SKU: Wieden + Kennedy New York Responds To PSFK Future Of Retail Report

SKU: A store that sells a monthly collection of 10 mystery objects chosen by a guest curator.

In a world of Instant Show and Tell where retailers are encouraging people to publish their “likes,” post their purchase history and share their dressing room decisions with their Facebook friends, it’s easy to envision a near future in which retailers will be able to personalize just about everything to perfectly suit a shopper’s preferences. And while this kind of hyper-personalization could represent great value, it is also slowly killing serendipity – that thing that used to make shopping fun. So perhaps the biggest opportunity for a retailer of the future to differentiate will be to bring back some surprise. What if there were a store that believed so much in the serendipity of stuff that the very products it sells were kept a mystery?

This concept is called SKU—a store dedicated to discovery that sells 10 mystery items each month all selected by a guest curator.

Each box could be sold for the same reasonably low price (perhaps $20). Curators could include musicians, actors, architects, designers, comedians – anybody with an interesting point of view, a respected opinion or a story to tell. It’s kind of like StumbleUpon for retail. The premise here, as inspired by Rob Walker and Joshua Glenn’s Significant Objects project, is that the value of any object comes from more than simply the materials it’s made of…it can come from stories, points of view, celebrity associations, even the simple experience of this kind of purchase.

One month Nick Cave might introduce you to a CD you’ve never heard, a brand of Vegemite™ that actually tastes good, an autographed copy of his script for The Proposition, or a pop-up book about international spacecraft. And the next month, Wes Anderson might introduce you to his favorite Japanese horror movie, or the world’s best bicycle pump.

While technology will inevitably help us all become better buyers of the stuff we like, hopefully we’ll always have interesting ways to discover some stuff we never knew we liked in the first place.

PSFK recently published an analysis of the Future of Retail. The 80-page report was created to explore this future from the perspective of brands, shoppers, retailers, and communities. It was also produced as stimulus for the creative community and we encourage brands, agencies, and individuals to respond with their thoughts about the Future of Retail.

The idea above is from Wieden + Kennedy New York. The agency has responded with three ideas; a piece of technology, a concept and an experience. The full response is available for download on request here.