Three great examples underlining that retail formats and shopping habits continue to blend, turning everything into easy-to-ogle, easy-to-customize, and easy-to-buy:
At The T-Shirt Deli in Chicago, unadorned shirts are selected from a deli counter and then adorned with garnishings of personalized lettering, delivering on a “T-shirts made fresh daily” tag line. The starting price for t-shirts ranges from USD 15 (EUR 11.50 / GBP 7.90) for a basic T-shirt to USD 22 for a long-sleeve t-shirt and USD 26 for a long-sleeve hoodie. T-shirts are available for women, men, babies, kids, and dogs. Letters are USD 1 each: customers can use custom letters or their own design. Preaching flexibility and transparency, it may not come as a surprise that The T-Shirt Deli sources its T-shirts from sweatshop-free American Apparel.
For those of you interested in introducing this concept in your own home town/country: The T-shirt Deli website states that they currently don’t have opportunities for franchising (they are however open to proposals, which they may reply to if they find them intriguing). In Springwise speak, that means you may as well go it alone: the world is a big place, and the demand for cool T-shirts and/or unusual retail experiences is infinite, especially with the Fast Fashion trend still picking up speed!
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Not exactly hot news: discerning consumers want healthy, tasty, and increasingly also organic produce from trusted sources, if not their own backyard. Pretty hot news: companies that deliver on this desire, either by making it easy for consumers to grow and produce their own food, or by adding a dose of convenience to the fast growing organic movement. Here are six spottings begging to be copied in whatever (urban) environment you may find yourself in:
• UK based Omlet brings hens to consumers’ gardens and thus fresh eggs to their table every morning. The company has designed a hen kit for the town or suburban garden, aimed at first time chicken owners, families and eco-savvy individuals. How it works? Omlet supplies organically reared and fully vaccinated female chickens (no early morning cock-a-doodle-doo), at a cost of GBP 365 (USD 700 / EUR 550). The two-hen service comes complete with an ‘Eglu’, an eye-catching, 21st century version of the henhouse. Springwise foresees over-easy market opportunities from Stockholm gardens to Manhattan roof top terraces.
• Urban wine is now a reality thanks to Crushpad. A licensed winery in the heart of San Francisco, the 9,000 square feet facility caters to aspiring winemakers, wine retailers and restaurateurs, assisting them in creating as little as 25 cases of ultra-premium, branded yet affordable wines (in their own words: ‘end-to-end winemaking from grapes to bottle’). Crushpad provides the equipment, winemaking talent, and fruit sourced from well known California vineyards. For wine fanatics who don’t live in the Bay Area, Crushpad’s extensive online courses will do the job. But since nothing beats real-world tastings, may we suggest that urban entrepreneurs near the world’s great vineyards, from Melbourne to Cape Town to Bordeaux, pay attention and take a cue from Crushpad? And how about a Crushpad for cheese, to name just one high-interest edible delight?
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