A year of Hiro Design in Verona: 3.000 items collected from the store and new ideas from customers

Hiro Design, an online-born brand specialising in furniture and design accessories, celebrates one year since opening its first physical store in Verona, after 7 years of e-commerce only.

The aim was not simply to add a new sales channel, but to give a physical space to a community that had until then been entirely digital: allowing people to see colours and proportions in person, touch materials and finishes and, above all, creating a meeting place between those who design the products and those who then bring them into their homes.

Twelve months after opening, on the occasion of the store’s first anniversary, Hiro is taking stock of the experience. And direct dialogue with the public has proved to be one of the most interesting aspects.

Direct contact with customers

While photographs and descriptions tell the story of a product online, the shop has allowed Hiro to observe something that an e-commerce site can hardly convey: people’s reactions to those same objects. Which colours work differently in person? What is sought by someone furnishing a few square metres? Which details prompt questions? Conversations held in the store brought to light useful insights for product development too, in some cases going as far as challenging assumptions that the brand had almost taken for granted.

This happened, for example, with metal, a material that has always been central to Hiro’s identity. For some products, the team had chosen to pair it with wood, thinking that an entirely metal solution might be perceived as “too cold” in domestic settings. The face-to-face discussions provided a different insight: Hiro customers actually prefer total metal, provided it is interpreted according to the brand’s language, which softens its industrial character through curves, soft shapes and colours.

The comment

“When we opened, our main aim was to allow people to physically enter the Hiro world. After a year, we realised that the opposite had happened too: people had entered our way of designing,” says Manuele Perlati, founder and CEO of Hiro Design. “Listening in person to questions, requests and observations gives us information that is much harder to pick up online. Some feedback has also made us reflect on materials, functionality and possible product developments.”

Over 3.000 items collected via click & collect

The store’s first year also highlighted another interesting behaviour: the growth of click & collect, the service that allows customers to purchase on the Hiro website and subsequently collect the product from the physical premises. In Verona, during the first twelve months, more than 3.000 items were collected using this method. The figures and experience gained have encouraged Hiro to extend the model to Milan too, where the volume of orders placed online and collected in person is now approximately double.

For Hiro, click & collect is not merely an alternative delivery method, but one of the most tangible expressions of what the brand calls universal commerce: a model in which the traditional separation between e-commerce and physical retail is gradually disappearing, with consumers moving within a single ecosystem. It is therefore possible to choose and purchase an accessory with a few clicks on a mobile phone, see it in person and collect it in the city, avoiding shipping costs and the need to wait for the courier. Online and offline become different moments in the same purchasing journey.

A virtuous model

The model has also had an impact on logistics: according to Hiro’s data, click & collect has brought returns caused by breakages during transport down to zero, while also making it possible to use lighter packaging and fewer materials, since it does not have to withstand the same stresses involved in a normal courier delivery.

The experience in Verona, followed by the extension of click & collect to Milan, is also pointing to a possible direction for the brand’s future development. The idea is to gradually bring Hiro to Italy’s main cities through spaces halfway between physical and digital: places where people can see and touch the products, engage with the brand and at the same time collect purchases made online.

This article was translated from the original Italian version with the assistance of artificial intelligence. In case of discrepancies, please refer to the original Italian version.