It's Never Been More Fun To Shop—Really!

Yoga classes! Book clubs! Champagne at the press of a button! With stores and sites devising ever more innovative ways to lure us in and keep us coming, retail therapy is taking on a whole new meaning.

- Amanda FitzSimons

There’s a scene in the first season of Mad Men in which Don and the rest of the Sterling Cooper team gather in their wood-paneled boardroom to pitch Abraham Menken, owner of Menken’s department store, their vision for the future of shopping. With great pride, they present storyboards depicting sleek glass display cases, glamorous mannequins, and—the pièces de résistance—a beauty parlor and a tea room “with modern signs and champagne linens.”

Menken, an old-school New Yawka if ever there was one, is not impressed. “

Thirty peh-cent of my ground floor is dedicated to...the restaurant business?,” he spits out, incredulous.

Fast-forward to 2017: Faced with the radical convenience of online shopping, plus rapidly evolving consumers—simultaneously more informed, less brand loyal, more impatient, less invested in “stuff,” and more invested in “ideas” than ever before—retailers are having a Menken moment of their own.