A hand holds a small shopping cart against an orange background with bold black and white text: THE CUSTOMER IS ALWAYS RIGHT BUT WHICH ONE? Highlighting how millennials and Gen Z shop differently, the shomi! logo appears in the lower right corner.

The Customer Is Always Right — But Which One?

by InformativeRetail Trends

How Millennials and Gen Z Shop Differently — and What That Means for Your Store Design​

There’s a moment every retailer eventually has, standing in their own store, watching two shoppers side by side and realizing they’re not actually shopping in the same reality.

One is scrolling their phone to compare prices while reaching for a product. The other walked in specifically because they saw your store on TikTok, took a photo near your display before touching anything, and is now reading your brand’s mission statement on the wall like they’re deciding whether to trust you with their firstborn.

Both are under 45. Both have money to spend. And they want almost entirely different things from you.

This is the Millennial/Gen Z split. If your store design isn’t accounting for it, you’re probably leaving one of them cold.

First, a surprising fact that changes the whole conversation

Let’s get the counterintuitive part out of the way early, because it reshapes everything else: Gen Z — the generation that grew up with smartphones surgically attached to their hands — is actually more likely to prefer shopping in physical stores than Millennials are.

According to a 2024 study by global strategy consultancy L.E.K., about two-thirds of Gen Z (64%) prefer shopping in-store to online, and 92% do research before they make a purchase. Meanwhile, Millennials trail at a distant 43% on that same in-store preference measure.

And it’s not a passive preference. Almost three-quarters of Gen Z shop in-person at least once a week, and the majority consider it an experience.

The generation everyone assumed would kill physical retail is, in many ways, keeping it alive. They just need you to hold up your end of the deal.

We covered a lot of Gen Z’s broader consumer psychology in our earlier piece, Gen Z: The Trailblazers of Retail’s Evolution. This article gets more specific about what their in-store behaviour actually demands from your physical environment — and how that compares to the Millennials shopping right beside them.

Who they actually are right now

Before getting into design implications, it helps to anchor these generations in where they actually are in life.

Millennials were born between 1981 and 1996, making them 29 to 44 years old today. They’re established in their careers, giving them greater spending power, and are more likely to be going through major life milestones: getting married, moving into a home, having children. They are, in short, the people buying furniture, appliances, and everything that goes in a nursery.

Gen Z, born 1997 to 2012, are still in college or early careers. They have less disposable income individually, but their spending power is expected to grow to $12 trillion by 2030. They’re not who they’ll be yet. Retailers who write them off today are going to have a rough decade.

The Millennial shopper: experience matters, but don’t waste their time

Millennials are comfortable shoppers. They’ve been buying things online since dial-up was a reasonable option, so they don’t need a physical store to browse. What they do need is a reason to be there.

70% of Millennials report that the quality of the shopping experience influences where they shop. That’s not a small number. It means the majority of this cohort is actively making location decisions based on how good the experience feels — not just what’s in stock.

They’re also prone to impulse buying, with 74% reporting they do so regularly, and nearly as likely to make an impulse purchase on their phone as in-store. The journey from “seeing something” to “buying it” is short, but the environment still has to trigger the impulse in the first place.

For store design, this translates into a need for clear, confidence-inspiring visual environments. Millennials aren’t going to stand and read a product paragraph on a cluttered display. They’ve already read reviews at home. Your job in-store is to confirm that the brand lives up to what they researched — and to make the space feel worth the trip.

The Gen Z shopper: the store is the content

Gen Z’s relationship with physical retail is completely different in motivation, even if the destination is the same.

They’re not there because the experience is pleasant. They’re there because shopping has become social and visual in a way that only a physical space can deliver. Hashtags like #mallhaul and #shopwithme generate millions of views, turning stores into content studios. Your store isn’t just a place to sell things — it’s a backdrop, a set, and a credibility signal.

41% of Gen Z cite the ability to touch and see products as their primary reason for shopping in-store — up significantly from the year before. They want the tactile and the tangible, which no amount of AR try-on technology has fully replaced yet.

But here’s where the paradox gets interesting: Gen Z shoppers are actually more cautious spenders than Millennials, with 47% saying they prefer to wait a few days before making a purchase. They’re in your store, absorbing everything. They may not buy today. They’ll go home, research more, and come back — or they’ll convert someone else through the content they create while standing in your space.

The store has to earn that second visit, and it has to be worth photographing in the meantime.

There’s also a patience threshold retailers should take seriously: 3 in 5 Gen Z shoppers will abandon a purchase if the checkout line is long, and more than a quarter will leave if their preferred payment method isn’t available. They’ll give you a great deal of enthusiasm on the way in and zero tolerance on the way out.

A note on music - from the generation you're probably ignoring

The research on in-store music volume is pretty unambiguous, and it goes back further than you’d think. A 1966 study in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that loud music caused shoppers to exit the store more quickly than soft music — correlated directly with lower sales. A 1982 Journal of Marketing study backed that up, finding that slow background music produced a 32% increase in sales. The mechanism isn’t mysterious: when the music is slower, quieter, and familiar, people tend to stay in the store longer. Music researcher Jasmine Moradi puts it plainly: “The best retail store music is actually music you don’t really remember.”

The generation most at risk of being driven out by a bad playlist? Gen X — born 1965 to 1980, largely ignored by retail marketing, and quietly responsible for 31% of all in-store and online retail spending despite representing only 19% of the population. They have the highest revenue per shopper across nearly every major category. They notice your environment. They respond to it emotionally. And they leave when it’s wrong.

Your playlist is part of your store design. Treat it that way.

Gen X deserves a lot more than a callout box. We’ll be covering them properly in an upcoming piece.

What this means for your physical environment

The two cohorts actually want the same core things: a space that feels intentional, a brand that looks like it means it, and an environment that matches the promise made online. Where they diverge is in what specifically trips the wire.

For Millennials, the environment needs to communicate quality and ease. Clear navigation, strong visual hierarchy, and lighting that makes products look the way they’re supposed to look. They’re not there to be surprised by your brand — they know it already. The store has to confirm the decision they’d already half made.

For Gen Z, the environment needs moments. Not necessarily gimmicks, but visual anchors worth pausing at, worth photographing, worth showing someone. A well-lit display, a bold graphic wall, an illuminated product showcase — these aren’t decorations, they’re content infrastructure. Gen Z’s path to purchase is non-linear: they might discover a product on social media, price compare in-app, and transact in-store. Your store is one node in a longer journey, and it needs to play its part clearly.

Both generations are showing up. Gen Z and Millennials are projected to fuel 60% of retail sales growth by 2030. That’s not a niche demographic consideration — that’s most of where retail growth is coming from.

The stores that’ll win with both cohorts aren’t going to be the ones with the cleverest loyalty apps or the most aggressive social media strategy. They’ll be the ones that understood something fairly simple: when someone walks through your door, the environment itself is doing the selling. The graphics, the lighting, the spatial flow, the way a display makes you feel when you’re standing in front of it.

That’s not a new idea. It’s just one that’s become impossible to ignore.

shomi! builds the displays, frames, and illuminated environments that make retail spaces worth walking into — and worth staying in. If you’re rethinking your store environment, we’re happy to help you figure out what makes sense for your space.

Sources
L.E.K. Consulting (2024) • Adyen/Retail Dive (2025) • Attentive (2024) • Circana (2025) • PwC 2025 Holiday Outlook • Journal of Applied Psychology (1966) • Journal of Marketing (1982) • Soundtrack Your Brand/Jasmine Moradi • ICSC/Alexander Babbage (October 2025) • RetailCustomerExperience.com • Parcel Pending/Quadient (2025)

An orange background with a red stop sign on the right. The text reads: shomi! Discover the science behind why your display isn't getting noticed.

The Science Behind Why Your Display Isn’t Getting Noticed

by Animated DisplaysRetail DisplaysTrade Show

Motion, light, and dimensional builds aren't design trends. They're biology.

The human visual system is hardwired to detect motion, respond to light contrast, and interpret depth. The right display format matches those instincts to the demands of the environment it’s going into. Here’s the science behind it, and what it means for how you spec and build.

The Problem With “Pretty” Displays

Most branded displays are designed to look good in a photo. Clean lines, on-brand colours, sharp graphics. And then they get installed in a trade show hall or a retail environment, and they disappear.

Not because the design was bad. Because the environment ate them alive. Nobody told the display it was going to a trade show floor with 400 other displays, all of which also have great brand colours.

A busy trade show floor has hundreds of competing displays. A retail corridor has competing signage at every turn. A branded environment in a corporate lobby competes with phone screens, overhead lighting, and foot traffic. In that kind of sensory noise, a display that isn’t working with the visual system’s attention mechanisms is fighting an uphill battle.

The displays that actually get noticed share three characteristics: they move, they glow, or they come off the wall. Often all three.

That’s not a coincidence. It’s anatomy.

Motion: The Override Instinct

The human visual system didn’t evolve to admire graphics. It evolved to detect threats and opportunities. Your display is neither, but it can borrow from the same wiring. One of its most deeply wired functions is motion detection.

The retina has two primary types of photoreceptors: rods and cones. Rods are concentrated in the peripheral visual field and are specifically tuned to detect changes in light intensity over time, which is the biological basis for motion perception. This is why something moving at the edge of your vision captures your attention before you’ve consciously registered it. The response is involuntary.

Research in visual neuroscience consistently confirms that peripheral motion detection triggers involuntary attention shifts. Pratt, Radulescu, Guo, and Abrams documented this directly in their 2010 study “It’s Alive! Animate motion captures visual attention”, published in Psychological Science, finding that animate motion captures visual attention faster and more reliably than static stimuli. The brain’s superior colliculus, which handles orienting reflexes, responds to motion cues and redirects gaze before the cortex has a chance to evaluate the stimulus. In plain language: people look before they decide to look.

For display fabricators and brand managers, this has a direct implication. Animated content, whether it’s a looping LED sequence, an illuminated fabric frame with shifting backlighting, or a mechanically animated dimensional element, triggers a response that static displays simply cannot. You’re not trying to be interesting. You’re engaging a reflex.

The Nielsen Norman Group has documented related effects in digital environments. Their article “Animation for Attention and Comprehension” confirms that movement in peripheral vision triggers a stimulus-driven shift in visual attention, what they describe as bottom-up processing, distinct from the goal-directed attention a person chooses to give. The same principle applies in physical space.

“People look before they decide to look. Motion engages a reflex, not a preference.”

The iMPAKT in-motion Advantage

For environments where motion is the right tool, animated lightbox systems like the iMPAKT in-motion exist specifically for that application. The display itself moves. Not the graphic, not a screen embedded in a frame, the entire illuminated panel animates. The result is a motion cue that registers in peripheral vision from a distance, drawing viewers in before they’ve made a conscious decision to engage.

It’s an additional layer on top of the contrast advantage that any quality lightbox already delivers. In environments where foot traffic is high, dwell time is short, and competing displays are dense, that motion layer can be the difference between being noticed and being part of the background. In a quieter branded environment, a corporate reception area, a showroom, a permanent retail installation, a well-fabricated static lightbox is often exactly the right call.

Light: Contrast Is What the Eye Follows

Light doesn’t just illuminate a display. It creates the contrast that the visual system uses to parse its environment.

The eye doesn’t respond uniformly to all light. It responds to differences. The Mach band effect, described by physicist Ernst Mach in the 1860s and subsequently confirmed by neurophysiological research, demonstrates that the visual system actively enhances edges between light and dark regions. Lateral inhibition in retinal ganglion cells sharpens contrast perception so that the brain can quickly identify boundaries and objects. An illuminated display against a darker background is, quite literally, easier for the visual system to isolate from its surroundings.

This is why backlit displays consistently outperform front-lit or non-illuminated displays in terms of dwell time and recall. The 2023 OAAA/Solomon Partners U.S. Major Media Advertising Effectiveness Analysis — an aggregation of publicly available recall studies from 2017 to 2022 — found that illuminated and digital OOH formats generated the highest consumer recall of any measured media channel. The underlying mechanism is contrast detection, not aesthetic preference.

Lightboxes work because they create a controlled luminance differential. The graphic isn’t just lit; it’s made to be the brightest, most contrast-rich element in a viewer’s peripheral field. The eye finds it automatically.

The quality of that light matters, though. Even backlighting, consistent colour temperature, and high colour rendering are the difference between a display that reads clearly from across a room and one that looks washed out or patchy up close. This is a fabrication issue as much as a design issue. A low-quality light source undermines the very mechanism that makes the format effective.

“The eye doesn’t respond to light. It responds to contrast. Illuminated displays win because they’re the sharpest edge in the room.”

Dimensional Builds: The Depth Signal

The third mechanism is depth perception, and it operates through a different set of visual cues entirely.

The human visual system interprets three-dimensional space using a combination of binocular disparity (the slight difference in each eye’s view of an object), motion parallax (how objects shift relative to each other as you move), and monocular depth cues including relative size, overlap, and shadow. When an object occupies multiple depth planes, the brain registers it as physically present rather than as a surface to be scanned and categorized.

A flat wall graphic is processed differently than a dimensional build that extends off the wall. The dimensional build activates the brain’s object recognition systems, not just its pattern recognition systems. It reads as a thing rather than a sign.

Research in environmental psychology, including work by Paco Underhill documented in Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping (1999), has repeatedly shown that tactile and dimensional elements increase dwell time in retail environments. The visual system signals the body to slow down and gather more information about a complex three-dimensional object. A flat graphic doesn’t trigger the same response.

For branded environments specifically, dimensionality communicates something beyond the graphic content itself. A brand that builds in three dimensions is implying permanence, investment, and presence. The perception is partly subliminal. A foam-core pop-up reads as temporary. A fabricated dimensional installation reads as the real thing. The brain makes that call in about the same amount of time it takes someone to walk past.

“A dimensional build activates object recognition, not just pattern recognition. It reads as a thing rather than a sign.”

Matching Mechanisms to Environment

Motion, light, and dimension each work through separate visual pathways. Understanding which ones are active in your display is how you match the format to the environment it’s going into.

A well-fabricated SEG lightbox is doing serious work on the contrast pathway. It creates a controlled luminance differential that the eye finds automatically. In the right environment — a corporate lobby, a permanent retail installation, an exhibition space with controlled lighting — that’s precisely what’s needed and nothing more is required. The display looks authoritative, the graphic is vivid, and it does its job.

The question of whether to add motion or dimensionality isn’t about making a better display in the abstract. It’s about reading the environment. A busy trade show floor with hundreds of competing illuminated displays is a different problem than a flagship retail space with a single brand story to tell. The former rewards motion because peripheral attention is the only currency that matters when 400 other displays are fighting for the same eyes. The latter rewards craft, finish, and dimensional presence because the viewer has time to engage.

Add a dimensional component — a fabricated element that protrudes from the frame, a three-dimensional logo application, a tiered structure that creates shadow and depth — and the object recognition pathway activates alongside the contrast pathway. Add motion and you’ve engaged peripheral vision as well. These aren’t upgrades on a single scale. They’re different tools for different environments, and the right combination depends entirely on where the display is going and who it needs to stop.

This is the logic behind why well-specified branded environments outperform underspecified ones in brand recall and engagement. It’s not about spending more for the sake of it. It’s about honestly matching the mechanisms to the demands of the space.

Because in physical environments, attention isn’t won by decoration. It’s won by how the brain actually sees. The most effective experiential environments are designed with that in mind long before anything gets built.

What This Means for Production

Understanding the perceptual mechanisms behind effective displays should change how you approach production decisions, not just design decisions.

On motion: animation needs to be designed into the display at the fabrication stage. An animated lightbox system has to be specified early. Trying to retrofit motion into a static display system produces compromised results. Get the fabrication right from the start.

On light: the performance of a backlit display depends on the light source, the diffusion method, and the fabric or media in front of it. A graphic designed for a particular light output and colour temperature will look completely different behind a different system. These variables need to be coordinated across the design and production teams before anything gets built. This is the argument for early production involvement in every display project.

On dimension: dimensional builds require structural engineering, not just design intent. Weight distribution, wall attachment, shipping constraints, and installation access are fabrication considerations that have to be resolved before the design is locked. A dimensional build that can’t be safely installed or shipped intact is a design that exists only in a rendering. The production team has to be in the room when the concept is being developed.

The displays that capture attention aren’t accidents. They’re the result of applying known perceptual principles to fabrication decisions made early in the process.

The Right Question to Ask

Before any display budget gets approved, there’s one question worth asking: what does this environment actually demand?

A well-fabricated SEG lightbox in a controlled, lower-traffic space is engaging the contrast pathway precisely and effectively. That’s not a compromise. That’s correct specification. Adding motion or dimension to an environment that doesn’t need them doesn’t improve the display — it just adds cost and complexity.

In a high-traffic, high-competition environment — a major trade show floor, a flagship retail launch, a keynote-stage branded installation — the question becomes which additional mechanisms are worth activating. Motion for peripheral attention. Dimension for object recognition and perceived permanence. Both together for environments where the display needs to earn its place against serious competition.

There’s no universal right answer. But asking the question forces an honest conversation about whether the display is being specified for the environment it’s actually going into, or just for the rendering it’s going to look good in.

One of those outcomes shows up in post-show reports. The other shows up in the photo the intern took for the recap deck.

shomi! fabricates branded environments, lightbox display systems, and dimensional builds for trade shows, retail, and corporate spaces across Canada. The iMPAKT in-Motion animated lightbox is part of the iMPAKT display family.

Designing for Accessibility-2

Designing for Accessibility: How to Create Inclusive Signage and Displays

by InformativeRetail Displays

Accessibility isn’t a checkbox. It’s the difference between signage that reaches every customer and signage that quietly excludes a portion of them. The good news: most of what makes a display accessible also makes it better for everyone else who walks past it.

Here’s what to think about when you’re designing signage and displays that work for the widest possible audience, with specific examples drawn from the kinds of builds we work on every day.

Start with what accessibility actually means

Accessibility in signage isn’t only about permanent disability. It’s about designing for people with visual, mobility, cognitive, and hearing differences, and for everyone navigating temporary or situational impairments: trade show floor glare, dim retail lighting, crowded aisles, a phone in one hand, a kid pulling on the other.

Design for the hardest case and the easy ones take care of themselves. A FABRiK Frame that reads clearly from a wheelchair in a busy expo hall reads clearly for everyone else, too.

Prioritise contrast for legibility

The most basic rule of accessible design: if no one can read it, it doesn’t matter how good the message is. Contrast between text and background does more for legibility than almost any other variable, especially for people with low vision or colour blindness.

This is where lightbox graphics have a built-in advantage. iMPAKT Lightboxes are backlit, which dramatically improves contrast and readability compared to printed signage in ambient light, especially in environments with mixed or low lighting. But backlighting doesn’t fix a low-contrast graphic. Pale type on a busy background looks worse when it’s lit, not better. The graphic file has to do the work first.

For large-format builds (backwalls, retail end-caps, suspended FABRiK Frames), keep contrast high and unambiguous, and check the graphic at full size before committing. What reads fine at 11×17 inches can disappear at 8 feet wide.

Choose typefaces that hold up at a glance

Decorative or heavily stylised typefaces can look distinctive, but they fail when readers have dyslexia, low vision, or just a few seconds to scan a trade show aisle. Stick to clean sans-serifs like Helvetica, Arial, or Verdana. Avoid italics and long stretches of all caps; both slow comprehension.

Size matters too. Booth headlines on a 10-foot FABRiK Frame need to read from across the aisle, which is typically 15 to 20 feet. Retail signage usually needs to be legible from at least 10 to 15 feet. The rule of thumb: 1 inch of cap height for every 10 feet of viewing distance, then go bigger if you can.

Place signage where people can actually see it

A perfectly designed sign mounted too high, tucked into a corner, or blocked by a fixture isn’t doing its job. This is where the placement strategy across a build matters: suspended Lanterns and iNTERPOLE hanging displays carry messaging above the crowd for distance visibility, while wall-mount FABRiK Frames and HORiZON Frameless displays handle the close-range, eye-level read.

For tactile and Braille signage on permanent retail builds, Canadian accessibility standards (CSA B651) place the baseline of text between 1220 and 1525 mm (48 to 60 inches) from the floor. That range works for standing users, seated users, and wheelchair users alike.

Lighting matters too. A well-designed sign in shadow is an invisible sign. This is another reason backlit displays earn their place in accessibility-conscious builds: they bring their own light, which means they don’t depend on whether the venue lighting cooperates.

Use symbols and icons alongside text

Text isn’t always the fastest way to communicate. Universally recognised symbols (a phone for service, the international symbol of accessibility, restroom pictograms) get understood faster than words and cross language barriers. On a trade show booth or retail wayfinding system, pairing text with symbols speeds comprehension for everyone, including readers who are rushed, distracted, or reading in a second language.

Where you have the real estate (a FABRiK Frame backwall, a large iMPAKT lightbox), give symbols room to breathe. Don’t crowd them up against the type.

Include Braille and tactile signage where it counts

For blind and low-vision users, tactile signage and Braille on directional signs, room identifiers, and key wayfinding signage are essential, not optional. Braille should sit below the corresponding visual text, be crisp, and be reachable at the heights noted above.

Most temporary trade show and pop-up signage doesn’t include Braille, but permanent retail builds and long-running pop-ups should. If you’re rolling out fixtures across 40 stores, accessibility-compliant tactile wayfinding is the kind of thing to spec in the design phase, not retrofit after a complaint.

Don’t overlook hearing accessibility

If a display includes audio (an iMPAKT in-motion animated lightbox paired with a soundtrack, an interactive screen, a video wall), it needs a visual equivalent. Captions, on-screen text, or visual cues mean the experience isn’t gated behind sound. This matters less for purely visual lightboxes and fabric frames, more for any build that integrates motion, screens, or audio elements.

Multi-sensory design isn’t only an accessibility win. It generally creates a richer experience for everyone, including the majority of trade show attendees who can’t hear your booth audio over the noise of the hall anyway.

Test with real users

The fastest way to find what isn’t working is to put a display in front of someone who’ll encounter it differently than you do. Feedback from users with visual, mobility, or cognitive differences turns up problems that no design review will catch: a graphic that’s perfectly legible at desk size and unreadable at booth size, a sign placed at exactly the wrong height for a seated user, a high-contrast palette that loses its punch under the venue’s specific lighting.

Accessibility simulation tools (colour-blindness filters, low-vision simulators) are a useful supplement during the design phase, but they don’t replace real users.

Why this matters for the brand, not just the build

Accessible signage isn’t only a compliance question. It’s a signal of who the brand is designed for. Customers notice when a space has been thought through, and they notice when it hasn’t. The brands that get this right tend to find that accessibility improvements quietly make their displays better for every shopper, not just the ones who needed the change.

At shōmi!, accessibility isn’t always the starting point of a build, and we’d be lying if we said it was. But it’s a conversation that’s a lot cheaper to have during design than after install. If you’re planning a retail rollout, trade show build, or pop-up and want a second set of eyes on the accessibility side before the design is locked, we’re happy to take a look.

Generation Z kids standing with social media signs covering their faces

Gen Z: The Authenticity Era in Retail Branding and Marketing

by Informative

Gen Z, Redefining the Future of Retail Part 2: Seven Brands That Got It Right

Gen Z doesn’t shop the way previous generations did, and they don’t respond to the same marketing playbook. They’re more diverse than any generation before them, more attuned to authenticity, and quicker to call out a brand that’s faking it. They expect the brands they support to mean what they say, which is a higher bar than the marketing industry has historically had to clear.

The brands that have figured this out aren’t following a checklist. They’re operating on a few clear principles. Here are seven that have done it well, and what each of them gets right.

1. Patagonia: putting the money where the mission is

Patagonia has built its brand around environmental responsibility, and unlike most companies that talk about sustainability, it backs the claim with action: recycled materials, fair labour practices, a percentage of sales donated to environmental causes, and a willingness to tell customers not to buy things they don’t need. That last one alone is enough to disqualify roughly 95% of brands from copying the strategy.

The lesson isn’t “be sustainable.” It’s that Gen Z can tell the difference between a sustainability statement and an actual commitment, and they reward the second one.

2. Nike: standing for something, knowing the risk

Nike’s “Dream Crazy” campaign with Colin Kaepernick was a calculated bet that taking a clear position on social justice would resonate more than it would alienate. The campaign generated significant backlash from older demographics and significant loyalty from younger ones. Nike chose its audience, which is a different exercise than trying to keep everyone happy and ending up with no one’s attention.

The lesson: Gen Z respects brands with a point of view more than brands trying to be liked by everyone. Trying to please all demographics tends to please none of them.

3. Billie: rewriting the category, not just the messaging

Billie, a women’s razor brand, ran ads showing real body hair on women: a small choice that quietly contradicted decades of category convention. The category had been showing women shaving already-smooth skin for so long that nobody noticed how strange it was. Billie did, and made a brand out of pointing it out.

The brand was acquired by Procter & Gamble in 2021. The lesson: Gen Z notices when a brand is willing to make its competitors look behind the times. Body positivity isn’t a marketing layer here; it’s the product positioning.

4. Fenty Beauty: setting the standard the category has to catch up to

When Fenty Beauty launched in 2017 with 40 foundation shades, it didn’t just expand its own product line. It redefined what an acceptable shade range looked like for the entire beauty industry. Competitors that had been shipping ranges of 20 or 25 shades suddenly looked behind the curve, and most of them spent the following years quietly catching up and hoping nobody asked what took them so long.

The lesson: diversity isn’t a campaign, it’s a product decision. Gen Z notices the difference between a brand that adds an inclusive ad to an exclusive product line and a brand that builds inclusion into the product itself.

5. Spotify: personalisation as the product

Spotify’s Wrapped campaign turns user data into a shareable annual moment, which is to say it convinced millions of people to voluntarily post their listening habits to social media every December. The personalisation isn’t a feature on top of the product. It’s a core part of why people use Spotify in the first place.

The lesson: Gen Z expects experiences that adapt to them, not the other way around. Personalisation done well doesn’t feel like targeting. It feels like the product knows you, in a flattering way, and not in the way that prompts you to check your phone permissions.

6. Liquid Death: taking the brand seriously by refusing to take itself seriously

A canned water company with a heavy metal aesthetic and the tagline “Murder Your Thirst” shouldn’t work. It works. Liquid Death turned the most boring product category in retail into a brand people actually want on their fridge, and they did it by committing harder to the bit than anyone thought was reasonable.

The aluminum cans are also infinitely recyclable, which makes the sustainability story real, but the sustainability story isn’t the lead. The lead is that the brand is fun, and the sustainability is what’s quietly true underneath. The lesson: Gen Z responds to brands that have a sense of humour about themselves, and they’re suspicious of brands that don’t. Being earnest about a mission and irreverent about everything else turns out to be a stronger position than being earnest about absolutely everything, which is what most brand decks recommend.

7. Lush: making the physical store the brand

Walk into a Lush store and the experience is immediately different from every other beauty retailer: products sold without packaging, sales associates demoing soaps on your hands at a sink in the middle of the store, signage that reads more like a manifesto than a price tag. The brand’s anti-corporate, anti-packaging, anti-conventional-retail positioning isn’t a marketing message you read about online. It’s the store. You can smell it from across the mall, which is also part of the strategy.

The lesson: physical retail is one of the strongest brand expressions available, and most brands underuse it. For Gen Z, who get most of their brand impressions through screens, a physical space that genuinely commits to a point of view stands out by default.

What these brands have in common

Seven different categories, seven different stories, but the underlying principles repeat:

  • Authenticity beats polish. Gen Z can spot a focus-grouped statement at fifty paces. Brands that sound like real organisations with real positions outperform brands that sound like brand decks.
  • Diversity and inclusion are baseline, not differentiators. Showing up with products and imagery that reflect a diverse audience is the floor, not the ceiling. Brands that treat it as a campaign rather than a product-level commitment tend to get caught.
  • Social media is the conversation, not the megaphone. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat reward brands that engage like community members, not advertisers. User-generated content and creator collaboration outperform polished brand content most of the time.
  • Storytelling beats specs. Gen Z is drawn to brands with a narrative they want to be part of, whether that’s sustainability, social justice, self-expression, or craft. Transactional messaging doesn’t build loyalty here.
  • Sustainability and social responsibility have to be real. Surface-level “green” claims get flagged fast. Genuine commitments, communicated honestly (including the parts that aren’t perfect yet), build trust.
  • Personalisation is expected, not impressive. Gen Z grew up with algorithms that knew their preferences. Generic shopping experiences feel dated by comparison.
  • A sense of humour is a feature. Brands that take themselves too seriously read as out of touch. Brands that are willing to be funny, weird, or self-aware tend to feel more human, and humans are what Gen Z wants to buy from.
  • Physical space is part of the brand, not separate from it. Stores, pop-ups, and activations are some of the most memorable brand impressions available, and they’re often the most underused.

How this plays out in physical retail

Most of these examples live in digital marketing, product design, or brand campaigns. But the same principles translate directly to physical retail environments. A pop-up that tells a clear story, a fixture program that uses materials a Gen Z shopper would actually want to ask about, a trade show booth that doesn’t look like every other booth in the row: all of these are physical expressions of the same ideas.

Lush figured this out. So did Liquid Death, in their own way, every time they show up at a festival or grocery aisle and refuse to look like the rest of the shelf. The brands that build retail environments worth posting about have figured it out too.

At shōmi!, we work with brands and agencies thinking about how their physical presence reflects what they actually stand for. If you’re planning a retail rollout, pop-up, or activation aimed at a younger audience and want a second set of eyes on the build, we’re happy to take a look.

multiethnic group of teenagers holding tiktok, facebook, youtube, snapchat and instagram signs over their faces

Gen Z: The Trailblazers of Retail’s Evolution

by InformativeNews

Gen Z: Redefining the Future of Retail – Part 1

Generation Z is the cohort currently in their teens and twenties: people born roughly between 1997 and 2012, depending on which definition you trust. They’re also the first generation in history to have never known a world without smartphones, which has turned out to matter a lot more for retail than most brands initially expected.

Gen Z is now flexing real purchasing power, and they’re spending it differently than the generations that came before. They’re not just changing what brands sell. They’re changing what brands have to be, which is a less convenient development for the brands that had already figured out the previous version.

What makes this generation different

Three things separate Gen Z from the millennials, Gen Xers, and boomers retail has spent decades learning to sell to.

They’re digitally fluent in a way nobody else is

Previous generations watched the internet and social media arrive. Gen Z grew up with them, the way previous generations grew up with television, except more so and with worse posture. They research products before they walk into a store, read reviews while they’re standing in the aisle, and watch unboxing videos as a normal part of the buying decision. The phone isn’t a tool they use to shop. It’s the room the shopping happens in, and the store is one of several places they consult.

They expect brands to mean something

This is the shift older brands struggle with most. Gen Z doesn’t just want products that work and prices that are fair. They want to know what the brand stands for, whether the brand’s actions match what it says, and whether the company is run by people they’d trust if they met them. Brands that engage in performative activism or greenwashing get caught quickly, and the call-outs spread faster than the original campaign ever did.

This isn’t about politics. It’s about consistency. A brand that says it cares about something and then quietly does the opposite is more damaging to itself than a brand that never made the claim in the first place. The safest play is meaning what you say, which is also, as it happens, the cheapest one.

They expect to see themselves represented

Gen Z is the most racially and ethnically diverse generation in North American history, and they expect the brands they support to reflect that. Tokenistic representation gets noticed and dismissed, usually before the campaign has finished rolling out. Genuine inclusivity, built into the product and not just the ad campaign, gets rewarded with loyalty.

The role of social media

Social platforms aren’t where Gen Z hears about brands. They’re where Gen Z forms opinions about brands, with or without the brand’s involvement.

Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Snapchat all function as parallel storefronts: spaces where products get discovered, evaluated, and recommended by people who don’t work for the brand selling them. Influencer recommendations and peer reviews carry more weight than traditional advertising for a Gen Z audience. The trade-off for brands: less control over the narrative, more leverage when the narrative goes well, and a learning curve for anyone who built their career on the assumption that brands set the conversation.

Why this matters for retail

It would be easy to read all of this and conclude that physical retail is the loser in a Gen Z world. The opposite is closer to true. Gen Z still shops in person, and they value the in-store experience, but they evaluate it against a much higher bar than previous generations did. A store that doesn’t deliver something a screen can’t (atmosphere, expertise, a brand expression you can stand inside of) struggles to justify the trip, because the alternative is sitting on a couch.

The brands winning with Gen Z aren’t choosing between digital and physical. They’re using physical retail to do what digital can’t: build a memorable, sharable, three-dimensional version of the brand that customers can experience with their whole body, then post about with their phone.

Coming up in Part 2

In Part 2, we’ll look at seven brands that have figured this out, and the specific principles they’re operating on. Patagonia, Nike, Fenty Beauty, Spotify, Liquid Death, and others have each found a different way to earn Gen Z’s attention, and the lessons translate well beyond their original categories.