Background
With its first location opening up in Edmonton in June 1990, gravitypope (with a lowercase g) have successfully established their brand as a high fashion, reputable footwear/tailored goods institution. 26 years later, they now have expanded their stores into Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto with an online store that delivers worldwide. gravitypope is an independently owned boutique store that sells wide variety of trendy shoes and tailored goods (more focuses on footwear). Their footwear locations offer products that varies anywhere from casual sneaker brands like Converse to top notch, high fashion brands like Alexander Wang.
Location
I believe that choosing Whyte Ave as their very first location was a wise move by gravitypope. Whyte Ave is known as Edmonton’s trendiest area, which helped the brand to establish a “hip, fashionable” brand image right from the beginning. With their other locations like Calgary’s fashionable 17th Ave, Vancouver’s West 4th Ave, and Toronto’s Queen Street, it is evident that the company is putting in the effort to remain their locations in the most fashionable, trendiest areas of the city. The nature of these locations display that the brand is targeting the young, upper-middle class demographic that enjoys fashion, culture, and trends.
The gravitypope footwear location in Edmonton shares the same building as other “hip” stores, such as Blackbyrd Myoozik and Junque Cellar. In my personal opinion, this creates a sense of transition zone for customers where they feel an immediate sense of "hipster-cultural" atmosphere right as they walk into the building.
Design/atmosphere
Having their reputation being the hip, trendy, fashionable retailer that they are; gravitypope offers exceptional interior design and atmosphere to all their physical locations. As described by sales representatives from Paul Smith, gravitypope is “one of the most beautiful stores in North America”. Their stores use original fixture and furnishings of the twentieth century, which gives an authentic, aesthetic vibe to their stores. Their stores have an open, rectangular concept where shelves are along the walls with few lower “tables” that are located throughout the store (as shown in the picture below). This organized concept allows customers to easily view and shop their products without feeling lost. Having this visually appealing outlook of the store allows gravitypope to compete through their premium pricing. To secure and ensure their customer satisfaction, providing this outstanding design and atmosphere is a must, especially as their target demographic is likely to care about the atmosphere a lot more than the target demographic of other types of retail.
Product
gravitypope’s main focus is product-centric, as they provide wide breadth of product line that meets the needs of many different demographic. They have lots of unique products that aren’t available anywhere in the city, which proves that they intensively focus on fulfilling the needs of customers that are hunting to spend several hundreds of dollars for a nice, unique pair of shoes. This makes gravitypope a one-of-its-kind, specialty footwear store that gives a sense of exclusiveness to their customers. Due to the unique nature of their company, gravitypope is placed at the top of footwear industry’s vertical differentiation. They provide top-quality product at a premium price that not many competitors in the industry offers.
Omni-channel
It is undeniable that gravitypope have successfully built their brand to have become what they are today. With the expansion plan of opening up new stores in locations such as Montreal, the future of gravitypope seems bright. In my personal opinion, they are a great company with exceptional retailer characteristics; such as the types of products they offer, the location they are set in, and the atmosphere that the stores have. It is definitely one of my favourite stores to go check out when I’m looking for new kicks. However, there is one thing that bothers me about the company: their slightly disorganized online store. Although there are more products available online than there are in the physical stores they have, the convenience and ability to shop by types of shoes is missing. Most footwear stores display their different types of shoes (dress shoes, sneakers, runners, boots, etc.) in different segments of their store, including gravitypope. This allows for easy navigation when looking for certain types of shoes. This is also true for most online footwear stores like Aldo, Little Burgundy, and the Shoe Company. By simply dividing up their website in a way where customers can easily navigate and look for the type of shoes they want, gravitypope will surely provide improved customer experience on their omni-channelling.
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