From time warning to personal shopper, this is the new shopping

It doesn’t happen often: Anyone who gets into the event will have the store almost for themselves. You then have ten minutes with another client to arrange your things. When your timeline starts, music starts playing in the store, and every few minutes you hear how much time you have left.

New shopping today

You can actually come and pick up an order. And now you can come back again as a customer.

The basic rules for this “new shopping”:

• A maximum of two clients per floor
• The customer must have registered at least four hours in advance
• The visit takes at least ten minutes (to prevent contact between clients who quickly rotate)

The new rules are nice for small libraries, clothing stores, and gift shops that usually don’t have many people at the same time, but large chains have a hard time doing this.

The procedure chose four 10-minute time intervals in one hour. Since two customers are allowed to attend at the same time, that means eight customers per hour. A company spokesperson explains that not every 60 minutes is fully booked, after those 10 minutes of shopping they have quiet time to pay and leave the store.

Branches are already fully booked

Reservations can only be made online and up to 2 days in advance. This is going very quickly, according to the spokesperson: Yesterday at the end of the morning some stores were already full for the day.

By the way, customers are not completely alone in the store. There is also a staffing about order selection, because order aggregation (click and collect) continues as normal in the meantime.

Clothing sets are ready

Most people don’t succeed in picking and fitting clothes in 10 minutes, which is why WE takes a slightly different approach. Clients were able to call in recent days to set up an appointment at their local branch.

A spokesperson says, “We have a phone reception in advance, where we discuss with customers what they are looking for. If desired, items and groups can be suspended in advance.” Then it will also estimate the amount of time required for the shopping appointment.

Incomprehensible excuse exercise

WE Fashion CEO, Joris Aperghis, is not happy to relax in the least: “We will see how many clients will do this, but given the limited capacity provided, this will not have much impact. This is more of an excuse to practice than a good business solution. For us it is incomprehensible. Because we can open it with absolute safety. ”

Because of this limited return, other large stores are choosing to keep their doors closed. For example IKEA Hardware Store, H&M, and Hornbach. Opening doors to very few clients is hardly profitable.

Or, as a Hornbach spokesperson explains: “The average Hornbach store is 15,000 square meters. We are allowed to have two customers there at the same time. Under current guidelines, it is not realistic for us to open. Sorry about that, but we can focus better on reservations. And receiving and online store, in order to serve the largest possible number of people. “

Personal shoppers

Gamma emulator will be opened. “We chose it because we want to see our customers again, but that’s a challenge,” the spokesperson admits.

“You have to imagine: we’ve been closed for a quarter of a year, and our stores have become distribution points. In the morning the employees go to the store and pick all kinds of orders. Sometimes that’s just a few bundles of screws, but sometimes also ten bags of pot soil and a yard heater.” . These requests are everywhere in the store. Now we have to have a regular store again while the order is still going on, because the customers are coming too. “

To visit a hardware store, wait 15 minutes. Gamma Ruse: Each customer is assigned a salesperson, a “personal shopper”. “This way we hope to be able to pass through the store in a fast and efficient way.” Is 15 minutes enough? “We don’t know, we’ll find out. Let’s start over.”