand, you embrace commodification at your peril. It’s a race to the bottom that requires massive upfront capital, huge sales volumes and vast tracts of logistical infrastructure (as I am wont to point out, the likes of Amazon aren’t really retailers - they’re logistics and hosting companies with a shop stuck on).
The reality is, for many brands, the only way to secure a long term future and respectable profit margins is to eschew commodification and offer consumers a curated shopping and buying experience.
Despite their best efforts, many mass-retailers have tried, and failed, to provide curated shopping experiences. And therein lies your opportunity.
It’s an opportunity that is already being embraced by direct to consumer brands. Take Outfittery, for example. This brand allows shoppers to collaborate with a stylist to create a curated selection of clothes. It’s a novel and interesting experience.
Or, how about the rather bibulously named Thatcher Wine? Since 2001, Mr Wine has been providing a ‘curated bookshelf’ service in which he curates the libraries of the rich and famous.
These are only a smattering of the curated experiences that are flowering across the retail landscape. But, expect to see more. As we’ve described above, for many brands it’ll become an economic necessity. Whilst for luxury or aspirational brands, it’ll make good strategic sense to embrace the art of curation.
We think one of Dior’s senior marketing directors sums up the situation rather well:
“Modern life necessitates curation in the first place. The way we identify authority has changed. If a retailer isn’t a curator, are they really selling anything at all?”
The curators are coming…
Offer your customers a curated shopping experience with Velstar
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E-commerce stores to us aren’t mere ‘projects’ to be worked upon, but artisanal endeavours that will leave you eager to show off your digital shopfront (and your curated experience) to the world.
Let’s have a conversation.