The retail community trap

Is that actually a community? Or a queue of people all trying to buy something?

Brands like Supreme talk a lot about community.

This collab is for the community. This store brings our community together. We are a community brand. It all sounds great, and the more you hear it, the more you believe it.

Except when you take a step back and dissect what a community actually is, or should be.

A community is a group of people with shared characteristics, interests and values. It also, ultimately, is not transactional. A community should interact and exchange values with the brand itself, and not just money.

So when I look at that Supreme queue again, I can’t help but think, is that actually a community? Or a queue of people all trying to buy something?

Is a t-shirt a shared interest or value? And what else are these people actually exchanging?

I look at the queue and think again. This isn’t a community. This is a brand that’s really good at selling stuff to a very specific demographic.

The danger of believing your own hype

The subsequent problem of the creation of this community “idea” is that community, in the mind of a retailer, means loyalty.

Building a community, it follows, means building repeat business.

But what happens if you haven’t actually built a real emotional bond with this group? What if it isn’t actually a community?

Then these customers jump aboard the next hype train.

We can see this happening everywhere in retail. Hypey brands come and go, and too often they seem to think they are building a community when what they’ve really built is a brand.

Which, by the way, is fine. Great, even. But believing that what you’ve built is akin to an amateur football team, a book club or a local group of new mums is a really dangerous trap to fall in.

Real retail communities we tend to ignore

Genuine retail communities exist and offer great inspiration. But some are better known than others.

Gymshark is one of the best-known examples currently and we all know the story. The community was built first, and the brand grew after. Gymshark fans lift weights in the Gymshark store, and use Gymshark YouTube tutorials to work out. This isn’t invented or added to the brand. This is the brand.

But there are bigger, better examples we rarely talk about. Like the best retail community on the planet, Games Workshop.

Started more than 40 years ago, Games Workshop is Disneyland for geeks. Focused on board games and spawning Warhammer, it now has more than 500 stores worldwide.

And from the beginning, without any PR or bluster, it was innately community-led.

It doesn’t really have customers. It has fans. And those fans go to stores to talk to staff (who are always fans themselves) and play games. Maybe they buy something. Maybe they don’t. That part always seems peripheral.

And yet, Games Workshop is now worth nearly £5 billion, and is one of the UK’s most profitable and consistently successful retailers.

Real community pays, and if anyone wants inspiration on how to build one, that’s where you should be looking.

Communities and subcultures

Games Workshop brings me to my final and most important point.

The problem with a streetwear inspired new luxury brand banging on about community is that it rarely taps into a real, definable, meaningful subculture - a group of people looking for somewhere to commune together.

Gymshark brings fitness fanatics together. Tracksmith brings amateur runners together. Games Workshop brings Warhammer fans together. RazerStore brings gamers together.

What subculture unites fans of Supreme?

The truth is, there is nothing wrong with creating a hype brand that doesn’t tap into a meaningful subculture. Most retailers don’t.

The problem comes when the false belief that you have a community leads to a false belief of loyalty and longevity.

So here’s to humility, and recognising the limits of what your brand is doing. Because if you really, truly have a community, chances are you don’t need to talk about it at all.