The department store of the future just opened in Texas

November 19, 2018

To the average shopper, Neighborhood Goods will likely feel like your good ol’ department store.

The store — which opened November 17 in Plano, Texas’s Legacy West shopping district — is stocking labels shoppers know, and possibly even love, in a central location. It sells clothing, skin care products, home goods, gadgets, and more. It has a sneaker museum, where shoppers can learn about the history of “drops” and presumably get some great shots for Instagram — exactly the kind of experience that malls are trying to give shoppers more and more these days.

But your local Macy’s doesn’t sell direct-to-consumer brands like Hims and MeUndies, and it almost certainly doesn’t have advanced cameras that track shoppers’ movements and an app that will send you targeted recommendations based on items you browsed but didn’t buy. And, behind the scenes, the business model — which allows startups to rent space in the store, the way office workers can in a WeWork or vacationers do via Airbnb — could potentially disrupt brick and mortar retail as we know it.

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