Digital to physical retail: Made.com to open Liverpool showroom this autumn

This week, another example of an online retailer discovering the value of opening a bricks and mortar store to showcase their goods: Following on from our recent article on the merits of physical retail design and creating customer experiences that cannot be replicated online – this week we were interested to read that online furniture retailer Made.com are about to make the move from digital to physical retail for the third time – with the opening of their third furniture showroom next month in the North West.

The spacious new store is going to be located inside the Metquarter shopping centre in Liverpool. The 4,000 sq ft showroom will be nestled amongst other high-end retailers such as Jo Malone, All Saints and Kurt Geiger.

Following the success of the retailers first two forays into physical retail in London and Leeds, the new Liverpool showroom hopes to build on these successes – although they won’t be forgetting their roots and will include exclusive retail technology in store where shoppers will be able to peruse product information via a set of in-store tablets.

The move follows the recent appointment of Susan Given, from SuperGroup to the board and the store suggest that the move is in response to growing demand from their rapidly expanding customer base in the North West. The made.com website traffic comprises around 700,000 hits a year from the Liverpool area, so the physical store is a direct response to this online data.

The head of UK at Made.com, Annabel Kilner, head describes the motivation behind the move:

“As an online-only company, where we can bring our brand to life and enable customers to see the quality of our product, with limited additional costs, we will. The new site allows us to do this – it’s a cost-effective partnership with the centre, meaning there are no big high street costs but we’re alongside great brands such as Hugo Boss and Jo Malone.”