Macerich is a publicly traded (NYSE:MAC) real estate trust and the third largest owner of shopping malls in the United States. It controls over $9 billion worth of real estate assets across 53+ million square feet of leasable inventory. With the rise of direct to consumer and digitally native retail brands (DNVBs), the retail industry has been facing unprecedented disruption.
Recognizing these market shifts, the Macerich digital team developed a product strategy to offer digitally native brands a brick-and-mortar store in which to test their markets and build their brand.
“Knowledgeable and experienced, Tivix delivered a top-notch product, while their excellent project management skills made them easy to work with.”
Macerich Digital
Head of Marketing
The Project
Macerich engaged Tivix as a full-stack development and design partner for both the BrandBox platform and a supporting BrandBox marketing website. Our team managed the development of the product from idea stage to market launch.
BrandBox, the resulting product, offers digitally native brands a flexible, turnkey solution for experiments in physical retail. Brands can rent a space for 6 or 12 month terms and have access to essentials like shelving, fixtures and even staffing from the web application’s inventory management system. Each store is also modular with moveable walls and layout per customer requirements.
In addition to the flexible leasing terms, each BrandBox unit comes with sensors that can understand shopper behavior and offer brands valuable data to optimize the customer experience.
Technology
Powered by RetailNext, BrandBox brings retail into the digital age with deep learning enabled cameras and sensors that recognize shopper demographics and store traffic delivering rich insights to BrandBox customers. Tivix built out the integrations to link RetailNext’s machine learning systems into the BrandBox product, along with multiple other integrations related to security, sales data and more.
Outcome
BrandBox debuted at Macerich’s Tysons Corner Center shopping mall. With six brands occupying mini-stores in the pilot. Additional rollouts are planend for Macerich properties in California, Philadelphia and Arizona.
Beyond digitally native brands, the product offers established brands a testing ground to experiment and incubate new ideas or product lines.
Since launch the project has received widespread press coverage from outlets like Bloomberg, Forbes and CNBC.
Macerich Digital
