America Looks to Europe to Reinvigorate Retail Spaces
A recent article in the Wall Street Journal reminds us of the net impact of the metrics used by retailers over the last 20 years: no functional department stores. Kate King, a reporter for the WSJ wrote an excellent piece about Printemps, the French department store. Printemps has opened its first store in New York City. And unlike its American competitors, the department store has not focused on sales per square feet.
(photo from WSJ article: Can the French Reinvent America’s Broken Department-Store Model? July 14, 2025)
“At 55,000 square feet, the New York store is less than half the size of a typical U.S. department store. It also has far less floor space dedicated to clothing racks and cosmetics counters,” writes King. Instead, the store has a café, a circus tent, merchandise displayed like a Parisian apartment, and three restaurants. The goal of the store is get shoppers to spend more time in the store. (What, you say? More time? I know, crazy!)
Look, for the last 20 years I’ve been telling anyone who would listen that retailers (and restauranteurs, and everyone else) should be focused on getting people to feel like the experience is time well spent, or time well saved, or time well invested. Most American departments stores focused on convenience, which is not the same but which works really nicely with their number one business metric: sales per square foot.
The result is zero differentiation between retailers. (Can you really tell the difference between a Macy’s, a Kohl’s, a Dillard’s, or a Bloomingdales?)
Blame for the demise of the mall and the department store has been placed on ecommerce. Amazon, etc. But I put the blame on the metrics retailers used to determine success. First it was sales per square foot, which prioritized bulk sales of SKUs over shopping experience. Then it was Net Promoter, which consulting groups like Bain and PwC sold as an ‘experience’ metric. PwC went so far as to coin the term ‘return on experience’ to describe the measurement.
How’s that working out for your clients, PwC? Kohl’s introduced NPS in 2018. Since then, its sales have decreased on average 6.5 percent each year.
Stone Mantel clients will remember that back in 2018, we warned you to avoid NPS and instead focus on Time Well Spent. There’s a reason for that, especially for business models that include in-person transactions. When a retail strategist thinks that they can increase sales per square foot by improving NPS scores, they tend to focus on convenience, service and smiles. When strategists focus on time well spent, they tend to innovate in ways that encourage people to spend more time in the store. It’s a totally different approach.
Which brings us back to the Wall Street Journal article.
The Europeans were always far more willing to turn shopping into an art, a form of entertainment, or a pleasure than their go-fast American counterparts. LVMH is the quintessential European model. Printemps is in the same vein, but more down market.
I loved the theme that Printemps Group Chief Executive Jean-Marc Bellaiche invoked for this new arrival to the financial district in Manhattan. “We said, ‘it’s going to be an apartment store, not a department store.’” An apartment store! Get it?
Look, there is no reason for a department store to have endless rows of shirts and pants on display. If someone wants that experience they can go to Walmart or Costco. Or they can go online. The new American department store should feel like a place that you go to. A place. A destination. Printemps gets this. No doubt they combine the smaller department store footprint with an excellent online presence. In the store you imagine, explore, and do all kinds of other fun things. Then when you purchase it’s shipped to your house. Voila!
The article goes on:
European department stores have better weathered the rise of e-commerce and changing shopping habits. That is in part because the European model has always been diversified well beyond fashion, said Joëlle Grünberg, who leads consulting firm McKinsey’s apparel, fashion and luxury sector in North America.
In London and Paris, department stores offer haircuts, massages, art exhibitions, sit-down dining and entertainment. Le Bon Marché in the 7th arrondissement of Paris holds immersive plays on the department store’s floors after hours.
In the early 2000s some retailers toyed with the idea of experiential marketing but quickly abandoned these activities because they wanted more t-shirts crowded into each square foot (wrong metric). Now, with a fully developed ecommerce play, more American retailers should be taking their cue from the French. Bring on the entertainment!
That’s un moment bien passé.