Immersive retail lets customers engage with brands through memorable interactive experiences.
For example, Sonia Mosseri, cofounder of denim brand Still Here, takes a hospitality-oriented approach to immersive retail: “I’m excited to look at each space as its own destination, to create these spaces that really invest in the brand and allow for a customer to leave with a beautiful sentiment, even if they walk out with no jeans,” she says on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast.
According to a 2025 study in the journal PLoS One, shoppers report a statistically significant positive relationship between in-store atmosphere and hedonic value—the amount of enjoyment a product provides. Shoppers see products as more valuable when they enjoy a store’s atmosphere, which, in turn, contributes to customer satisfaction and brand trust—both of which build customer loyalty.
Here’s what immersive retail experiences are, how leading brands create them, and how you can bring immersive elements into your own store.
What is an immersive retail experience?
An immersive retail experience blends art-designed physical spaces and unique services or events to attract customers and make in-store shopping more engaging and memorable. Examples include interactive product demos, hands-on workshops or classes, multisensory art-designed installations, and even dining. These experiences can be permanent features of brick-and-mortar retail spaces or occur as part of a temporary pop-up.
Start selling in-person with Shopify POS
Shopify POS is the easiest way to start selling in-person. Take your brand on the road and accept payments, manage inventory and payouts, and sell everywhere your customers are—farmer’s markets, pop up events and meetups, craft fairs, and anywhere in between.
Discover Shopify POS
Immersive retail experience examples
- Our Place
- Loewe x On Running
- Revenge Of
Here are a few examples of how different businesses have approached immersive retail:
Our Place
The Our Place showroom in Venice, California, uses a combination of cabinets, shelves, and tiling to create a space that resembles a kitchen more than a traditional retail store. This immersive environment lets customers fully engage with the products in a home context and see their features in use.
“What differentiates the retail experience from the online experience is our beautiful tablescapes set up in-store,” says Our Place Director of Digital Product Danielle Hoo in aShopify case study. “Customers can interact with, feel, and touch the product, see it in different lights, and imagine what it would be like in their homes.”
Beyond product browsing, the showroom includes a café and backyard space for hosting pop-ups and events like cooking classes and book launches. Past events have served dishes baked in Our Place’s Wonder Oven and served on plates from their dinnerware set.
Loewe × On Running
At physical retail spaces such as Selfridges in London and Dubai Mall, showrooms for the Loewe × On Running collaborative collection have a digital floor that creates virtual imprints every time someone takes a step on it—an interactive display inspired by the shoes’ light, supportive cushioning.
“The interactive floors were the perfect fusion of technology and tactility,” Loewe’s Chief Marketing and Communication Officer Charlie Smith explains in a case study by AKQA, the design and innovation company that created the installation. “For a collaboration that’s all about movement, we wanted to add a new dimension to the Loewe × On experience that really focused on how you move through a space and the magic of walking on cloud-like footwear.”
Revenge Of
Revenge Of uses Co-owners Jeff Eyser and Joe Myers’s backgrounds in production design to create an immersive shopping experience based on their shared fondness for third spaces they grew up with.
OnShopify Masters, Jeff explains the vision of a “nerd bodega” he and Myers had when brainstorming. “We wanted to design the space around some nostalgic moments, with the bodega theme and the Automat and old movie theaters. We wanted to build the space around things that we think are cool.”
The store is divided into three distinct areas linked by a shared throughline. The bodega-inspired section combines brutalist concrete walls with vintage convenience store cold cases, creating an atmosphere that feels both retro and futuristic. The spaceship-themed pinball arcade uses a cylindrical design and colored neon lights to evoke a rocket’s interior. The base station—which combines elements of the first two spaces along with barstools and a phone booth—gives customers a place to land.
Revenge Of uses these environments to create an in-store experience that encourages customers to linger and explore each room’s details, with an intentional narrative structure guiding them on a literal shopping journey.
- Understand your target customer
- Design immersive elements
- Work within your means
Drawing on her background facilitating immersive experiences for luxury retailers like Barneys NYC and Loro Piana, Retail Strategist Tiffany Langenbacher offers these best practices for creating your own immersive retail strategies:
Understand your target customer
Understand who you’re trying to reach with your immersive retail experience. “I think number one is to really learn who the customer is,” Tiffany says. “A lot of companies want a certain customer, and they target a certain customer, but that’s not always the reality of who that customer really is.”
Use retail market research as a starting point, drawing from a combination of competitive analysis and market data to identify demographics most likely drawn to your store. You can also use customer surveys and your own ecommerce analytics, if you have them, to spot tendencies within your existing audience.
Use the shared characteristics and interests of your customers to inspire your methods of immersion. Our Place, for example, understands that their customers are people who appreciate both cooking and aesthetics, so they designed a visually intriguing retail space where customers can experience their culinary products in use.
Design immersive elements
Tiffany describes the range of immersive details during a collaborative pop-up with Barneys NYC and Fashion Designer Rick Owens. “The production team literally created a giant, immersive world of Rick Owens,” she says. “It had Rick Owens mannequins displaying Rick Owens products. It featured furniture that he was developing with Michéle Lamy. And then, you could go to the ninth floor and have a burger and fries co-designed by Rick Owens. You could literally consume the Rick Owens brand.”
This demonstrates the degree to which every detail deserves attention. To create an immersive retail environment, start with a single, recognizable creative idea and carry it consistently through the setting, programming, and customer service, so customers encounter a cohesive brand world. Use visual merchandising, lighting, décor, layout, and sensory cues to guide exploration and make products central to the experience
Work within your means
Tiffany emphasizes that immersive retail isn’t exclusive to luxury brands or retailers with big marketing budgets. For the design side of things, she suggests creating and refining initial concept ideas using AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini. This can help you save money on design, freeing up budget to bring those designs to life.
“Yes, you need to spend on physical production, takedown, and maybe even leased space, so there are some fixed costs that you probably can’t escape,” she says. “But a lot of the creative layouts, how things look—you don’t need to hire a team of expert designers to go on Figma all day and make edits. You can really close the feedback loop and get it done quickly and inexpensively.”
For example, if you’re an emerging business without a physical location and want to bring your brand to the public with an immersive pop-up, you could lease a space short-term. Even a single-day rental can work if you focus your budget on physical design, interactive displays, and activities for customers to participate in—and market it widely enough to attract sizable attendance.
Immersive retail experience FAQ
How does immersive retail improve customer experience?
Immersive retail improves the customer experience by using physical experiences and interactive features to captivate customers and help them understand what a brand has to offer. Immersive, experiential retail gives customers participatory methods for viewing and trying out products.
What technologies are used in immersive retail?
Immersive retail technologies include digital screens, augmented and virtual reality, and interactive displays. These tools are designed to increase customer engagement in physical retail locations, letting shoppers have a more expansive and memorable experience with products.
Can small physical stores create immersive retail experiences?
Businesses of all sizes and budgets can create immersive retail experiences by using less expensive tools and prioritizing funds for areas that feel like they would have the highest payoff. You could use Shopify’s 3D scanner to generate product models customers can view in their spaces directly on your website.
