A few years ago, a tile showroom asked me a question I’ve been asked dozens of times since:
“How would you redesign our showroom?”

If you’ve ever shopped for tile, furniture, kitchens, lighting, flooring, appliances, or fixtures, you already know the punchline—every showroom looks exactly the same...

✓ Wall-mounted displays.
✓ Waterfall towers.
✓ Sample boards.
✓ Neutral lighting.
✓ Endless options that somehow all blur together.

So when they asked how I would redesign their showroom, my answer caught them completely off guard.
“I wouldn’t.”

Not because their showroom was bad—but because they were expecting another showroom, just like the last one. And that’s the real problem.

I wrote about this moment in more detail in a previous article, “Why I Told a National Tile Brand: I Wouldn’t Redesign Your Showrooms.” In that conversation, I pointed out something uncomfortable but obvious:
Their showroom wasn’t driving traffic on its own. Which is why they were spending money on marketing.

And that led to the real question they hadn’t considered:
What if the showroom itself was the marketing?

The Hard Truth About Showrooms in 2026

This article is for anyone who owns or operates a showroom—retailers, manufacturers, dealers, franchise owners, and brand leaders.

Because most of you are sitting on opportunity you don’t even realize you have.

Traditionally, showrooms were designed for one purpose: shopping

But you already know the reality has changed.

Foot traffic is inconsistent.
Conversion rates vary wildly.
A significant percentage of visitors are “tire kickers.”

And many shoppers now use your showroom for inspiration—then immediately pull out their phone and search for a better price online.

Let’s be honest: retail has fundamentally changed.

Your showroom is no longer the end of the funnel. It’s the middle of a much larger experience.

So the real question becomes:
How do you recapture value from customers who don’t buy immediately—or don’t buy from you at all?

Two Strategic Paths Forward

There are really only two viable ways forward for showroom-based businesses today.

1. Embrace the Cart, Not the Counter
You have to fully integrate e-commerce into the showroom experience.

Customers want to browse, save, compare, leave, think, and purchase later.

Your showroom should support that behavior—not fight it. QR codes, saved collections, follow-up links, and personalized carts should be standard, not experimental.

But that’s table stakes.

The real opportunity is the second path.

2. The Missed Opportunity: Social Media Lives Inside Your Showroom

Here’s the part most retailers and marketing teams completely overlook:
You now serve customers who have never known life without social media.

Your customers don’t just consume content.

They create it.
They share it.
They tag it.
They perform their identity through it.

So let me ask a simple question:
How is your showroom making it easy—and rewarding—for customers to create content inside your space?

Throughout the history of retail, customer service was the gold standard. And while we’ve watched customer service decline across industries, something else quietly took its place:
Social influence

At this point, even my grandmother is a content creator.

Which means the real question isn’t whether people will share—it’s whether your showroom is designed to support it.

Influencers, But Local

Brands love influencers.

They ship products to creators.
They pay for sponsored posts.
They celebrate online reach.

But here’s the irony:

most of that traffic benefits corporate e-commerce, not local showrooms.

Online success cannibalizes physical locations.
Local stores suffer.
Corporate dashboards look great.

So how do you reverse that?

You stop thinking of influencers as something that happens outside your store—and start designing for influence inside it.

What If Your Showroom… Wasn’t a Showroom?

What if a portion of your retail space wasn’t optimized for shelves and samples—but for content creation?

What if your showroom included:
• Designed filming areas
• Consistent lighting
• Quiet zones
• Product-ready backdrops
• Branded environments made for vertical video

What if you created programs for local creators, designers, homeowners, contractors, or community personalities—giving them a reason to film, tag, and share from your space?

And what if those creators had:
• Personalized e-commerce pages
• Local affiliate collections
• Revenue-sharing incentives
• Attribution tied to your physical showroom

Now your showroom isn’t just a store.
It’s a local broadcast studio.

“Isn’t That Risky?”

Here’s the part where executives get nervous.

“But how do we know it will work?”
You already do.

You’ve seen it before.

It’s called QVC.

QVC Was the Blueprint—You Just Missed It

QVC launched in November of 1986.
Back then, launching a soundstage inside a retail environment would have been prohibitively expensive. Cameras, crews, transmission infrastructure—it wasn’t realistic for most brands.
But today?

We all carry a production studio in our pockets.

An iPhone.
A Bluetooth mic.
A ring light.

My grandmother can produce a QVC-style segment from her phone.

So if she can do it…Why haven’t retailers?

The Real Reason Retailers Are Stuck

The answer is surprisingly simple:
You and your marketing team are only looking inside your industry for solutions.

Retailers look like retailers.
Coffee shops look like coffee shops.
Frozen yogurt stores look like frozen yogurt stores.

No one is borrowing ideas from media companies.
No one is studying platforms.
No one is designing for participation.

And yet, the most successful businesses of the last 20 years didn’t win because they sold products better.
They won because they turned customers into marketers.

This Is Customer-Centric Marketing

Customer-centric marketing isn’t customer service.
It isn’t loyalty cards.
It isn’t smiling harder.

It’s designing systems where your customer benefits by sharing their experience—and your brand benefits by getting out of the way.

Your showroom already has the raw ingredients:
• Physical space
• Tangible products
• Emotional moments
• High-intent customers
• Local relevance

You just haven’t connected the dots.

From The Armchair
If this article made you uncomfortable, good.

If it made you question your showroom’s purpose, even better.

Because the future of retail doesn’t belong to stores that look good. It belongs to stores that perform.

If you’re ready to rethink your showroom—not as a cost center, but as a media engine, a content platform, and a local growth lever—Let’s talk.