Curate Retailing: Tailoring the Product Mix to a Customer Experience [Antonia Branston, Senior Retail Industry Analyst] ANTONIA BRANSTON: What I'm going to talk to you about today is curation, which is something that we're seeing a lot in store. It's a word for when retailers begin to tailor their product mix in order to not only create a product mix that's more appropriate for the customers that they expect to see coming through the door, but also to start introducing them to new concepts, to start bringing new types of customers into their retail store by maybe mixing up their traditional range of products with some new ones. It's something that we're seeing particularly within department stores, which there's been a rash recently of beauty boutiques opening up within department stores. So these are self-selection areas where people can go in, and they can see side-by-side premium products alongside things like dry hair shampoo, for example. So it brings in a whole new bunch of consumers at different price points, and also maybe introduces consumers who would normally be more comfortable in a self-service environment, such as a drugstore, into a new environment, such as a department store that they might not automatically think of going to to shop. Now, this can also happen online. But online, it has got another really important function. And that is to help consumers navigate the enormous amount of product choice that there is available on the internet. But it's very important that this is done in such a way that consumers don't feel that their choice is being limited. Instead, it's a much more aspirational sort of feeling. They feel like they're being directed towards something better and being sort of raised up as a consumer to a higher product level, if you like. So there are a number of different ways that curation can be done. There are a number of different people that can actually be the curators. I mean, you can go from the retailers, themselves. And when retailers do this, it's very similar to what we used to call "tailoring the product mix." But there are also people like peer-to-peer recommendations that raise one product above another and say, try this. And if you like this, then try these ones. There are, of course, the consumers themselves. Many retailers are now introducing automated processes that look at where consumers are going on their websites, what products they're looking at. And even now, they're beginning to bring in factors such as where the consumer lives, what sort of weather there is at that time, maybe interactions that the consumer has had with that retailer via emails to customer services, for example. And it is bringing together all these sorts of information to put a more tailored product selection onto this particular consumer's home page when they visit their site. So that's the sort of curation that is actually, in a sense, directed by the consumer, even if they don't realize it. And then, of course, we move on to the realm of bloggers and video loggers, which are increasingly being perceived by retailers as a really important source of reviews and recommendations, and essentially guidance for consumers who have got so much choice, they don't know how to find the right product. So they're looking to people like bloggers and video loggers to suggest where they should go. And this is becoming so important, of course, that retailers are actually wooing bloggers and creating special events for them, making some of them brand ambassadors, even. And then you're seeing this go the full circle, with now bloggers such as Michelle Phan, who's a very well-known, trailblazing beauty blogger, actually opening up her own site called Ipsy, which brings together bloggers, reviews, peer-to-peer recommendations, but also, crucially, sells the products, as well.