If you’re familiar with shopping malls on the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa, or the Middle East, you might as well have heard of Lefties. The chain store brand is part of the Spanish Inditex Group, much better known for their worldwide store concepts and brands like Zara, Bershka, Stradivarius, and Pull & Bear. In an effort to establish the Lefties brand in the highly upcoming lower-end fashion retail sector and compete with brands like the French Kiabi and British Primark, the company has taken steps to revamp its store concept.
During my visit to the new Lefties store in Elche, Spain, I noticed an interesting and innovative feature of their new store concept. I hope that this new approach will set a trend in retail concepts.
Lefties Digital Stores
Lefties has a limited brand range, operating in 14 markets including Spain, Portugal, Andorra, Israel and many North-African and Middle Eastern countries. At least, compared to Inditex other brands (which have a total of 7,200 stores world wide). Sounds like a perfect platform to experiment new concepts with. Inditex took it upon itself to take the Lefties brand and use it to experiment with new technology and develop a new shopping experience, called Lefties Digital Store. They started the project with a concept store in La Coruña and swiftly revamped their flagship stores in Madrid and Barcelona.
RFID
The shops are completely rebranded with flashy-loud, but distinct new interiors, filled with big screens and Neon signage. Most notably is the new Easy Pay concept, where the whole pay experience is completely hands off for personnel as well as clientele. Clients are guide through a route where RFID-tags are automatically scanned, and deactivated after payment. Something, that suits a “one brand” store like Lefties very well, as production, distribution and retail are handled by one company. The Digital Stores also act as hubs for the online store’s pick up and return.
Retro Games are part of the experience
The presence of numerous retro-arcade cabinets spread throughout the new Digital Store in Elche, a city with a population of 250,000 in the southeast of Spain, may not be the central aspect of the rebranding effort, but it certainly stands out when you visit the store. The placement of these cabinets is strategic, with eight of them distributed throughout the store. Four are located on the main store routes, while two are near the fitting rooms, and another two are positioned close to the Easy Pay area.
I don’t know the exact strategy of the the placement of these arcade cabinets, but I can only presume that the cabinets keeps bored kids and partners of the back of the people actually shopping for clothes. Why not play a round of Street Fighter II instead of waiting while your company is trying on clothes in the fitting room?
Indeed, the concept seems to be a hit as all the cabinets were consistently occupied by enthusiastic players, ranging from kids to middle-aged men, and sometimes a mix of both. The multi-game setups featuring classics like Street Fighter 2 (Turbo), Pac-man, Pang!, Super Sidekicks 2, among others, seems to be a significant draw for the visitors. Despite the limited selection of about 15 games, the appeal of these cabinets seems strong, attracting a diverse crowd of gamers.
Pandora’s Box
While tinkering with one of the cabinets, I quickly discovered that the full-size arcade cabinets feature Pandora Box DX plug-and-play arcade hardware*. To my surprise, these cabinets usually come with a broad selection of 300 games, but the Spanish company Rex Arcade, which operates them, has limited the available games to just 15. It could be licensing that forced Rex Arcade to limit the amount of games. The game selection wasn’t really curated, but hey, it’s the thought that counts!
* We will get into Pandora’s box-hardware soon on Retrolike.net.
Rex Arcade, based in Sabadell, in the Barcelona Metropolitan area, is the driving force behind this resurgence of classic arcade gaming in retail stores. Their business model revolves around supplying retro-game cabinets to retail brands and events. Additionally, they sell the same arcade cabinets at their physical store.
Arcade games as part of the Customer Journey
If anything, Inditex shows, with their customer attachment, even in low-to-mid-price range fashion outlets, that they have turned much more towards the customer journey and experience. They offer hassle-free shopping and in-store entertainment, such as retro gaming in this example. It brings back arcade gaming to its essentials and reminds us why it was popular in the first place: easy pick-up-and-play gameplay, which can keep anyone busy for a couple of minutes without the need for any support from store personnel.
Let’s see if this observation turns into a trend and we start seeing arcade games pop up in much more stores. I’ve encounter these kind of arcade machines left and right already in other stores, too. Perhaps current-day arcade game producers will start facilitating this new market and producing arcade machines with a small store footprint and without ticket-winning mechanisms. Just to keep those bored kids occupied, while mom can have a stress-less shopping experience.
