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Inside the Future of Physical Retail: 10 Stores Mastering Sensory Brand Experiences
On a rainy January afternoon in New York City, a group of retail leaders, brand partners, and media gathered in SoHo for a guided tour through the future of physical retail. Discover how these 10 stores prove that retail is dynamic, sensory, and deeply human.
Mood Media’s inaugural store tour brought together leaders across retail, design, and technology to explore how sound, screens, scent, space, and storytelling are shaping the modern store experience. Attendees included representatives from GAP, Tesla, Future Commerce, Amazon, AT&T, Zumiez, H&M, and more. RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert Ian Scott led the group through 10 stores across fashion, beauty, and consumer tech. The lineup included Bang & Olufsen, Crocs, Dyson, Kiehl’s, Longchamp, and several others. Each stop revealed something different about how brands are rethinking the role of their physical spaces.
The tour kicked off ahead of NRF 2026, setting the stage for the conversations that would dominate the conference floor. We wrapped the afternoon with champagne at Victoria’s Secret PinkBar, just minutes from the conference’s opening party. It served as both a celebration of experiential retail and a timely reminder that physical stores are far from obsolete when they’re designed with intention.
Here’s what stood out from a day spent seeing how the best retailers are using experience to turn stores into true brand destinations.
Stores Are Slowing Shoppers Down on Purpose
The most striking observation from the tour wasn’t about any single brand but rather what they all had in common. None of their store experiences felt rushed or felt like a race to the register.
These stores are designed to slow people down, providing the space for browsing, testing, and asking questions. This is especially successful because there’s less of a focus on inventory density and more on discovery, which means customers experience quality over quantity. Brands are using their physical spaces to tell stories and build confidence in ways that a product page simply can’t.
This approach solves a real problem for online shoppers: endless choice with little context. Decision fatigue sets in when people stare at dozens of options without understanding what makes one better than another. For higher-consideration purchases, that lack of confidence can be paralyzing. People want clarity. They want to understand what a product does, why it matters, and how it fits into their lives before they commit.
That’s where physical retail has the advantage. Every store we visited gave shoppers the chance to see, touch, and experience interactive retail in ways that build product understanding and trust.
Education was built into each store experience through demos, explanations, and guided interactions. The environments felt open and welcoming rather than purely transactional. Sound, visuals, and layout worked together to create sensory consistency. Most importantly, staff acted as guides rather than passive salespeople.
According to our 2025 In-Store Media & Path to Purchase consumer survey, nearly half of Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z shoppers say in-store media helps them notice and feel more connected to brands. Another 32% of millennials and Gen Z report that in-store media often keeps them engaged and encourages them to browse longer. In short, when the environment feels intentional, shoppers respond better.
Brands Doing Experiential Retail Well
The best brands don’t chase trends. They show up with a clear and distinct identity. Every store we visited knew its brand identity and used the physical space to reinforce it rather than distract from it. Here are a few observations from some of the stores we toured that particularly stood out:
Bang & Olufsen
Bang & Olufsen treats its retail spaces like living rooms. The brand sits at the intersection of design, art, and audio. As one team member explained, many brands can make things sound good. Bang & Olufsen focuses on making them look good, too. The retail audio system is designed to create an environment where visitors feel invited to sit down, relax, and experience sound in a way that feels personal. Personalization and emotional connection drive the experience. The brand’s commitment to longevity and circularity shows up in practice, refurbishing and restoring products that are decades old.
Dyson
Dyson dedicates roughly 70% of its retail space to hair care, reflecting where the business has grown. The brand excels at translating complex technology into something intuitive and hands-on. Demonstrations let customers see and experience the engineering behind products that span vacuums, air care, wearables, and formulations. The store becomes a place to understand how innovation works rather than just what it looks like on a shelf.
Kiehl’s
Kiehl’s has built its space around discovery, education, and community. The brand hosts intimate sessions, masterclasses, and events that create meaningful engagement beyond a typical shopping trip. Customers can touch, test, and experience products for themselves. That level of engagement resonates particularly with Gen Z and millennials, who want confidence through trial before making a purchase.
Victoria’s Secret
Victoria’s Secret uses in-store screens to build confidence through storytelling. During the tour, the screens featured the debut of Hailey Bieber’s Valentine’s Day campaign. The digital displays added context and narrative to the products on display, showing how technology can enhance rather than distract from the brand experience.
Crocs
Crocs uses retail digital signage to guide customers through a journey from brand heritage to future innovation. The store layout tells a deliberate story, using the entrance to welcome shoppers with digital displays that establish brand identity. The middle showcases what Crocs stands for today, and the back points toward where the brand is headed next. The centerpiece is the Jibbitz Bar, a creation station where digital screens display creator content showing different styling possibilities. This setup sparks both creativity and community, turning customization into a social experience. What stood out most during the tour was the store associates themselves, who acted as genuine brand ambassadors by demonstrating a true love and passion for Crocs that felt authentic, not scripted.
A common thread across these stores is their approach to community, one of the main themes that came up repeatedly at NRF the following week. While “community” often centers on building a digital presence with followers, the same principles apply in physical retail. The best stores create spaces where people want to gather, learn, and connect. Kiehl’s masterclasses, Bang & Olufsen’s living room environments, Dyson’s hands-on demonstrations, and Victoria’s Secret’s campaign-driven storytelling all build community authentically.
Our data from the same 2025 survey supports what we saw on the ground: Younger shoppers are the most likely to talk about memorable store experiences, half share them with friends or family, and 27% post about them online. When the environment is designed with intention, customers stay longer, engage more, and become advocates for the brands they connect with.
Why Human Connection Scales Better Than Technology
The stores we visited represent some of the most polished retail environments in the country, but the principles behind them don’t require flagship budgets or prime Manhattan real estate. What they do require is intentionality around human connection.
Across conversations, retail leaders emphasized the same point: Trust and emotional connection drive retention. AI can personalize and streamline, but human experience — service, storytelling, community — is what earns loyalty. And it can be lost in seconds.
The stores that understood this didn’t rely on spectacle. They focused on clarity, comfort, and connection. Small changes made a meaningful difference: clearer storytelling, better traffic flow, and thoughtful moments of interaction. Brands don’t need to overhaul everything at once. Focusing on one or two sensory or educational elements, like sound or scent, can shift the entire atmosphere in a 2,000-square-foot store just as effectively as in a 10,000-square-foot showroom.
Technology still plays a role when it serves a clear purpose. We found that 43% of Gen X, millennials, and Gen Z want more interactive digital media like touchscreens or kiosks in stores. The interest is there, but the execution matters. The most effective uses of technology we saw during the tour were the ones that faded into the background:
Digital screens that told brand stories without demanding attention.
Sound systems that created atmosphere without overpowering conversation.
Interactive retail digital signage that answered questions customers were already asking.
When technology feels like a natural extension of the environment rather than a novelty, it enhances the human moments that actually build loyalty. Experience is about how people feel, not how much is in the store budget.
What’s Next
The future of retail belongs to brands that create environments worth visiting. Physical retail isn’t dying, but it is evolving into something more intentional, educational, and memorable. The stores that succeed will be the ones that understand this shift and design accordingly.
The tour through SoHo and Fifth Avenue offered a snapshot of what’s possible when brands prioritize experience over transaction. Mood is already exploring how to bring this concept to new cities and take a more global approach to understanding how experiential retail is evolving across different markets. As more retailers recognize the value of slowing customers down and building confidence through interaction, the gap between online and offline shopping will continue to widen. One offers convenience. The other offers connection. Both have a place, but only one can make you feel something before you buy.
Want to explore how sensory design through methods like digital retail solutions can transform your store environment? Reach out to our team to learn how we can help create an in-store experience that keeps customers engaged and coming back.
About The Authors
Jaime Bettencourt
Jaime Bettencourt, SVP of Global Account Management and Marketing at Mood Media, is an accomplished senior-level sales and marketing leader with a proven ability to achieve double-digit revenue growth, recognized for designing world-class customer experiences for leading lifestyle and retail brands. She has a robust track record for leading teams and leveraging custom, complex in-store marketing, media, and technology solutions for Fortune 100 clients in the retail space. Throughout Jaime’s 20+ years in the experiential industry, she’s been in various marketing, branding and sales leadership roles and has worked with global organizations to enhance in-store experiences through targeted brand initiatives and marketing strategies supported by customer insights and analytics.
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