This page contains a Flash digital edition of a book.
Story in New York


turns shopping into an experience. It is regularly themed and redesigned


what’s the story?


as fast as they can. But for experi- ences, time is really the currency – it’s all about how customers can spend more time with you.” A hotel, for example, can either be an experience or just a service, depending on how it’s offered to cus- tomers, as well as how they perceive it. Are guests paying for the time they spend in the hotel, or merely for a bundle of activities to be performed?


THOUGHT-PROVOKING Pine and Gilmore are far from being academic theorisers – they’ve spent the past 15 years of their business partnership working with companies across North America and increasingly across the world – advising them how to apply a range of principles to stage engaging experiences.


Under their consultancy brand, Strategic Horizons LLP, they under- take speaking engagements, offer workshops, run a global certifi cation programme, create ‘learning excur- sions’ for individual companies and lecture at colleges and universities. Their fl agship product is the annual thinkAbout event, which takes place in


ISSUE 3 2013 © cybertrek 2013


Pine and Gilmore say the big buzz they get from their jobs is seeing their clients “get it”, changing their mindset, and doing things diff erently as a result. One past participant of their exclusive thinkAbout event is former brand consultant Rachel Shechtman, who recently opened the highly innovative retail space Story on New York’s


10th Avenue. Described as “a retail space that has the point of view of a magazine, changes like a gallery and sells things like a store,” the 2,000sq ft site is like one imaginative, revolving pop-up shop. Every four to eight weeks, Story changes all its merchandise, design, fi xtures and reinvents the store around a diff erent theme.


a different city each year and is per- sonally designed by Pine and Gilmore to bring delegates a highly interac- tive, immersive and thought-provoking two-day tour around the ‘Experience Economy’ of a chosen city. Since its inaugural event in Gilmore’s hometown of Cleveland, Ohio in 1998, thinkAbout has taken followers of the experience economy to such places as Hollywood, Las Vegas, Baltimore and Nashville. Last year the event – which also names the top 10 experiences of the year and gives the top one the ‘Experience Stager of


the Year’ (EXPY) award – was in San Francisco and in September 2013 del- egates will be exploring the streets of Washington DC in pursuit of experi- ences par excellence. The partnership between Pine and Gilmore has stood the test of time and renews itself with new ideas and vigour each year. The pair fi rst commu- nicated when Pine published his book, Mass Customization, in 1992 and Gilmore wrote him a letter about it. “My fi rst thought was, oh shoot some- one has gone and written the book!” says Gilmore. When Pine left his job


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