Reformation to Open In San Francisco With Tech-Enabled Retail Concept
Reformation's San Francisco store. Photo: Reformation
Reformation has announced its next U.S. location to open up shop later this month: San Francisco. According to founder Yael Aflalo, she decided on the Bay Area city because it was the brand's biggest market after Los Angeles and New York. "The community is so receptive to new ideas, especially involving technology and sustainability," says Aflalo. "So opening the new store there just felt like the right move."
The Los Angeles-based brand stuck to its eco-friendly roots by working with local companies to design the brick-and-mortar space: Walls were built with rammed earth (a raw, sustainable material), along with low VOC paints that release less toxins in the air over time, hangers made from recycled materials and reusable shopping totes.
Reformation's San Francisco store. Photo: Reformation
To keep up with Silicon Valley's startup culture, the Reformation locale will include tech-enabled retail concepts for a more efficient shopping experience. Aflalo says that she and her team walked through each of the inconveniences usually found in traditional stores in order to come up with an intuitive system for its future customers.
"Most [stores] are super messy, you can never find your size, you have to wait in line forever, the dressing room lighting is the worst," she explains. "I felt like a high-volume, high-end retail experience was basically nonexistent. So we wanted to blend internet and IRL to create a store we'd actually want to go to ourselves — that hopefully solves a lot of these problems."
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As a result, the San Francisco shop will have touchscreen monitors and a "magic wardrobe," which happens to be Aflalo's favorite. Shoppers will discover this feature in the store's fitting room via an additional monitor that's home to a digital attendee. Rather than having to go back and forth between the fitting room and sales floor to try on different garments, you can simply request additional sizes, colors or styles from the monitor. Once you've added your request to your fitting room's monitor, open the magic wardrobe's doors and — voila! — your new piece is ready to be tried on. In addition, the fitting rooms will have customizable lighting and the ability to play your own music. You just might never leave.
Reformation's San Francisco store. Photo: Reformation
Reformation's San Francisco store will open its doors on Tuesday, Feb. 21. And if the feedback is good, Aflalo hopes to implement these tech features within the brand's New York and Los Angeles stores as well. Until then, make a trip to Silicon Valley to experience everything firsthand yourself.
Visit Reformation's San Francisco store at 914 Valencia Street when it opens on Tuesday, Feb. 21.
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Homepage image: Reformation's San Francisco store. Photo: Reformation
