Situ Live, which bills itself as “a discovery playhouse to inspire your everyday”, is an immersive consumer electronics experience store featuring 75 brands that is built for product trial rather than instant purchase. Following in the footsteps of some of the great experience-led retail concepts of the last few years like Pirch, the Google Store Chelsea and Sonos’ New York flagship, the store is arranged into zones representing different rooms of the house or lifestyle missions, with live appliances and devices ready to be explored.
The store includes the “On the move” Mobility section, the connected “Nutrition Kitchen” and zones modelled as a bedroom and a living to show off the capabilities of the products it hosts in contextual surroundings. There is also an Oculus Virtual Studio and areas focused on fitness, gaming and working from home.
Shoppers are invited to explore and use all of the products with guidance from Situ staff, who are referred to as demonstrators and storytellers, rather than sales people. Indeed Situ Live is so geared towards experience and product trial that nothing in the store is actually available to buy.
Situ Live doesn’t make money from selling products. Instead, brands pay Situ to feature in the space and to have independent, Situ-employed staff walk customers through them.
When customers discover something they’re interested in at Situ Live, they scan a QR code that adds it to their wishlist on the Situ Live website, where they can compare prices and product specs in their own time. One more click from there will redirect them to the respective brand’s ecommerce site, where the customer can buy directly through the brand, leaving Situ out of the transaction altogether.
Through a partnership with AI and machine learning experts The Data Analysis Bureau, Situ also offers partner brands analytics and insights from the digital and physical channels to help them “in converting more sales and product research and development”.
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