Speciality stores are readily identified by their focus on specific merchandise classifications or multiple product ranges offered under a single brand.
Speciality stores tap into shoppers’ desire for increased choice within select categories or brands and they give the modern retail industry its appearance of seemingly limitless offerings.
The speciality store stands in sharp contrast to the typical discount or department store where the appeal to shoppers is based on a broad selection of merchandise with limited range within categories. Conversely, speciality stores created a new value proposition for shoppers that was based on the depth of product assortment within specific categories or brands. The new approach to retailing gained broad acceptance following the Second World War. Retailers recognized that increased consumer demand had created the opportunity to appeal to ever narrower segments of the market with stores that offered specialized merchandise assortment or specific brands. Shoppers found the depth of assortment presented by the speciality store very alluring and their spending behaviors gave rise to the speciality store movement of the last half century.
The earliest speciality stores tended to focus on large product categories such as shoes, sporting goods, jewelry or menswear. However, as the speciality store segment of the retail industry evolved, the merchandise classifications became increasingly narrow. Speciality stores now exist for specific types and brands of shoes within the footwear category and the same is true for a category such as sporting goods where speciality stores exist for the fly-fishing segment of the fishing category within sporting goods.
The trend of increased specialization within the speciality store retail segment gained new momentum with the dawn of e-commerce in the late 1990s. Online shopping suddenly made it possible for speciality store operators to take the principles of serving shoppers with an extensive product offering across a narrow range of categories to an unprecedented and more finely segmented level. Unbound by the constraints of physical stores the speciality store stands as an even more significant force in a digital world where shopper choice is unconstrained by the limitations of physical stores.
Contribution to Retail History
The speciality store, or “category killer,” represented a different approach to serving shoppers and created powerful growth opportunities for retailers and brands. By offering deep product assortments within narrow merchandise classifications, retailers created a viable store format that offered consumers unlimited choice, competitive prices and differentiation from traditional department and discount stores. The speciality concept further evolved and created new growth opportunities as e-commerce has experienced explosive growth.