Rachel Shechtman Has A Story To Tell

Style

This fourth-generation retailer is bringing sexy back to physical retail with her innovative Chelsea store

Until recently, the biggest innovation in retail besides the Apple store has been “Put a bird on it.” The revolution has taken place online, launching giants like Amazon while the poor bricks and mortar store has all but been declared dead. 

Which is why Rachel Shechtman’s pronouncement is all the more surprising. “Physical retail is the new sexy,” she said at her 2,000-square-foot store, STORY, in Chelsea.

Shechtman, a fourth generation retailer — her mother was in food, her grandfather in fabric and her great-grandfather owned a men’s store — spent the last decade as a marketing consultant for companies like TOMS Shoes and Gilt Groupe, gathering information about what works for retail in the Internet age. She put her theories into practice at STORY, a store that “has the point of view of a magazine, changes like a gallery and sells things like a store.”

If it seems strange to use the hobbled magazine industry as inspiration for the also-struggling retail industry, Shechtman isn’t fazed. “Retail and media are evolving, and I like to think I’m using the best of both worlds,” she said. “It’s retail as media.”

"We have things that could be at Barneys and things that could be at Walgreens. A guy who wears a Hermès watch still uses Charmin toilet paper."

There are editors in the form of Schechtman and her buyers, who curate the contents of the store according to a theme — a “story” — that changes every six to eight weeks: Love Story sold clothes by Victoria Bartlett, jewelry by Simon Alcantara and chocolate by Vosges. Art Story featured pieces chosen from Art.com, limited edition towels from Art Production Fund and tattoos from Tattly. Between each story, the space shuts down for a few days to be reinvented, right down to the display design (students from Pratt’s Exhibition Design Intensive Program designed the “Art Story” space).

Each story has a sponsoring partner. For “His Story,” it was Details magazine and Proctor and Gamble. For “Color Story”: Benjamin Moore. This takes the pressure off the sales floor, and makes partners in promotion. “I’m creating a multilingual environment,” Shechtman says. “It’s as much B-to-B as B-to-C.” 

“Made in America” — was a collaboration with Boulder-based marketing agency Made Movement and men’s underwear maker Flint and Tinder, with home-grown goods ranging from $22 artisanal bitters to $375 leather handbags, hand-carved wooden sunglasses and a Polaroid-shaped leather beeswax candle. “It’s gift-driven,” said Shechtman. “We sell things people need or want but didn’t know they needed or wanted until they got here.”

They source the items or “discover” goods during their monthly pitch night, when local makers present their wares. At one pitch night, Shechtman was so impressed with structural engineer Beth Macri’s hidden message necklaces that she decided to have STORY act as a business incubator for her (Macri has since quit her day job). “It’s not just a store that sells things but a platform that supports [makers] from a marketing and PR perspective,” says Shechtman. “It’s good for everyone involved.” She calls it the offline version of Etsy or Kickstarter, places that support innovative products but don’t have a physical home. 

The store itself is a malleable space, used as a yoga studio on the weekends for the “Wellness Story,” or as a design studio for the “Making Things Story”; only 25% of the sales floor was used for products during “Making Things”; the rest was devoted to injection molding machines and 3D printers. What’s most important in a physical space, she says, is entertainment and community: that’s what she thinks the future of retail will include. Hit those right, she says, and “consumption will come as a byproduct of that.” 

No manufacturer wants to hear that consumption is a byproduct, what with it being the entire basis for our economy, but Shechtman is convinced that they need to listen to, well, a new story. After all, her store was profitable within its first year of operation, and she’s in the process of opening another in New York and one in Los Angeles. The average time a customer spends in the store is 40 minutes (she knows this thanks to heat tracking surveillance, which also tells her what’s selling the most).

"Physical retail is the new sexy."

The space does provide some respite from the monotony of single-category shopping, the insta-fatigue of stepping into an old fashioned department store. Even the salespeople seem pumped to work the floors, excited about the new products and the break in retail monotony by way of constant reinvention. Patrons appear strangely enthusiastic when they step into the store. 

Perhaps it’s the variety, for in the Internet age we’re used to buying high-end and low-end with the same series of clicks. For “His Story,” Gillette shaving cream shared shelf space with Diptique candles. “We have things that could be at Barneys and things that could be at Walgreens,” Shechtman said. “A guy who wears a Hermès watch still uses Charmin toilet paper.”

You won’t find her wares online, at least not yet. Despite being hailed as the most exciting thing to happen in retail in decades, Shechtman doesn’t have e-commerce. “This,” she said, “is old school.”