How retailers are deploying in-store experience

Dive Brief:

• Stores are still the most popular channel to shop even as digital sales take on a growing percentage of overall retail sales, according to EY research released in June. Offline retail spend accounts for 77% in 2025 but is expected to drop to 73% by 2028.
• Fresh food, snacks and confectionery, processed food and nonalcoholic beverages were the most popular categories for which consumers shop in person, according to data from the EY Future Consumer Index, which surveys over 20,000 consumers spanning 27 countries.
• “Stores are still dominant,” said Jon Copestake, EY global consumer senior analyst. “And they will be in most categories for some time to come.” 

Dive Insight:

Though AI tools for shopping continue to grow in popularity and e-commerce sales growth outpaces physical, retailers cannot neglect brick and mortar, according to Copestake.

“Stores are valuable assets,” Copestake told sister publication CX Dive. “If you were to consider cutting or eliminating store footprints because of the rise of online and the rise of AI buying, etc., then you may be missing a significant trick.”

The EY AI Sentiment Index, which surveyed 15,000 consumers globally, found that 3 in 5 consumers already use AI to shop. However, only a small portion will trust AI to make that purchase for them, Copestake said.

The grand majority — 94% — of consumers make purchase decisions in a store after browsing across channels.

For that reason, retailers ought to rethink how consumers experience stores and what they want out of them, Copestake said. 

“Stores are really valuable for product discovery,” Copestake said. “They're really valuable for understanding promotions, offers, new product launches, etc., which you don't necessarily get through AI curation, because that's just going to give you what you want and what you've always bought.”

Retailers are also beginning to introduce fresh in-store experiences and services.

“Stores as spaces can be reimagined for lots of things,” Copestake said. “So in apparel and luxury, we're seeing more and more rental services, resale services and repair services creep into stores.”

Providing services in-store can diversify revenue streams and drive increased foot traffic and customer loyalty, according to EY.

Dick’s Sporting Goods, for example, is expanding its experiential House of Sport format, which offers immersive in-store experiences through features like climbing walls and simulated driving ranges. Executives say visitors to those locations stay longer and spend more than the typical Dick’s shopper.

As Walmart-owned Sam’s Club undergoes a growth spurt, with plans to double its sales, profit and membership in the next eight to 10 years, the club retailer’s CFO said convenience, fresh food and omnichannel offerings play key roles.

“[W]e’ve really invested heavily and focused on improving convenience and improving experience, and every trend we see with consumers is they want that,” Todd Sears, senior vice president and CFO of Sam’s Club, said at the Evercore Consumer & Retail Conference earlier this month, based on a Seeking Alpha transcript. 

Sam’s Club has already increased its sales by 50% over the last five years, with the COVID-19 pandemic serving as a “shot of adrenaline,” Sears said, noting this growth was “purely organic” as sales increased while the company maintained roughly the same number of locations.

Over the same five-year period, Sam’s Club has also seen its member base grow 33%, he added.

As the retailer looks to continue growing organically, it is remodeling all of its clubs to give shoppers a “consistent elevated experience throughout,” Sears said. 

Sam’s Club is still working toward its previously stated target of opening 30 clubs over the next five years, Sear said, noting the club retailer plans to be able to open 15 clubs annually, though he did not specify when this would be.

New locations will open in markets where there is a “good enough addressable market” so the company can achieve its “average member base” within a few years of opening, he said. 

“In real estate, it takes a while to build up a pipeline and get going,” Sears said. 

Fresh foods and both online and in-store digital tools are serving as key areas that the club retailer is looking to hook consumers with and make shopping at Sam’s Club more convenient, Sears said.   

The importance of fresh food

Fresh food continues to be a traffic driver for Sam’s Club’s business, Sears said. 

“It’s where the member assesses quality immediately, and they can tell that difference. And so in a lot of clubs, we’ve already remodeled our fresh area, but those we have not, we needed to get it up to the same standard that we have in our best clubs around fresh,” Sears said.

During the company’s most recent quarter, its comparable-store sales increased nearly 7%, growth that is “pretty healthy in retail” and was primarily driven by fresh food purchases and health and wellness products, Sears said.

Sushi is one of the key fresh food areas for the club. Sam’s Club has sushi displays and a sushi chef in 581 of its 600 clubs, Sears said. As the club remodels locations, it’s making sure that the sushi chef is “front and center,” he said.

“It adds this theater,” Sears said. “Sushi is a big traffic driver. [It’s] one of the reasons why people come all the time, and the quality of it is excellent.”

Keeping prices consistent for important fresh items is another area where Sam’s Club aims to differentiate itself from competitors. 

The retailer has not raised prices on pineapples and bananas even though those items are imported, Sears said. Instead, the chain focused on reducing spoilage and waste as a way to offset any cost increases it may feel from tariff-related price hikes, he said.

Building out digital capabilities in-store and online

As Sam’s Club leans into convenience, omnichannel retailing is playing an increasingly important role, Sears said.  

“We believe the future of club retail is omni,” Sears said. “And so that’s why we are investing heavily in omni.”

Sam’s Club’s online shopping app is migrating to the same platform that the Walmart app uses, which will help create a seamless experience for consumers who are already familiar with Walmart’s app, Sears said. The migration started a few weeks ago and is scheduled to be completed in a couple of months, he said. 

Sam’s Club is seeing success with its in-store technology deployments. Scan & Go accounted for 35% of sales during the company’s most recent quarter, up 600 basis points from a year ago, Sears said — “tremendous growth in a technology now that's 9 years old.”

Meanwhile, the retailer’s computer vision solution for automated receipt checking is cutting down on labor at the exit, reducing shrink and making it faster for consumers to leave the store, Sears said. The technology can check twice as many items and has identified 17% more unpaid items than manual checks, Sears said. While some items, like alcohol, require manual checks, the majority of purchases can go through the exit arches, cutting down the time they spend in-store, Sears said.

E-commerce accounts for 17% of Sam’s Club’s sales, excluding fuel, up 300 basis points from a year ago, and the digital channel saw sales increase 27% in the latest quarter, Sears said. While most of the chain’s e-commerce sales are curbside pickup, members are also using the other channels, he noted.

“Curbside pickup and shipping have been growing pretty consistently for a number of years. However, delivery has been what’s really taken off as of late,” with that channel growing 160% year-over-year in the latest quarter, Sears said. 

The club retailer’s newly launched pizza delivery is introducing members to the delivery channel, Sears said, noting that the service “has exceeded our expectations.”

“What’s surprising is the average order value of a pizza order is 10X the price of the pizza, so people are adding other things to the basket,” Sears said. “The other thing that is interesting is that a significant percentage of the total orders, members are choosing to pay for it for delivery through express. … The value on the pizza is so big. They’re willing to pay that extra money to have it delivered that much faster.”

The need-it-now desire for the pizza is driving some consumers to try delivery and the express delivery options for the first time, Sears said.

“When you have this total omni offering, again, it’s allowing the members to choose how, where and when they want to shop,” Sears said. “It all kind of works together.”

CVS Health introduced a mobile app that allows shoppers in a handful of stores to unlock secured display cabinets to access merchandise, the company announced in January 2025. The feature is a test for now. 

With the app, which succeeds the retailer’s previous CVS Pharmacy app, shoppers can also access savings offers and pick up prescriptions in stores using personalized barcodes. Through partnerships with Everyday Health, Headspace and other companies, CVS app users will have access to a variety of health and wellness content.

The drugstore retailer also leaned into AI for the overhaul, integrating AI into its search functions to help shoppers locate products, services and information. It plans to add a conversational AI chatbot to answer questions about medication refills and order status later in 2025.

CVS’ unlocking feature follows shopper frustration with retailers securing inventory in stores as a way to deter retail crime.

Some drugstores and mass-market retailers, as well as beauty retailer Ulta, have turned to locking products behind glass to prevent theft, and staffing issues further deter shoppers from buying the products they want, experts told Retail Dive. While 62% of consumers will wait for assistance from a store staffer if they find a product locked up, 27% of shoppers will abandon their purchase or choose a different retailer, according to a survey from the data technology company Numerator. 

CVS’ app also includes features to manage shoppers’ healthcare needs, including vaccine scheduling and prescription management. The retailer will continue enhancing its mobile app with additional features, including personalized recommendations and educational content for patients with chronic medical conditions and efforts to connect them to cost savings and copay assistance programs. 

“As a company, we are super focused on improving the health care experience,” Tilak Mandadi, executive vice president at CVS Health, said in a statement. “The CVS Health app will make it easier for our customers to access and manage their health and care, save time and money, and make informed decisions about their health.”

The app upgrade comes a few months after CVS announced plans to lay off 2,900 employees, about 1% of its workforce, on the back of a plan released in 2024 to reduce expenses by $2 billion. Just weeks after the layoffs, CVS named David Joyner as its chief executive officer, replacing Karen Lynch. 

Alongside its cost-cutting efforts, CVS has also invested in its product assortment, welcoming several new brands. In July 2024, the drugstore chain introduced tween period care brand Pinkie across more than 3,300 locations. Days later, the skin care brand Curology announced its expansion into 3,800 CVS locations. 

While retailers have a vested interest in understanding all of their shopper demographics, the industry’s youngest customers are always a source of fascination, even before they fully come into their spending power. They represent the future retailers need to build toward, and their preferences will shape investments in the industry in a variety of ways.

Although the youngest Gen Zs just entered their teenage years, attention is already turning to their successors, Gen Alpha. The group is still reliant on their parents for money, but they’re already influencing purchase decisions. According to Holden Bale, global chief strategy officer of Merkle, almost 75% of Gen Alpha members are already driving purchase decisions.

“I don't know if you've had a conversation with a child recently,” Bale said during a presentation at Shoptalk Spring, noting that in a recent discussion over where to go for dinner a seven-year-old girl “made all the decisions for me. I had no input.”

While it’s too early to say many things about Gen Alpha, if they follow in Gen Z’s path they’ll likely be digitally savvy and have a penchant for in-store shopping. According to Merkle, 81% of Gen Z prefer shopping in person to online, which is higher than every other generation.

In the wake of the conference, here’s how a few different retailers are thinking through the store experience for some of retail’s youngest shoppers.

Sephora

In the era of Sephora kids, the beauty retailer is well aware of the allure of its stores for young shoppers, even as they’re more digitally aware than ever.

“It's about play,” Celessa Baker, vice president of marketing partnerships for Sephora, said of the company’s stores. “Consumers come in to touch, feel, but what we are noticing is they're on their phones. So they are looking at product on their phone.”

Shoppers are checking out ratings and reviews, looking at influencer and creator content, and consuming that information throughout their shopping journey in stores, Baker said. Meanwhile, store associates are there to give guidance and the retailer hosts events and brand days where different companies can educate consumers on a product. Beauty is a tactile space, which makes stores appealing even as online content flourishes. For Gen Z and Gen Alpha in particular, Sephora “is really their playground.” 

“I used to hang out at a mall. It's no different. My daughter wants to hang out in a mall,” Baker said. “Sephora happens to be a trending space right now, so I will take it. You just have to educate the younger consumers on appropriate behavior as they’re in the stores and what that looks like. But I think as long as you are rooted in discovery, in visualization — and you’re a warm and welcoming place, that digital, offline, the content, the storytelling, will ultimately lead to a path to purchase in store.”

Foot Locker

At Foot Locker, appealing to younger generations comes in multiple forms, with Gen Alpha likely shopping its Kids Foot Locker format and older teens graduating to its namesake banner. When it comes to the youngest of shoppers, though, Foot Locker’s approach is two-fold. 

For Gen Alpha themselves, Global Chief Customer Officer Kim Waldmann said the retailer has spent a lot of time looking to understand the group, including their fluency with technology. She noted that Gen Alpha is the first truly digitally native generation, in that they were born with more advanced mobile phones, and they therefore start engaging with YouTube videos, product reviews and other such content early on.

“The point is, by the time that kid is going into the mall with his parents, he already knows about product and brands, right? He already has preferences, and so he's really driving the choice in that store environment in a way that maybe kids didn't in the past,” Waldmann said.

She noted that Gen Alpha kids are more independent than their predecessors, so Foot Locker has designed its revamped Kids Foot Locker locations to allow them to drive their own experience and be able to customize products. But as independent as kids are these days, their parents are still footing the bill.

President Frank Bracken said the retailer has thought of them too, with kids’ activity tables in stores so parents can keep them entertained if they’re shopping for multiple children at once. A technology-enabled sizing experience will tell kids not just what size they are, but how much they’ve grown since the last time they came into the store. The retailer’s store associates are educated on different products and brands, and also expect different things based on the location of the store.

“If you're at Aventura Mall, you're getting a broad swath of consumers where, if you're on 49th Street in Philadelphia, a more multicultural sort of urban setting, you know you're going to get more sneaker mavens who are into basketball and sneaker releases,” Bracken said. “Our store teams, our managers, our striper staff are very acute and aware of those things.”

Toys R Us

Toys R Us’ strategy to appeal to the kids of today, and recover its place in the market after a 2017 bankruptcy that erased its store footprint, includes leveraging its IP in the entertainment industry, hosting in-store events and giving Geoffrey the giraffe a birthday.

Taking inspiration from Sesame Street’s Elmo, Geoffrey is perpetually nine and a half years old, but the toy retailer still celebrates his birthday every year. With a presence across 1,500 stores in 34 countries, Kim Miller, global chief marketing officer for toys at Toys R Us parent WHP Global, says the mascot’s birthday has become “an international holiday.”

Celebrated on Oct. 17, Geoffrey’s birthday has drawn participation from brand partners including Mattel. Toys R Us has also built the giraffe a 1.1 million-strong following on TikTok and has a photo opp with Geoffrey on a bench in every store. Those moves help the brand stay young, despite its growing age.

“You don't want a grumpy 50-year-old giraffe as your mascot down the road,” Miller said, noting that the relationship between fans and Geoffrey is still strong, even for adults who remember the mascot from their childhoods. “We've been to Comic-Con and had 35-year-old men cry when they hug Geoffrey the giraffe, remembering their experience as kids.”

Toys R Us is tapping further into the adult demographic through partnerships with entertainment franchises like Golden Girls, among others, and is hoping to connect with both adults and children via an upcoming movie and in-store events. As to the latter, Miller touted special play days that include local DJs, parades leading up to the storefront and a theme surrounding some form of play, like a Hasbro-run game day or a make-believe day.

“It's bringing that experience to the stores, to the actual physical retail today — and that's the distinguisher between just going on Amazon and typing something in and actually really trying to feel the magic,” Miller said.

Coach

Appealing to U.S. Gen Zers has required a feat of repositioning at Coach, which just three years ago was being perceived as “their mother’s brand,” according to Giovanni Zaccariello, senior vice president of global visual experience. That perception led Coach to lean into “expressive luxury,” a strategy focused on meeting Gen Z shoppers differently.

“Now, they actually think we are their brand after a few years of transformation,” Zaccariello said.

Coach has experimented with its store experience to better align with what Gen Z is looking for, which includes more experiential retail and deeper connections with the brands they shop. One example of that, a concept called Coach Play, which has 12 different locations, is localized to the city it operates in and created based on interviews with store managers and other efforts to understand the local consumer. Zaccariello stressed that trusting regional teams is crucial to the success of these locations.

“Each of them are incredibly bespoke, which means more work, also incredibly local. We don't only speak to the city, but we speak to the neighborhood. Those locations are laboratories for Coach and what we learn in those 12 locations we then roll out around the world,”  Zaccariello said. “So, for example, the first Coach coffee shop actually was introduced in our Coach Play location in Singapore three years ago. Now, we have a rollout plan so you can see how the laboratory and testing and learning kind of works.”

Product customization is also big at these locations, with shoppers able to make cosmetic changes to their Tabby handbags that are removable — a selling point for young shoppers in particular.

“It's not a permanent customization,” Zaccariello said, saying much can be done with charms, handbag straps and stickers. “You want to buy that beautiful Tabby bag and you want to wear it in the evening, at night, for the weekend — so you don't want to put something on top of it and then you cannot wear it anymore, right? Because for a Gen Z, that might be the only bag they can afford.”

Even the layout of these locations is tailored to Gen Z’s preferences — and Coach considers it a win even if Gen Z shoppers aren’t buying anything. Zaccariello noted that one key performance indicator is simply how many Gen Z shoppers are crossing a store’s lease line, and another is how much time they spend there, whether that leads to a purchase or not.

“We will not start a brief without KPIs. So I will personally not design anything unless I know, what does success look like?” Zaccariello said. “Is this for brand building? Is this for traffic driving? Like, how do we know if this is successful?”

American Girl

American Girl is proof that a toy retailer can sell much more than just a doll, while still undeniably being a doll company. The ’80s-era retailer, which opened its first store in 1998, does nail painting, ear piercing and hair styling for children and their chosen doll, and allows them to have tea or lunch with their 18-inch friends at in-store cafes.

In fact, the salon and cafe experiences are so popular that shoppers “have to reserve well in advance” and often call in to say they couldn’t get a spot at a certain time, Jamie Cygielman, general manager and president of American Girl at toy manufacturer Mattel, said. While technology might be present to assist with the experience, like choosing a hairstyle from an iPad or exploring YouTube content throughout the store, American Girl’s selling points are very much in the physical world.

“It was designed to create a place to celebrate girlhood,” Cygielman said of the retailer’s first store in Chicago.

Now, a generation later, Gen Z and millennials still come back to the stores to bask in nostalgia or guide their own kids through the experience, according to Cygielman. 

“We see a lot of original Samantha dolls in the store,” Cygielman said, referencing one of American Girl’s first dolls. “It's the one item that everybody saves and passes down to the next generation or holds for themselves. And so it's really important to make sure that we are still leaning into the legacy — what made this brand so special, the storytelling, the original heroines that were based on different moments in American history. But then also to speak to the child, we've got to bring forward new stories and technology and new ways of giving that storytelling.” 

That means evolving from American Girl print books to also offer a YouTube series, gaming options and more storytelling geared toward a digital generation. There’s also now a build-your-own-doll program on American Girl’s website that allows for 1,000 different permutations. Originally, the option was offered in stores as well, but shoppers were avoiding it because they wanted the benefit of walking out with their doll that day.

The solution for stores, developed later, is called “style guide” and lets kids choose a doll from a whole wall of different options and customize the doll’s clothes, accessories and other things from there. They can choose a pet for the doll, write a background up for the doll and take a selfie at the end of the experience with their new purchase.

Over half of retailers completed a major payments modernization program within the past year, a KPMG modernizing payments report found. For most retailers, the work is not over: 4 in 5 will once again update their payments infrastructure or plan to do so.

Almost 3 in 5 retailers in North America report changing customer expectations as the top factor triggering payment modernizations. The findings are based on a survey by KPMG International of 810 financial institutions and 690 retailers.

A seamless payment experience is critical to customer satisfaction, according to a statement from Duleep Rodrigo, national sector leader of consumer and retail at KPMG U.S. The right delivery can improve operational efficiency and help provide insights into customer behavior, Rodrigo said.

As digital payments become more mainstream for consumers, retailers are trying to keep up with the payment methods they accept. Retailers need to make significant investments to navigate legacy systems, data security and privacy concerns, KPMG found. 

When modernizing their payments, 3 in 5 retailers are working to upgrade and implement digital payments, KPMG found. Nearly the same number are working to add new payment options. 

“Implementing and integrating new payments platforms can be complex and time-consuming,” Courtney Trimble, lead of global payments at KPMG, said in the report. “Despite these challenges, executives recognize the benefits of payment modernization as a catalyst for growth and innovation.” 

One of the biggest roadblocks is cost. Nearly two-thirds of respondents said the top challenge when creating a modern payments program for retail is the cost of implementing new technologies. For over half of respondents, training staff from old to new systems is also a challenge.

Rodrigo said that younger generations of consumers increasingly gravitate to contactless payments, mobile wallets and other digital solutions compared to cash and credit cards. In support of digital efforts, three-fifths of retailers surveyed already offer an app or plan to launch one.

Though Gen Z in particular enjoys in-person shopping, their preferred methods of payment lean digital.

However, frictionless payments come with its pros and cons. While contactless methods of paying can cut transaction times, improve data security and boost customer satisfaction, they are still more vulnerable to certain privacy risks. Bad actors can exploit consumer behavior information for purposes like unauthorized purchases.

Around the Bob's Discount Furniture office, corporate has a saying: “Value is always in vogue,” according to Ramesh Murthy, the retailer’s COO.

That philosophy has enabled Bob’s to expand at a time when the overall home retail category is stagnating. Furniture and home furnishings store sales have fallen since their peak of $12.7 billion in January 2023 to $11.8 billion this May.

Meanwhile, Bob’s announced plans to open 20 new stores this year. Fellow furniture retailer Ikea is opening eight new locations across the U.S. this spring and summer.

While these two retailers differ greatly, they share commonalities that cater to today’s consumer and have been instrumental in their expansion despite category softness: a focus on low prices and a penchant for convenience that seamlessly blends online and in-store shopping into a true omnichannel experience.

“Customers today want things to be easier, faster, and more accessible,” said Rob Olson, COO at Ikea U.S. “We want to meet people … however they choose to shop.”

If the price is right

Pandemic lockdowns prompted a slew of home renovations and furniture purchases. But in the years that followed, home and furniture retail “ran out of steam,” said Matthew Katz, managing partner at consulting firm SSA & Company. 

Home and furniture retailers such as Bed Bath & Beyond, Conn’s, Mitchell Gold Co., Pirch, True Value, The Container Store, Tuesday Morning and Z Gallerie filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Consumer confidence has waned, new home builds are down and mortgage rates are hovering above 6.5%. Material costs have risen and tariffs could hike prices, especially on home furnishings imported from China.

As a result, many consumers are trading down, and value players are poised to take market share from higher price points. “Some of the price-conscious players, like Ikea and others, will have an opportunity to steal share,” Katz said. 

Over the last five years, Ikea has grown its market share in the U.S. by 13.6%, per the retailer. In addition to quality, sustainability and other factors, low price is a key element of its product designs. 

“That’s a big part of why people trust us — we’re committed to making great design accessible to everyone, not just a few,” Olson said. 

Ikea’s sales did fall 5% last fiscal year after it lowered prices in hopes of attracting more consumers. But Jia Li, associate professor at Wake Forest University’s School of Business, expects value retailers to continue to “be in good shape, as long as they find a way to keep their prices down.” 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, high-end home retailers have reported mixed results. RH’s revenue grew 12% year over year in Q1, with executives crediting the retailer's “most desired products presented in the most inspiring spaces in the world, with bespoke interior design services.” In Ethan Allen’s most recent quarter, however, sales dropped 2.5%, with CEO Farooq Kathwari noting “uncertainty in the economy, elevated interest rates and a challenging housing market, that together, have impacted consumer confidence and interest in the home.”

According to Li, price insensitive consumers will continue to shop at high-end stores regardless of economic conditions. “What will be in trouble is those middle retailers,” he said. Consumers shopping in that tier, which includes department stores, are likely to trade down as inflation continues. 

Katz expects “more mixing and matching,” in which consumers purchase high-end furniture but are willing to trade down for accessories, such as a throw pillow. 

“Price will be a big driver for much of this market in the near term,” Katz said.

The shopping experience — on and offline

Value is just one piece of the puzzle. Convenience and omnichannel experiences help retailers stand out, especially for digital-native generations. 

“Their purchase behavior is totally different from the previous generations,” Li said. “If you want to perform well, you must become an omnichannel retailer.”

As Ikea and Bob’s expand their brick-and-mortar footprints, they’re ensuring physical stores and their online presence tie together.

Bob’s offers what it calls an Omni Cart. Consumers can start shopping online, add items to a virtual cart, then visit a showroom to try out the physical product before completing the purchase in store. The process works in reverse too, Murthy said. 

“For furniture, this is unique, and others in the industry are still looking to catch up,” Murthy said. 

Ikea’s remote planning service lets consumers virtually speak to Ikea teams. The retailer also offers in-home kitchen planning, where employees visit the consumer’s home to plan a kitchen together. That service will expand to all stores by the end of this summer, Olson said.

Physical stores remain important in furniture retail, because “people still like to go to the store, take a look, touch it, feel it,” Li said. Just 14% of Bob’s sales are online, compared to the retail industry’s e-commerce penetration of more than 16%. 

At Ikea and Bob’s, stores offer something unique as well: food options. Some Ikea locations have full restaurants with hot food offerings, while others have a Swedish Bistro concept with hot and cold options “for a quick meal on the go,” Olson said. Each Bob’s store has a Bob’s Café with free snacks and coffee, and the retailer 100% matches any donations that customers give in the store. 

Bob’s expansion includes markets such as North Carolina, with high population growth, and a store in Vermont, which “allows us to get closer to a population that has grown up with Bob's and loved it,” Murthy said. 

Ikea has added small-format stores and plan-and-order points, where shoppers can pick up online purchases. The store formats, often located in urban areas, offer convenience to large populations and “allow us to reach people where a traditional large-format Ikea simply couldn’t,” Olson said. 

Ikea’s footprint in the U.S. has grown to 51 stores (up from 40 in 2015), 10 plan-and-order points and 74 pick-up locations.

“It’s been an incredible journey, and we’re just getting started,” Olson said.

In an age where digitization dominates almost every aspect of life, selling pens and paper might seem like a thing of the past.

However, physical methods of communicating aren’t entirely obsolete. The world of stationery continues to exist despite some bigger names in the industry — such as Papyrus and Paper Source — closing some stores or filing for bankruptcy. 

But plenty of small retailers are dedicated to selling something that even artificial intelligence can’t quite mimic: the joy of physical stationery.

This specialized space goes beyond the printer paper or standard back-to-school binders customers might purchase at a big-box store. Nowadays, the product category can encompass a variety of items in the office or desk supplies world, from customized greeting cards your grandmother has to high-quality paper types and pens from Japan. Many countries outside the U.S., such as Germany and Japan, have highly sought-after stationery products. 

Colorful washi tapes, customized day planners, quirky sticky note pads and more are sold to customers who seem dedicated to keeping analog forms of communication and writing a thing of the present. Cashing in on this trend are a variety of independent founders across the country who share a passion for the craft.

The big names

Some of the well-known retailers and brands in the specialty stationery space have included Paper Source, Papier and Papyrus, though many have endured challenges in recent years. 

Papyrus shuttered all of its U.S. stores in 2020, with company leadership citing the “current challenges of the retail industry” at the time. The company still maintains an e-commerce site and also lists retailers such as Target, Kroger, and Albertsons Companies on its retail locations webpage.   

Additionally, Paper Source filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2021. Originally founded by Susan Lindstrom in 1983, Paper Source was acquired by Barnes & Noble owner Elliott Investment Management through bankruptcy. Paper Source still operates its own retail stores, per its store locator webpage, in addition to selling through Barnes & Noble. 

More recently, parent company Barnes & Noble filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification with the state of Illinois in January for the permanent closure of a distribution center, impacting 107 employees.

In a statement to Retail Dive, Paper Source said they had worked in the space for ten years. 

“Sadly the lease of the building comes to an end at the start of next year,” the stationery brand said via email. “As a retailer whose business is especially concentrated into the Holiday period, we have to make the move in the summer to be able to meet the seasonality of the year-end.”

Reliance on holiday gifting occasions may be a core vulnerability for some of the larger legacy brands in the stationery space, according to emailed commentary from Devadas Pattathil, CEO of inventory management company OnePint.ai.

“In contrast, indie shops have leaned into hyper-personalization, community engagement, and unique curation,” Pattathil said. “They foster direct relationships with customers through workshops, limited-edition collaborations, and locally sourced products."

Meanwhile, the London-based stationery brand Papier in 2023 marked its first U.S. wholesale partnership through a deal with Anthropologie. 

“DTC remains the majority of our sales and traffic but we’ve seen wholesale grow rapidly over the past few years since we launched it, and it is now a meaningful part of our business that we’re excited to grow further,” Papier founder and CEO Taymoor Atighetchi said in emailed responses to Retail Dive.

The brand’s planners and diaries are among its best sellers, per Atighetchi. Papier is also seeing success with recipe journals and photobooks. Despite being founded in the United Kingdom, the brand said the majority of the company’s customers are based in the U.S.

“We have built a brand that resonates with the modern consumer and how they think about analog in an increasingly digital world,” Papier said. “We know that there’s a growing desire to ‘switch off’ from screen time and digital distractions - Papier’s products offer offline experiences that are both beautiful and tactile.”

Despite challenges in the niche market, some smaller stationery brands and retailers in the U.S. are thriving, capitalizing on consumer trends promoting self-expression and wellness. Some are even trying to bring a more positive reputation to American-manufactured products in an industry dominated by international brands.

Small business, big growth

“It just continued to grow and grow,” Amy Rutherford said of the stationery offerings she was selling at her store Red Barn Mercantile in Alexandria, Virginia. That growth led her to open another shop in the area called Penny Post, which is dedicated to this product category and has distinct branding from her other ventures.

Rutherford noted that some customer interest in stationery, like with journaling, seems to be tied to mental health practices — taking time to reflect away from screens — and a form of self-expression, as many of the stationery brands she sells create visually unique, sometimes even political, goods.

California-based stationery brand and retailer Shorthand has also found a way to operate more than one store in the same city without cannibalizing sales. Founder and owner Rosanna Kvernmo in an interview with Retail Dive said she is even exploring opening a third location.

Kvernmo began working in stationery in college by creating a small greeting card line. Shorthand, the company that has since developed, has created a larger product line — its most popular product being a notebook. Now, Shorthand also sells products from other brands that make pens, envelopes and more. 

The store experience seems central to the stationery world, according to Kvernmo, which is filled with customers who care about how a paper type feels and how a pen performs. There is an active print shop within one of Shorthand’s locations allowing customers to see products being made, and Kvernmo even keeps the Shorthand email signup old school — there’s a pen and paper in store for customers to write down their contact information.

“The internet can be so overwhelming for shopping and when you go into a store … it's like three versions of the same thing and they've already been vetted for quality ostensibly,” Kvernmo said of the ability to finely curate selections in-person so customers aren’t paralyzed by choice. 

The presence of stationery in the U.S. may not be new, but several business owners for this story noted that some countries — particularly Japan — have had a long-standing stationery fandom. 

“In both Germany and Japan, there has been a concerted effort to preserve domestic manufacturing,” St. Louis Art Supply Product Director Carson Monetti told Retail Dive via email. “These are historically export economies and there is a broad consensus around building the capacity to make things well. Governments and businesses have worked together for generations to refine industrial processes, train workers, and build out complex supply chains. We have not done that work in the U.S., so we've lost the expertise.”

Many small stores in the U.S. will seek out specific products to retail from these countries, but even still it is sometimes hard to find a wide range of stationery specifications in the U.S. without going abroad. Quality is particularly high with stationery products made in Japan, Monetti added.

“There is a ton of local competition, which keeps prices low,” Monetti said. “Japanese consumers use way more of these products than we do, and they are much more discerning about pens and paper. All of this adds up to an environment where the stationery giants are still rolling out new products every season, setting and following trends, and trying to outdo one another. It's really refreshing for an American merchant because so many of our domestic brands are in suspended animation.”

The introduction of tariffs announced by President Donald Trump on Wednesday could present issues for many stationery companies in the U.S. — and not just for those who import finished products. 

“There are no U.S. alternatives to many of the products we source overseas, so we will have to pass on the price increases to customers,” Monetti said. “We are also a small American manufacturer — we make watercolors and inks here in St. Louis under our Federal Color brand. Even that part of our business will have to raise prices if the tariffs are implemented, because the packaging and raw materials come from all over the world.”

When Suann Song — a graphic designer by trade — created the stationery brand Appointed through a Kickstarter, she set out to create the perfect notebook — one manufactured in the U.S. with the type of quality consumers find abroad. She saw a need in the market for gender-neutral, timeless stationery that seemed harder to get in the U.S.

About a decade later, the company’s top seller is still that notebook, though the brand’s offerings have expanded greatly since. Appointed operated a Washington, D.C., store for many years until just this February, when the brand shuttered the location (which served as an all-in-one design studio, office, retail and manufacturing space) to instead increase its production capacity with a new facility in New York state.

The move has been about a year in the making, Song told Retail Dive, and will allow for more frequent product releases and restocks.

Maintaining Made in America requirements hasn’t always been easy, but Song has been dedicated to meeting its required standards since the Appointed brand was founded.

“It was almost more from a practical standpoint,” Song told Retail Dive. “I could quality control, I could do smaller runs. You could have faster turnaround when you're sourcing stateside.”

However, sometimes this has meant working harder to create certain products. Another popular product from Appointed is the brand’s task planner, which is released annually with tabs for every month. Song said that the company’s employees used to arduously collate the pages all by hand. 

“If you really look at the planner market, there's very few or no planners in the U.S. made with tabs just because the machinery to make them is pretty extensive,” she noted. 

Thankfully, Song was able to find a small company in Oregon that made a limited number of machines each year that could meet the specifications Appointed needed to make this process more efficient. 

“I took a small business loan out for that. It was like a $50,000 purchase,” Song said. “And that changed everything for us … When someone gets a good planner, they habitually will buy it and then they'll tell their friends about it, so that's nice because you just see the organic growth year after year.”

Following initial in-store tests of Lowe’s Style Studio on Apple Vision Pro, the retailer expanded a pilot program to select stores in Northern California in April 2025. 

Over the following three months, customers at Lowe’s Bay Area locations in Sunnyvale, Concord, Dublin, East San Jose and South San Jose will be able to utilize the service. The retailer in March rolled out tests of the technology in five Austin, Texas-area locations, also for three months.

Customers can book free appointments to use Lowe’s Style Studio, which allows them to visualize and redesign a kitchen’s features, including appliances, cabinet colors, countertops, styles and other fixtures, before actually renovating their space.

Lowe’s, which launched its Style Studio app designed for Apple Vision Pro in February of 2024, first brought the tech into select stores in June that year for a weekend-long test experience. Since then, the retailer has updated the in-store experience, adding a companion app that allows friends and family to design together, and a transport feature that makes it easy to move around the room, per a company spokesperson.

Lowe’s Style Studio is an immersive, 3D experience that allows customers to design their kitchen using Apple Vision Pro technology. The tech combines spacial computing with home improvement, so shoppers can change the colors, styles and features around them in real time. 

"We try on clothes, sample paint colors, and test drive cars to help us decide before we buy," Chandhu Nair, Lowe's senior vice president of data, AI and innovation, said in a statement. "Customers deserve that same confidence when it comes to home renovation. With Lowe's Style Studio, consumers don't have to guess what their new kitchen could look like — they can step into it and experience their style choices together as if they are actually there."

Other home retailers are dabbling in technology as a way to help shoppers visualize their choices. Furniture retailer Joybird brought its own version of tech-inspired visualization to mobile devices in January 2025, noting that 70% of its traffic comes from mobile devices. 

Through its product visualization tools Decorify and Muse, Wayfair allows shoppers to find product recommendations based on images. Decorify does so through user-uploaded images, while Muse uses AI-generated images of home interiors to motivate consumers and give them ideas for purchasing.

“Home improvement projects are often large, complex and highly personal, making tech adoption uniquely important,” said Nair. “Because of this, technology is a key part of our total home strategy. We’ve been exploring and investing in AI for a decade, and we have consistently been the first home improvement retailer to test and bring to market technology including a store digital twin, the first retail app for Apple Vision Pro, and Mylow, our customer-facing AI-powered virtual assistant.” 

A spokesperson confirmed that Lowe’s has officially rebranded its digital home platform to MyLowe’s Home, and also said it will open a new store in East Asheville, North Carolina.

Lowe’s reported net sales for fiscal 2024 of $83.7 billion, a 3% decline from 2023. Operating income fell 9.4% to $10.5 billion and net income declined 10% to $7 billion year over year. 

In April 2025, the company announced that it would acquire Artisan Design Group for $1.3 billion. 

In February 2024, Lego transformed its Battersea Power Station store in London into a flower shop. 

All the flowers were made of Lego Bricks, of course, and employees put together 220 sets to create “Le Florist.” 

Guests are immersed into an experience, Martin Urrutia, Lego’s head of global retail experience and innovation, said to an audience at the National Retail Federation’s Big Show regarding the floral transformation. “A couple of months ago we landed a spaceship in the center of the store. We have Santa’s chair — made of Lego bricks — with a fireplace. That’s what delights and creates memories for shoppers.”

That’s because physical retail spaces can be considered a media channel, a place for storytelling and a way customers can see and engage with a brand, according to Urrutia.

But retailers must have the fundamentals in play. That goes back to stock availability, the correct physical location and streamlined communication, per Urrutia. And while experiences can be created within a store, employees enable storytelling.

The toy maker has also been bridging its online and in-store efforts. In fall 2024, the company began hosting gaming-themed workshops both digitally and at select locations. 

Lego has also been experimenting with livestreaming and found that the best possible studio for the venture may be its own stores.

“We already have the product. We have the set,” Urrutia said. The company also has found that its own employees make exemplary livestream hosts. 

“They do a great job talking to customers every day. So why not allow them to be on livestream? They are great stars,” Urrutia said. “They’re very authentic. We love the passion that they bring.” 

Lego has also removed some of its standard shelving to create a personalization studio where customers can create customized Lego Minifigures. Shoppers can pick between preselected designs or create something new by adding text, decorations and drawings to their figures. 

“We're removing the space from products, but we believe that will make the store visit unique and we’ll keep shoppers engaged to come and visit again,” Urrutia said.

Instagram user Jacey Adler recommended the experience as a dating idea in New York City that “isn’t just going to bars or restaurants.” 

 

 

 

 

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The notion of being able to draw in adults for a toy retail experience may be of particular importance as the cohort accounts for more toy sales than preschoolers. Nearly half of all adults had purchased a toy for themselves within the previous 12 months for reasons including collecting, socialization and enjoyment, according to a June 2024 report by Circana. 

Thus, the storytelling that takes place within Lego stores is part of the larger consumer draw. Urrutia urged other retailers to think about the story they are telling to shoppers when it comes to in-store experiences. 

“The expectations are to deliver best-in-class experiences where the brand will come to life,” he said.