Planning for Future Growth: How To Optimize Stores as Showrooms

For today’s shoppers, the path to a purchase rarely begins or ends at the store. Customers discover products online, check availability before leaving home, and expect flexible fulfillment options like ship-from-store to be standard. They typically want access to a broad assortment even when shelf space is limited and often expect associates to help place orders when an item isn’t physically on display.

As a result, many retailers are reimagining stores as showrooms: curated, experience-driven spaces that inspire customers while also functioning as miniature fulfillment hubs. However, this evolution brings new complexity. Smaller in-store selections, distributed inventory, and multiple fulfillment paths mean that successful sales depend on near-perfect coordination across systems and partners.

Turning showrooms into profitable growth engines — rather than costly experiments — requires precision in inventory visibility, order routing, and supplier collaboration from the very start.

Why Retailers Are Reimagining Brick-and-Mortar Stores

In rethinking physical stores, retailers are responding to mounting financial and market pressures. Rising labor and real estate costs have made large, inventory-heavy stores harder to justify, while in-store conversion rates have struggled as more transactions shift online.

At the same time, customers have grown accustomed to instant access and rapid delivery, expecting accurate, real-time inventory visibility, multiple fulfillment choices, and the ability to move effortlessly between digital and physical channels.

Competition is accelerating this shift. Direct-to-consumer brands, such as Warby Parker, are opening storefronts to build awareness and deepen customer relationships without carrying massive on-site assortments. Meanwhile, big-box retailers, like Target, are experimenting with smaller formats that emphasize curated selections and digital ordering.

What Defines a Successful Showroom-Driven Store

Retailers that succeed with showroom-style locations tend to share a similar operational and strategic foundation.

Curated Assortments and Endless Aisles

Showroom-driven stores typically carry a smaller on-floor selection designed to spark discovery rather than represent the full catalog. Digital kiosks, mobile apps, or associate-assisted ordering tools extend that assortment, allowing customers to browse additional sizes, colors, or complementary products and complete purchases in-store, even when items aren’t physically stocked.

Fulfillment-Ready Operations

To meet omnichannel expectations, these locations are built to support multiple fulfillment paths. Buy-online-pick-up-in-store (BOPIS) and buy-online-return-in-store (BORIS) options are on the table, while ship-from-store and micro-fulfillment capabilities help retailers move inventory closer to customers and reduce delivery times. The most effective showroom stores treat fulfillment as a core design principle.

Experiential Retail

Experience is what gives the showroom its purpose. Product demonstrations, workshops, and in-store events invite customers to interact with merchandise in ways that aren’t possible online, while services such as fittings, repairs, or customization add value beyond the transaction. Storytelling — through visual merchandising, trained associates, and brand environments — helps turn visits into lasting memories.

Data-Driven Execution

Behind every high-performing showroom is a steady stream of guiding data. Retailers rely on store-level demand forecasting to determine which products earn precious floor space, tailor assortments to local preferences, and continuously adjust inventory allocation. Measuring performance across channels — not just in-store sales — ensures each location is evaluated for its full contribution to the customer journey and the broader retail network.

The Hidden Operational Complexity of the Retail Showroom Model

What looks simple on the sales floor can be remarkably complex behind the scenes. Showroom strategies can stretch traditional retail systems that were designed for linear supply chains and inventory-heavy stores and weren’t designed for distributed fulfillment networks where every location can sell, ship, and receive returns.

Fragmented inventory data across systems, delayed updates from suppliers, and manual processes make it difficult for sellers to promise product availability with confidence. Limited store-level visibility only compounds the problem and can leave teams guessing which products are actually on hand and where other products can be fulfilled from.

Legacy systems can falter under all this pressure, resulting in consequences for the retailer. Stockouts and order cancellations erode trust, while expedited shipping and inefficient routing eat into margins. Customers frustrated by inaccurate availability or slow fulfillment are more likely to abandon purchases — or turn to competitors.

The core truth is that a showroom model only works when inventory and logistics data is accurate, automated, and shared in real time across every partner in the network.

Related Reading: What Is Cross Merchandising?

Real-Time Data Is the Foundation of Omnichannel Showrooms

To make showroom-driven stores profitable at scale, retailers must treat supply chain connectivity as a strategic asset. Synchronizing inventory across stores, distribution centers, and suppliers enables faster replenishment and more confident fulfillment decisions, while smarter allocation ensures limited floor space is reserved for the products most likely to convert locally.

When every node in the network is operating from the same up-to-date information, retailers can promise availability accurately and, most importantly, keep those promises.

That level of orchestration depends on continuous, real-time data flows. Orders, advance ship notices, invoices, and inventory feeds must move quickly and reliably between trading partners to support rapid decision-making and exception management.

Automation plays a critical role in keeping that information current. Removing manual touchpoints reduces errors, shortens response times, and allows operations teams to handle growing order volumes without adding proportional head count. In an omnichannel showroom environment, speed and accuracy are no longer just nice to have — they are foundational.

Practical Steps Retailers Can Take Today

Retailers don’t need to overhaul their entire footprint overnight to begin shifting toward showrooms. Most successful organizations start with an assessment of their current operations and focus on targeted improvements that improve flexibility and profitability.

Retailers can begin by defining the role each store plays within the broader network — whether it serves primarily as an experience center, a fulfillment hub, or a hybrid of both. Mapping supplier connectivity reveals where manual processes or one-off integrations are slowing replenishment, while analyzing fulfillment paths can expose bottlenecks that drive up costs or delay deliveries.

Automation should be applied to the most error-prone and time-consuming processes first, freeing teams to focus on higher-value work. When evaluating automation partners, retailers should look for solutions built to operate at network scale — platforms that can connect hundreds or thousands of trading partners, support multiple fulfillment scenarios, and adapt as new channels and store formats emerge.

Turning Showrooms into Engines of Growth

The future of physical retail isn’t a zero-sum choice between digital and in-store shopping — it’s about designing locations in which experience and execution work in lockstep. Showroom-driven stores thrive when curated assortments, engaging environments, and flexible fulfillment options are supported by operations that run with speed and precision behind the scenes.

That execution, in turn, depends on supply chain visibility and seamless connectivity. Retailers that invest in real-time data, automation, and network-based collaboration are better positioned to turn their stores into growth engines, confidently supporting omnichannel customers while building the operational foundation required for whatever comes next.

Ready To Make Showroom-Driven Growth Operationally Sound?

Explore how the Supply Chain Performance Suite at SPS Commerce helps retailers gain real-time visibility, automate partner connections, and orchestrate complex omnichannel flows — so every store and showroom can perform at its full potential.