From Data to Delight: An Insight-Driven Revolution of the In-Store Experience

Editor's Notes

• #4: Good morning everyone. Big hand to Mike Mauler? Stunning stuff from GameStop. My name is Colin Watts, Chief Health Enthusiast and CEO of the Vitamin Shoppe Talk about dual title later.
• #5: Not familiar with Vitamin Shoppe One of the first Health and Wellness retailers Celebrating our 40th anniversary Founded here in New York City Long history of leadership and growth
• #6: Haven’t always talked about ourselves as a Health & Wellness retailer I’ll be honest not in love with the term Health and Wellness ambiguous descriptor many forms over many generations So today I’ll share our Vitamin Shoppe story which is one of a transforming consumer riding one of the biggest Mega-Trends of this generation reinvent a retail experience to match that intensity.
• #7: Take a step back to look at the consumer trends ‘60s, Wellness was truly a fringe phenomenon: peace, love, granola and yoga 70’s brought us the advent of the calorie counting craze and an obsession with self help gurus Then low-fat diets, spandex and the aerobics wave 90s had us cutting carbs, checking nutrition labels, and cardio kickboxing
• #8: Not surprising that people historically equated Health & Wellness to fad diets trendy exercise regimens and an Industry overly focused on pills and powders
• #9: Fast forward to today Wellness is no longer a fringe or fad notion For this generation a total lifestyle choice Food, ideas and exercise that were once on the fringe are now mainstream Represent billions of dollars of consumer spending that continues to grow every year
• #10: striving for “the Good Life”.
• #11: Think about yourself …
• #12: How many of you got 8 hours of sleep last night? How many of you think you had a healthy, balanced meal in the past day? How many of you feel stressed out, overworked, overwhelmed?
• #13: Now how many of you are doing something about it? Wearing a fitness tracker? Anyone switch to a standing desk at work? Making the choice to add more protein to their diets? Paleo diets? Gluten free? More than ever, people are looking at wellness as a lifestyle choice, Not a fad, but a way to live your best life as your best self.
• #14: This is both amazing and unsettling news On the one hand, there has never been a better time to be in Health and Wellness
• #15: On the other hand, we have never seen more fierce competition: Everyone from drugstores to mass merchants to online Have been dabbling in selling nutritional supplements
• #16: We had begun to see signs that parts of our core offering was becoming commoditized.
• #17: Our challenge wasn’t just reinvigorating our retail experience, we needed to reinvent our business model
• #18: About 2 years ago, working with our partner, Jackman Reinvents, We embarked on our journey to transform the Vitamin Shoppe…
• #19: …and the first step was to stop looking at our business strictly from a transactional perspective…
• #20: …and begin to deepen our holistic understanding of our customers Focusing on uncovering the role we could play to help them reach their lifestyle goals
• #21: For instance, a typical retailer might look at simple customer demographics and transaction data… that would report a customer like this…
• #22: …where at the Vitamin Shoppe We are engaging our customers with profile data like mine here With a goal of unlocking their total life ambitions and needs
• #23: Once we better understood our core customers We found that 70% of our sales come from two types of people – Donna and Andrew
• #24: Women and men like Donna are motivated lifelong goal setters. They are looking for ways to continuously improve: Eat better, sleep better, build muscle tone and strength for everyday life Andrew represents men and women that are in-the-know health & fitness advocates They are tricky customer to serve because they stay so well informed and ahead of the curve when it comes to innovation. But they are always looking to try something new and appreciate external validation of their knowledge
• #25: Changing our lens from customer transactions to human relationships… We realized that we needed to join Donna and Andrew on their journeys To meet our customers’ needs, our proposition needed to change from selling pills and powders… To becoming a trusted partner on our customer’s wellness journeys A partner who would not only provide inspiration but solutions In focus groups, the lack of a trusted source for advice would come up again and again
• #26: People were turning to all kinds of sources like family, friends, media and online looking for answers
• #29: For complex and highly personalized health & lifestyle choices
• #30: What people were looking for was someone to engage with in their everyday life And here is where our competitive advantage as a retailer became apparent… our Vitamin Shoppe Health Enthusiasts.
• #31: CLICK ONCE AND SLIDE WILL BUILD AUTOMATICALLY We learned that our best Vitamin Shoppe Health Enthusiasts already filled that role - but there was an opportunity to do this more systematically and consistently at all our customer touchpoints You see, the Health Enthusiast is a special breed by design We actively recruit and then train and develop men and women who take great joy out of living healthy lifestyles and imparting expertise and knowledge to their customers. If you’ve ever worked with a great fitness trainer, think of our Vitamin Shoppe Health Enthusiasts as great “wellness trainers” They inspire you to be your best self every day Earlier I mentioned my dual title? Everybody at The Vitamin Shoppe is a Health Enthusiast….let me share a quick video that really captures our culture and our ethos
• #32: So today, here at The Big Show, we wanted to take the opportunity to unveil some of our most recent steps in our transformation Steps we have taken to transform both our digital and retail experience CLICK SLIDE – MOVIE WILL PLAY AUTOMATICALLY
• #33: A few months ago, we started to rollout a dramatic retail store transformation that moves our retail experience from overwhelming shelves of pills and powders into a true healthy lifestyle destination A place where people could come to learn and be inspired We remerchandised and redesigned the store experience from top to bottom to support Donna & Andrew on their journey
• #34: We started with a dramatic upgrade of the exterior…
• #35: To create a beacon for customers driving by our new store
• #36: We gutted the old store to create three distinct zones: The entrance and foyer was designed to Embrace our Customers; An innovation zone that is our Engagement area; And a comprehensive product solution area that is our Empower Zone.
• #37: There are also tons of surprises and delights: A Kombucha-On-Tap Bar… where we convene Kombucha happy hours for our customers…
• #38: The most comprehensive Healthy Beauty section we’ve seen in the country…
• #39: An industry first sports protein sampling and tasting station…
• #40: A Solutions Wall, where we highlight the most important Wellness interests of our customers… and provide them with a variety of solutions to address their challenges.
• #41: We’ve even installed a comprehensive Aroma therapy bar…
• #42: And the first of its kind Fit freezer case…
• #43: and finally, our gathering place in the heart of the store… – our Health Enthusiast Solutions Bar –
• #44: …where our SPARK workshops and 1/1 nutrition sessions come to life...
• #45: We spend time with individual customers, providing nutritionist-led 1x1 consultations And multiple evenings a week
• #46: We also conduct our signature “Spark” Workshop sessions to teach and inspire our customers on a variety of wellness topics
• #47: We’d like to think that with our new transformation… We’re all you need on your journey to your best self
• #48: Altogether, you can see that Vitamin Shoppe is transforming from; …a purveyor of pills and powders …to a Trusted Authority for those engaged in a healthy lifestyle. In summary, our transformation was borne out of -
• #49: Deeply understanding our market
• #50: Aligning our behavior to our customers’
• #51: Uncovering and amplifying our competitive advantage
• #52: Building long-term relationships that benefit people
• #53: So I hope you now can understand how at the Vitamin Shoppe, the term “Health & Wellness” falls a bit short. We’ve transformed that too.
• #54: Our research supported that what todays consumer means by health & wellness shifts from the passive to active engagement They want to engage with retailers who are prepared to make that leap Our new mission is a focus on Nourishing bodies and inspiring minds to help people thrive every day. In turn, they have helped our business thrive too.
• #55: 3 times the number of first time customers
• #56: Spending 2 times longer in store
• #57: 91% likelihood to recommend us to a friend
• #58: Thank you for your time and your attention this morning, and… I hope each of you continue to thrive every day.