Zara opened the doors of its new flagship store at Westfield Old Orchard in Skokie, IL, which includes innovative features designed to transform the customer experience and integrate in-store and online shopping. The new Zara store covers more than 28,000 sq ft, showcasing the brand’s latest Women, Men and Kids collections.
The new Skokie flagship is just one example of the brand’s investments in new, high quality, digitalized, and differentiated stores, which feature highly efficient technological tools and welcome customers to explore Zara products in a spacious, light-filled, and innovative environment.
The store concept, designed by Zara’s Architecture team, serves as the perfect frame for Zara collections, where the product and the customers are the protagonists. The store’s location in the newest development at Westfield Old Orchard presents an impressive two-floor curtain wall façade that allows the entrance of daily light inside the store. At the same time a stony portico frames the entrance to emphasizes the access to the store in an elegant and impressive way.
The store’s interior is accented with clean and neutral tones and natural textiles that create a backdrop for the character of each section. On the first floor, the Womenswear space features predominantly white interiors, with most of the new customer services concentrated at the back of the floor. Menswear and Kidswear areas are spread across the second floor with hints of color and warmth from wooden furniture.
INNOVATIVE CUSTOMER SERVICE TECHNOLOGY
Zara’s Skokie store is fully equipped with innovative technological tools to offer customers a unique shopping experience, integrated with the brand’s online platform. Some of these services include a fitting room reservation service, a two-hour pick-up service for online orders, as well as the ability to search online for in-stock items at the store. The store also has other features that provide an integrated and convenient customer experience, such as self-checkout areas across the three sections and an online shopping collection point with an automated storage area for up to 650 orders – the first of its kind in a Zara store in the great Chicago area.
MORE ECO-EFFICIENT STORE
As part of Zara’s sustainability goals and our commitment to efficient store design, construction and management, Zara Skokie has advanced eco-efficiency systems that reduce environmental impact. These include efficient heating and cooling systems, energy-saving LED lighting and the use of more environmentally-friendly materials.
The flagship is connected to Inditex’s internal “Inergy” platform, which monitors the consumption of the store’s air conditioning and electricity installations to optimize their management, identify the most efficient systems, improve maintenance, and help define strategies to reduce energy demand. Zara works continuously to reduce the environmental impact of its teams’ daily decision-making with the use of a holistic roadmap that includes every phase of the value chain. We also develop reuse and recycling programs to promote the circular economy while reducing waste and use of new raw materials.
Source – ZARA
