“All the trends that Showfields was built upon are strengthening as the result of Covid-19"

While the Covid-19 pandemic has been hard on many retailers, Amir Zwickel says that it also showed that Showfields, the innovative retail platform he helped co-found, is on the right track. Showfields has flagship stores where online brands can rent physical space to let consumers experience their products, and Covid-19 closures did hurt that aspect of the business last year. But Zwickel shares two other channels Showfields is using to help brands reach customers. Their platform now includes e-commerce that features quick and easy onboarding for new brands and a service to bring experiential retail into smaller spaces, like open areas in malls. This service will help brands reach new consumers and give landlords data about what products might support a storefront. Zwickel says the barriers to entry in traditional physical retail are very high, but Showfields can help companies get the benefits without the risk.

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Take me back a year ago: what happened with Covid-19 and Showfields?

There were challenges in the short term: we had to close our New York store for more than three months. We had to postpone our opening in Miami by a few months. We basically had to take steps to compensate for that—launch our e-comm earlier than originally planned, bring additional cash from existing investors and new investors to not only survive this crisis but also to position ourselves to be strong on the other side. I'm happy to say that we were pretty successful. The other thing is that it actually created a huge opportunity for us because when you think about it, all the trends that Showfields was built upon are strengthening as the result of Covid-19. Starting with experiential retail, I think it was already very hard to get people to show up outside of their house in the last few years, and it's going to be even harder; it's very clear. I think we're already one of the only companies in the retail industry that is not only speaking about experiential retail but is also building it. Also, e-commerce is going to continue to grow. Customer acquisition cost online, which has been increasing consistently in the last few years, is going to continue to increase. We're going to see more and more brands trying to create touchpoints with consumers on other channels.

The third thing being flexibility in retail: brands would want to take less risk and I think would be less likely to sign on a long-term 10- or 15-year lease, and they would want to do retail in the least risky way possible while still being respectful towards their brand, elevated and elegant without compromising their brand value, and that's exactly what we offer. Lastly, the connectivity between the digital and the physical is key. With all that in mind, we’re very optimistic about the future. When you look at the metrics in terms of demand that we see from brands, we actually see that the number of brands approaching Showfields and asking to join has been increasing month-over-month anywhere between 30 to 50 percent since Covid-19 started, which is counter-intuitive to what's going on in the retail industry right now.

What I'm hearing you say is that short term, it was tough, but if you look at the long-term growth of Showfields, you’re actually seeing the market adapting to the same thesis that you had originally. Is that the thinking?

Exactly. When you think about a few years back, like 10 or 15 years, building a website for a company was a million-dollar project, six to 12 months, super complex. Then Shopify and other companies came to the world, and instead of huge complexity in upfront investment, we will do it with no barriers to entry whatsoever. You can do e-comm within an hour, and instead of paying upfront, pay us a monthly fee. What happened then is that there was an explosion of creativity, and democratization was totally lost. Now what’s happening is that it’s impossible to stand out online without spending a huge amount of money, so all of them are coming back. The thing is that the barriers to entry into the physical world have never been so high. We want to be what Shopify is for e-comm for physical retail. Pay us something monthly with no barriers to entry. No upfront risk.

Amir Zwickel, co-founder & CRO, Showfields. Photo: PR

When I first met you in New York, were you as clear on that thesis or did this really solidify as a result of what happened this past year?

We had this thesis all along, but I think we now see the business more like a platform. Our vision is in the next few years to have thousands of different touchpoints on this platform for many different kinds. Once a brand onboards to the platform, they never have a reason to leave. Today, we have three main channels. One being flagships: we have one in New York, another in Miami, and we want to keep opening more. The second channel is e-commerce. We have more than 400 brands and more than 200 artists, and we more than tripled the amount of brands on our platform since Covid-19 hit. For a different collaboration that we have with enterprise-level brands such as American Express, we bring to the table our access to beautiful and endless amounts of brands and our technology that allows us to onboard brands within minutes to a multi-vendor platform that actually works.

I remember you explaining the onboarding process that you have for a new brand in the physical space and how pretty much seamlessly you do everything online, and it results in a beautiful store. Now you're telling me about this new magic where you're onboarding, within a matter of minutes, new brands. The intelligence of what you're doing here is the ability to work with brands in such a seamless way.

It's even becoming more interesting when we're speaking about brands that are already on our platform because it's even easier. We're about to finalize the partnership with a very big media group that basically has very high traffic online. They work with very, very strong brands. But the type of brands that they don't work with are the long-tail brands, which is exactly like most of the brands in the world and the type of brands that we have access to. So this collaboration is basically building a new e-comm platform on top of their website where they would bring the traffic and we will bring the brands. We basically allowed our brands to opt-in to this new channel, and we got 40 percent of our brands opted-in within an hour, and more than 60 percent opted-in after another follow-up email. It's becoming a very meaningful channel for us.

The third channel, which is the newest thing we have, is called Out of Home. We developed a concept called a magic box, which is a service where Showfields can basically create a smaller version of the Showfields magic in any type of square footage that you want. We basically become partners of the landlord, operator, or retailer. The main one is shopping centers. We do everything, and the landlord gets an activity space that wasn't activated before, monetizes it at least as well as a traditional tenant, and the most important thing, they get to have the most sophisticated lead generation machine inside their mall. It’s very easy to look at the data and identify which brands were so successful that it would make sense for them to take their own store.

It's literally data-driven real estate.

Exactly, and I think what’s innovative about it is that, for us at least, we're not a traditional tenant anymore; we're more a tool that landlords can use. Similarly to Uber, which is the largest taxi company in the world without owning any taxis, we want to be the largest retailer in the world without signing any traditional lease. That's the vision.

I have three short questions for you. Your favorite subject in school?

I think it was geography. The one thing I like doing the most is traveling around the world, and I think this passion started back then.

Role model who had an impact on you?

There are several. I'm currently reading a book about Frank Lowy, who’s the person behind Westfield, an extremely inspiring person who built an empire from nothing. It's called Frank Lowy: Pushing the Limits.

Three words that you would choose to describe yourself?

It’s hard working, passionate, and gets things done.

Michael Matias. Photo: PR