WONDER! calls itself the largest retail store for little kids — a 135,000-square-feet cross between IKEA and Whole Foods.
The brainchild of Lake Forest entrepreneur Shane Christensen opens on Saturday in Deerfield at 250 S. Waukegan Road — after a delay of several months.
“We are the largest brick-and-mortar store for children of its kind in the country,” Christensen said. “We have the broadest and deepest selection of products, with incredible experiential elements.”
Christensen hopes to change the way parents shop for kids, ages from infancy to 7-years old. He plans more stores that may open as early as next year. They have no specific locations in mind yet, but are looking at possible sites. The business plan calls for 19 more stores to open within five years.
With its children’s car test track, 100 varieties of strollers, a half-acre play area, 20-foot-tall trees, 10 classrooms, a 1,600-square-foot baby registry area, WONDER! s a one-of-its-kind retail store; a one-stop shop for parents who want specialty boutique products, Christensen said.
Mayor Harriet Rosenthal said Deerfield is excited about WONDER! because it fills a big space that has been vacant for years. The new store is in the former space of the Great Indoors, a home decor store, that had closed a number of stores across the region.
It will be one of the largest stores in the village, on par with the Home Depot, Rosenthal said. And Deerfield will be WONDER!’s corporate headquarters, she noted.
It’s also a brand new concept, and Deerfield is on the ground floor of that — which gives the village a higher profile, especially if the concept takes off as company officials hope.
Christiansen said raising capital for the endeavor proved to take longer than expected, leading to the delayed opening.
“WONDER! coming to Deerfield is the biggest thing to happen to the village this year,” said Deerfield Trustee Tom Jester.
To sweeten the pot for WONDER!, the village extended tax breaks. If WONDER! exceeds $25 million in annual sales, it would receive up to $1 million in rebated sales taxes over a five-year period.
WONDER! diverges from the recent national retail trend of smaller stores with a narrower product selection, said Rick Wilson, clinical associate of marketing at Northwestern University and associate director of the Kellogg Center for the Global Marketing Practice in Evanston.
Some specialty mega-stores, like Bass Pro Shops, that carry products not typically sold in grocery and drug stores, are still building big, Wilson noted. But other retailers, like Wal-Mart and Best Buy, are building smaller, Wilson said. That’s because consumers can purchase those product from a variety of retailers, he said.
Retailers like Target appear to be paring down selections, providing what the stores think are the most pertinent products. It’s based on a philosophy that says time-strapped consumers don’t have the time to consider so many different options, Wilson said.
The third direction – embraced by WONDER! — is putting a premium on customers’ experiences that are unique, hands-on and dynamic. Those are concepts that Apple retail stores have used, with highly lucrative outcomes, Wilson said.
“One stop-shop is tricky,” Wilson said. “You have to get the just combination right if you want to be in destination-place retailing.”
But WONDER! has picked one of two most stable retail segments: Children’s products and pets. Also, mothers, who make most of the purchases for children, are typically loyal to stores that make their lives easier, putting one-stop shopping at a premium, according to Wilson.
Christensen said he had the resiliency of children markets in mind when he first begin his foray into retail.
Calling the children’s market “fragmented,” Christensen channeled his own frustrations while shopping for two young children. He was forced to travel to a variety of stores that carried different products his family needed, he said.
WONDER! combines IKEA’s full-bedroom displays and a huge variety of products with the specialty item idea of Whole Foods, he said. About 70 percent of WONDER!’s products are boutique offerings, he said.
What makes WONDER! unique among retailers is its size and its wide array of specialty children’s products, he said.
“We want to do for children’s stores what Whole Foods did for grocery stores,” Christensen said “We are opening a fun, happy creative place to shop.”
WONDER! will hold a ribbon cutting with Deerfield officials at 7:45 a.m. The store opens to parents at 8 a.m.
Its website, shopwonder.com, will be up and running on Monday.
