Retailers spice up shopping to lure customers offline

As the pungent scent of Alpine cheese wafted through the chilly air, two men in baseball caps and T-shirts stood in front of raclette warmers, scraping bubbling hot melted fromage from half wheels onto toasted bread for a line of customers 10 deep.

It’s an experience — one that doesn’t come when shopping online.

“You get something different, not what you get at all the department stores and online,” said Rebecca Sutcliffe, 23, at the Bryant Park Holiday Market with two friends who happily munched melted-cheese sandwiches.

Baked Cheese Haus’ bustling stall, manned by Jacob Croskey and Steve Bloom, is one of the theatrical additions Urbanspace — which has operated the Union Square and Columbus Circle holiday markets for years — has brought in to amp up the offline shopping experience in its first year running the Bryant Park market.

To earn a profit during the remainder of the all-important holiday selling season, independent bookstores and merchants at local holiday fairs are boosting efforts to connect with customers in person, while tapping social media and improving their mobile capabilities.

“We’ve been thinking about this a lot,” says Natasha Samoylenko, a partner in Dumbo-based Trunk, which sells wares by local designers. “Anybody can open an online store … [but] we’re creating an experience.”

It’s all about offering something consumers can’t get on the shrunken screen of a mobile phone.

• For Trunk, that means hosting an in-store event for the designer of popular T-shirt line Magdalena to discuss her hand-printing process.
• The Strand is hosting more events that start online — customers pre-order books and receive custom inscriptions — and end in-store, with pickup of the books at an author reading.
• Local retailers are also figuring out how to make mobile commerce work. This year, The Strand finally has a mobile-responsive Web site, and a holiday gift guide consumers can shop on their phones.
• On Instagram, jeweler Catbird slashed prices 15 percent for Cyber Monday, its only sale of the year — sparking an increase in mobile traffic and conversions.

Shoppers checked out rings and necklaces in Catbird’s 250-square-foot Williamsburg, Brooklyn, shop, then ordered on their phones in-store to score the discount. Sales are set to rise 40 percent this year, according to Catbird’s co-creative director Leigh Batnick Plessner.

Catbird’s strategy contrasts sharply with the blizzard of promotions big retailers like Amazon began offering last month.

Record numbers of shoppers are using their mobile devices this holiday season, helping push Thanksgiving weekend sales at brick-and-mortar stores down 4 percent, according to RetailNext, Inc.

“We can’t compete with Amazon on any of these fronts,” Batnick Plessner said.