Gloria Chow of Imagination On How To Create A Fantastic Retail Experience That Keeps Bringing Customers Back For More
The key to a successful retail experience lies in understanding people, your internal teams’ capabilities and culture, as well as your external customer’s needs, challenges, and drivers on their purchase journey.
As part of my series about “How To Create A Fantastic Retail Experience That Keeps Bringing Customers Back For More”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Gloria Chow.
Gloria is a design strategist who helps Imagination’s clients bring new products, services, and experiences to market. Using a human-centered approach, she takes an idea from insight to build by designing qualitative research activities, facilitating concepting and ideation workshops, and building new business models. Gloria has a passion for designing innovative projects backed by her understanding of what drives consumer behaviors and decisions.
As a researcher and storyteller, Gloria plays a key role in Imagination’s strategy team, where she works with clients in seeing the ‘Art of the Possible.’ She is an experienced multi-disciplinary project facilitator who has worked across design, data, technology and strategy teams. Throughout her career, Gloria has held various strategy roles at creative agencies as well as innovation labs.
She graduated from NYU undergrad with a Bachelor of Science (BS) and has an MBA from London Business School.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?
I was born and raised in New York City in Chinatown on the Lower East Side. I had a very creative childhood growing up in New York City and the city was my backyard. From the Met Museum to Broadway shows to Central Park and the South Street Seaport, I grew up surrounded by the arts. I started dancing ballet and Chinese dance at a young age and then community theater, acting, and photography classes when I was older. I also love the rich, cultural heritage and spirit of the Chinatown community I grew up in and I appreciate it so much more as an adult now.
Growing up in the City, I was always curious about Wall Street, so I started my career in finance. Now, as a design strategist, I’m grateful to have had both quantitative and qualitative experiences and skill sets. But after several years, I realized that I was looking for something more and went back to school to get my MBA at London Business School.
After my MBA, I transitioned into management consulting that led to working at KPMG’s Innovation Lab and then frog design where I learned about design thinking, ethnographic/design research and now, Imagination, which is a design company with a focus on immersive experiences that are both digital and in-person. With each transition, I have been able to develop a deeper understanding of myself and my strengths as a design strategist. My natural strengths of empathy, curiosity, and observation have helped me grow as a design researcher/ethnographer — I’m always curious about users and what drives their decisions, which is at the core of human-centered design. I love to approach a problem with a fresh perspective and without biases, which always leads to an unexpected and more creative solution.
I’m incredibly grateful and happy that my path led to the design world. And I can see now that there was a thread of creativity that started in my childhood that led me to where I am today. What I love about design is that it’s not just beautiful work and experiences, it’s often also useful, purpose-driven, impactful, or can even, change minds. I love being able to create new experiences, products, and services and I’m also grateful that I get to work with incredibly talented people every day. I am a researcher, storyteller, and strategist who loves exploring the ‘Art of the Possible.’
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lessons or ‘takeaways’ you learned from that?
One of my first summer jobs while in high school was to get voters to sign a petition for a new referendum that we were trying to get on the NYC ballot. On my first day, I was standing in Union Square with my clipboard asking people who walked by the farmer’s market to sign the petition. There was a large group of very nice people who stopped to learn more. I was so excited to have gathered such a large audience. I went through my whole spiel and song and dance about the petition for several minutes. Then I asked if they were registered NYC voters and if they could sign? It turned out that these very nice people were all tourists and not registered voters in New York City. I guess I should have known since they were so willing to stop and listen! And I felt badly that I had wasted their time, but they were very kind and even willing to sign, even though their signatures wouldn’t be valid since they were not registered voters in NYC. After that encounter, I learned my lesson and switched the order up and started asking whether they were a registered voter in NYC first before I launched into my speech. My biggest lesson and takeaway was to always get to know your audience and your customer first!
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story?
I have to thank my family. But in addition to my ‘fam,’ I would have to say that I have had the privilege to work with incredible people and teams throughout my career.
Early on, I was going to hackathons every weekend in the city. And at every event, there’s a lot of chaos as teams and ideas are forming and coming together at rapid speed. But there’s always an incredible moment when everything comes together despite incredible stress and time pressure. It was a very condensed version of the design process that I love, where we formed a hypothesis, did some rapid-fire user interviews, and then focused on building a solution over a single weekend.
Over the years, I’ve learned so much from my collaborators across many disciplines from designers to creative technologists to filmmakers to writers. I love the passion, energy, and dedication that people bring to their craft. Together, we have built new products, services, experiences and even explored telling new stories with short films.
Is there a particular book, podcast, or film that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
This is a hard one because I consume so much information and I love learning something new. Starting a new project is exciting to me, because I will do a deep dive into the industry, competitors, and start-ups, as well as exploring adjacent rabbit holes.
So, while there are many books, articles, and films that have made a huge impact on me, I think I have to go with Nobel prize winning psychologist and behavioral economist, Daniel Kahneman’s “Thinking, Fast and Slow.”
I have always been curious about people and what drives the choices that they make. Sometimes those choices are rational and sometimes they are impulsive and driven by fears or worries that are lying just below the surface. Sometimes people build a spreadsheet to help them make a decision. Kahneman’s book is a brilliant piece of work that helps explain that there are two systems in our brains that drive human decisions: System 1 that is fast-thinking, intuitive, impulsive, and System 2 that is slow-thinking, analytical, more deliberate. So, in my quest to try to understand why people make the choices that they make, this book which has a mix of psychology, behavioral economics, and neuroscience research had a big impact on me as a human-centered design strategist.
What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?
I think what makes Imagination stand out is our culture, process, and people. We approach every project with a fresh lens and an open mind that begins with exploring the problem statement and from there, everything is custom designed to help find, develop, and build the right solution for the client.
By coming in with the willingness to explore the ‘unknown’ combined with creative freedom and trust, we’re able to create incredible experiences for both the people who are experiencing them, as well as for the people who are creating them. There are so many creative and brilliant people at Imagination, and I come to work every day feeling grateful to have the opportunity to work with so many talented people with such diverse backgrounds and experiences — from architecture, to technology, to theater, to fine arts, to design.
Which tips would you recommend to your colleagues in your industry to help them to thrive and not “burn out”?
I think my number one tip is self-care. And this may seem like common sense, but I really do believe in the importance and value of self-care. In the creative/design industry, it’s very easy to burn out.
I think it’s about creating routines and continuing to keep ‘filling’ yourself up physically, mentally, and creatively. And self-care is a very personal concept that every person has to discover, experiment with, and define for themselves. For me, it means getting enough sleep, eating healthier, meditating, exercising or going for a walk daily, and for me, filling myself up creatively. While I think creativity is an infinite resource that we can tap into, I think it does need replenishment from time to time. So, I try to feed my creative soul with different experiences — from travel to creative projects, to taking a class, and learning something new.
The idea of self-care is to make sure you’re putting energy back into yourself by doing whatever activities that keeps you being you. And don’t worry about perfection either! I’ve learned that perfection is impossible. And it’s ok to start small. I’m currently trying to meditate for five minutes a day and while five minutes sounds like a very low number, it’s been helpful to start with small, achievable goals for me, and I’m finding that even a few minutes a day of sitting in silence can be extremely helpful.
Ok super. Now let’s jump to the main questions of our interview. The so-called “Retail Apocalypse” has been going on for about a decade. The Pandemic only made things much worse for retailers in general. While many retailers are struggling, some retailers, like Lululemon, Kroger, and Costco are quite profitable. Can you share a few lessons that other retailers can learn from the success of profitable retailers?
The key to a successful retail experience lies in understanding people, your internal teams’ capabilities and culture, as well as your external customer’s needs, challenges, and drivers on their purchase journey.
I think about retail in a more holistic way. The retail experience is so much more than a single transaction. It begins much earlier and continues long after the purchase is made. And when we build a customer journey map, we map out the entire retail experience for customers, which can be both physical and digital. This includes the discovery phase before you enter the store, to making the purchase decision at the store or on the website, to after the transaction, where we consider potential scenarios like repeat purchases, or a return to the store, as well as customer loyalty and retention scenarios.
When building the experience for customers, I think sometimes retailers over focus on the transaction. But it’s really important to look at the entire customer journey and begin to identify the most important moments. It really goes beyond just the transaction moment in the store. There is so much that we can uncover in mapping out a customer journey. And it’s important to be human centered in this process, keep the focus on your customer and have empathy for what they might be experiencing at different points of their journey.
In addition to using a customer journey map to understand where a customer’s potential pain points and unmet needs are, I also really find value in developing personas. Personas are a great way to hone in on groups of people with unique behaviors and needs that you might want to design for. There are a few common behavioral axes for personas that range from financial sensitivity (price insensitive to bargain shoppers) to adoption (early adopters to trailing/late adopters).
Personas also help with specificity of who we might be building for, e.g., it’s much harder to design for everyone vs. for a specific target group of users. There are so many customers, and we build personas to try to understand which customers we want to target and better understand so that we can meet their needs through a retail experience. So that might mean there is one persona for someone who wants to get in and out of a supermarket as quickly as possible and another persona for someone who walks down every single aisle in the supermarket.
For example, TJMaxx released a commercial a few years ago about how they are ‘For Those Who Love to Discover.’ This was based on an insight about their shoppers who have a ‘treasure hunter’ persona where they are on the hunt for that special, unique item that might be hidden on a shelf behind four other items. This is a great example of how to tailor the retail experience to a specific persona that represents a significant percentage of your customer base, and it all begins with understanding your customer, their behaviors, and their journey.
Amazon is going to exert pressure on all of retail for the foreseeable future. New Direct-To-Consumer companies based in China are emerging that offer prices that are much cheaper than US and European brands. What would you advise retail companies and eCommerce companies, for them to be successful in the face of such strong competition?
In the face of strong competition, one approach is to focus on your core strengths as a brand by remaining true to your brand values and investing in your people. There will always be competition, but instead of competing on price, take a human-centered approach, and focus on meeting the needs of your customers and adding value to their lives in ways that they didn’t even realize that they wanted or needed. And again, part of this customer-centered strategy is to develop a very strong understanding of and ultimately, relationship with your customer.
And I also think many don’t realize how important people are in the retail experience. A key part of the retail experience ‘equation’ are the employees, who are in essence your brand ambassadors, and the customer-facing front line of your company. This is where an organization can play a major role in providing employees with the resources, tools, and experiences they need to feel supported, and in turn, that passion and enthusiasm will come across to customers who have a spider sense for authenticity. In organizational activation work, the focus of the human-centered design process is turned inwards and the people who work for the company become the focus of our study.
For example, I love Trader Joe’s. It’s a grocery store owned by Aldi that expanded from California to New York City in the last 15 years. It’s a fun, exciting, playful brand that feels fresh, young and trendy despite being over 60 years old. And what I love about Trader Joe’s is their in-store experience — from employees who show off their personalities with colorful Hawaiian shirts to a continuously changing product line-up that’s carefully curated and packed in fun, whimsical packaging. They’re also continuously introducing new products in response to changing and seasonal food trends — from Korean rice cakes to ube ice cream to birria beef for tacos. Personally, I think I have purchased more pumpkin spice products at Trader Joe’s during this fall than in my entire life. At Trader Joe’s, I think I may fall into the ‘Discoverer’ persona. I love being able to explore new products and foods from around the world through their continuously changing product line-up.
I also think it’s very important to know your brand promise and what customer needs you are striving to meet. For example, there are companies who approach ‘Retail as entertainment’ vs. ‘Retail as convenience.’ These are two extremes on the axis of retail experiences. At one end, you have someone who wants to have fun, experience something new, and is willing to take the time to do it. And at the other end, you might have someone who is on their lunch break and wants to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible and in that case, you might want to offer hyper-convenience.
One example of ‘retail as entertainment’ is Showfields, which is a department store in New York City that calls itself the ‘Most Interesting Store in the World.’ Just like Netflix, Showfields is constantly in search of new content, but their content is in the form of new brands, events, art, and experiences. They have become a retail destination, and much more than a department store. And that’s also reflected in the space design with lots of Instagrammable moments, including a hidden room with a slide that takes you down to the second floor. The entire store is in a constant state of reinvention with design changes and new brands rotating in and out. Every time you go to Showfields, there’s an element of newness and surprise. And in-store staff are much more engaged and involved as some have a background in acting, which lends itself to ‘retail as entertainment’. They are the relationship builders and brand storytellers for the people who are visiting Showfields.
At the other end, you have ‘Retail as convenience’ and that is filling a very specific customer need too. This customer persona is efficiency-driven, and they might not have a lot of time. Their goal is to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible. An example might be your local drugstore, which is focused on convenience. So, there might be a self-checkout option, as well as grab-and-go items that are close to the entrance and exit. And you also want to add predictability. You’re not going to change your store shelves frequently, and you’re not likely to be adding new brands all the time. There may be a greater desire for trusted products and brands. There’s also an element of predictability that is desired by your customers who don’t want to spend a lot of time browsing and searching for their vitamins every time. While at Showfields, there is customer value to new brands and experiences. But, at your local drugstore, customers likely will value predictability, familiarity, and trusted brands.
Both of these retail experiences meet different customer needs in very different ways. It’s important to know your brand promise and what customer needs you are meeting. And it’s also on a sliding scale. At a local drugstore near me, there’s a seasonal aisle that’s currently filled with Christmas decor and gifts so there are also opportunities to add ‘newness’ to the ‘retail as convenience’ experience too.
And in terms of ‘retail as entertainment,’ it makes so much sense that there are so many former theater and film people at Imagination, because there’s such a large element of entertainment and storytelling in creating the experiences and products that is at the core of the brand and experience work that we do.
Lastly, I would keep an eye out for Tik-Tok as an example of ‘retail as entertainment.’ Tik-Tok may look like a social media platform, but it’s the modern-day QVC/Home Shopping Network of Gen Z with a growing retail platform. Tik-Tok has also been making some ‘Amazon-like’ investments in operations, including building product fulfillment centers and warehouses. So, under the guise of a social media platform, Tik-Tok is actually a growing e-commerce platform as well. I would keep an eye out for the increasing convergence of ‘retail as entertainment’ more and more in social media as well as in gaming, including the metaverse.
What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start a retail business? What can be done to avoid those errors?
I think there are a few common mistakes. One common mistake is to not take the time to understand their customer. While I keep emphasizing how important this is, I think it’s easy for companies to get complacent and to think that they don’t need to continue to listen, understand, and build and grow their relationship with their customers.
I think taking your customer base for granted and falling into old patterns of expecting what worked in the past to work in the future is an easy pitfall to fall into. It’s important to not stick with your status quo and to continue to change and evolve as a brand.
My advice to leaders is to stay curious (despite all your years of experience) and be self-aware of what your potential biases are so that you can make better decisions as an organization. It’s also important to keep an open mind and continue to learn and listen to your customers. And lastly, continuous innovation really needs to be built into your process and organization.
A great example of a brand that’s pursuing continuous innovation is Gucci. Gucci is now one of Gen Z’s favorite luxury brands. And although Gen Z may not yet be able to afford Gucci’s luxury products, they are the high earners and spenders of the future. Gucci has reinvented themselves from an old school Italian luxury brand into a brand with new purpose and meaning for Gen Z that is playful, creative, and authentic. On Tik-Tok, Gucci is one of the most popular luxury brands with 2.5 million followers. They are pursuing a strategy of high engagement with Gen Z through campaigns and challenges like #GucciModelChallenge and #GucciAbsoluteBeginners. Gucci is also moving into spaces where their Gen Z customers are in gaming and the metaverse with their virtual ‘Gucci Garden’ store and a digital space to design your own virtual footwear in the ‘Gucci Sneaker Garage.’ Their brand strategy has been innovative, engaging, and effective.
I think there is some confusion over brand values versus brand life. While a brand’s underlying values should not change, the brand itself should continue to change and grow. Just like their customers who are living their lives and growing as people, brands should live their brand lives and continue to evolve alongside their customers.
This might be intuitive, but I think it’s helpful to specifically articulate it. In your words, can you share a few reasons why great customer service and a great customer experience is essential for success in business in general and for retail in particular?
Great customer experience and customer service are essential because companies are operating in such a competitive environment and customer expectations have increased. The stakes are very high and the cost of losing a customer based on a poor experience is high.
In the culture we live in now, there is a very high bar for great customer experience and customer service. Once we’ve experienced something that’s exceptional, it’s really hard to go back. We live in a world where instant gratification is a must., Customers’ behaviors, habits and expectations have shifted. And once consumers have an expectation in their minds, it’s extremely difficult to change that.
At the industry level, in retail in particular, the stakes are extremely high due to the entire industry raising the ‘expectations’ bar for customers. This ‘expectations’ shift is usually driven by innovation, led by start-ups or outsiders. But there are a few industries where the bar is still low, which is a sign that they are actually ripe for disruption, such as parts of the healthcare, energy, and banking value chains.
And at the level of the customer journey map, there continues to be significant opportunities for innovation by looking for ‘make or break’ moments where a great customer experience can turn a customer into a lifelong customer. And as ‘experience’ designers, we are focused on turning these ‘make or break’ moments into moments that aren’t just ‘good enough,’ but rather moments that surprise, delight, help remove the stress and anxiety from the moment, and maybe, even exceed customer expectations.
We have all had times either in a store, or online, when we’ve had a very poor experience as a customer or user. If the importance of a good customer experience is so intuitive, and apparent, where is the disconnect? How is it that so many companies do not make this a priority?
I think while companies may know what a good customer experience might look like, it’s much harder to actually achieve it. There are many points of potential disconnection. One major example is that your people are the physical representations of your brand in a retail environment. And if the passion for the product and experience is not there, then people will intuitively pick that up. And it can’t be faked. We, as human beings and social creatures, are homing beacons for authenticity. And that sixth sense for authenticity also applies to retail experiences. That’s why human-centered design that’s focused on listening and understanding the needs of your employees is so important to help support the people on the front lines, who are helping your customers.
When I go to the little pizza shop around the corner from me, I can sense that they are passionate artisans who take pride in their work, are proud of where they work, and it shows and is also reflected in the customer experience, service, and product (delicious pizzas!).
And in addition to building a strong culture, it’s important to look at the entire customer journey and hone in on potential moments of disconnection with your customer, such as potential moments of friction or pain points. We always begin with developing a deep understanding of the customer’s journey to help companies identify where they might be providing a sub-optimal experience so that we can hone in on those moments to turn them into positive ones by developing new solutions, services, or experiences.
Can you share with us a story from your experience about a customer who was “Wowed” by the experience you provided?
We have helped create pop-up experiences for Samsung, Rembrandt, Jaguar Land Rover, as well as experiences for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and auto shows. These experiences are often custom designed to coincide with a new product launch, service, or event.
We’ve also worked to help design longer lasting retail experiences, like the work we did for Canon’s retail presence in Brazil that’s designed to be modular and adaptable to different retail environments and spaces.
And lastly, we have the flagship brand home work that has proven to have brand experience longevity from the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, Ireland to Old Forester Distilling Company in Louisville, Kentucky.
We collaborated with Brown-Forman and a team of expert consultants to create a fully functioning distillery. The space comprises 70,000 square feet in two historic buildings on West Main Street in Louisville’s historic Whiskey Row in Kentucky which once served as the brand’s main base of operations.
We created an experience for visitors that includes elements of surprise, discovery, and delight as they move through the distillation process on guided tours. But I don’t want to give any of the magic away! There are moments of engagement that bring visitors very close to the bourbon making process throughout the journey. You’ll have to go in person to experience it. But the end result allowed the brand to engender a deeper connection with their customers.
Photo source: From Imagination case study deck
Did that “Wow! Experience” have any long-term ripple effects? Can you share the story?
One unexpected ripple effect is that the Old Forester Distillery was voted one of the Top 10 Best New Attractions of 2019 in a USA Today survey by popular vote. And it was so gratifying, because it was end-customers who voted for us.
Most recently, we were told by a major industry leader that Old Forester was the most incredible Brand Home they had ever visited!
Even with planned closures for production work and unexpected inconveniences caused by the pandemic, 90,000 guests still paid to experience Old Forester in 2021.
And the ripples continue, as we continue to work with brands on building new experiences. In 2023, we will debut a number of new guest experiences, each designed to connect individuals and brands in unique and engaging ways.
A fantastic retail experience isn’t just one specific thing. It can be a composite of many different subtle elements fused together. Can you help us break down and identify the different ingredients that come together to create a “fantastic retail experience”?
I think designing a fantastic retail experience begins with understanding your value proposition, a deep understanding of your customer and their needs, and what is the journey that you are taking your customer on.
I’d like to share a storytelling tool that is a great way to help design a retail experience. Imagine your brand is the hero of the story. How are they rescuing your customer? What is the journey that they are taking your customer on?
For example, your customer might have the flu and they need some cough medicine as quickly as possible. How might our hero rescue the customer? In this case, the hero of our story might have prepared a cold and flu bundle with Gatorade, cough drops, tissues, and cough syrup that’s right by the door and ready to pick up.
What I like about this tool is that when you align your brand with the hero of the story, it humanizes and also personalizes the experience and helps you build out the retail experience. This can be an innovative way to think about your retail experience in a new way by adding human qualities and anthropomorphizing your brand to better meet your customer needs.
Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Based on your experience and success, what are the five most important things one should know in order to create a fantastic retail experience that keeps bringing customers back for more? Please share a story or an example for each.
This is a great opportunity to summarize some of the key themes that were discussed earlier. Here are the five most important things to keep in mind when creating a fantastic retail experience.
- Go beyond the transaction — Think about the whole journey and not just the moment when the purchase is being made. It’s really important to have a holistic view of the entire customer journey.
- Know your customer — It’s very important to know your customer and develop a deep understanding of their behaviors, habits, hopes, fears, aspirations, and dreams. This knowledge, combined with data collection and analytics, can be used to help develop personas and insights to better understand your customers.
- Know your people — The second part of the people equation is your employees. Turn the same lens you’re focusing on your customers to your employees as well. Your employees’ matter, because they are the face of your brand and often, on the front lines of working with your customers, directly or indirectly. Provide your employees with the tools, support, information, and data that they need to do their jobs well.
- Know your brand promise — What customer needs are you meeting? What is your brand value proposition? What problems are you solving? Remember what value you are providing to your customers and what differentiates you from your competitors.
- Don’t be afraid of change. It’s important to build continuous innovation into the organization. Don’t rest on your laurels. Don’t stick to the status quo. Be willing to experiment, make mistakes, and be curious. Let your brand live its ‘best brand life.’
Thank you for all of that. We are nearly done. Here is our final ‘meaty’ question. You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
In the last few years, my new movement has been more mindfulness. I think this also applies to the design process.
I’m always reminding myself and teams of this during moments of ambiguity and uncertainty during the design process. There can be a rollercoaster of unknowns and the design process can be uncomfortable at times. What really helps me get through these moments is a reminder to myself to stay present and to focus on the task at hand.
It’s easy to worry or get anxious about the future outcome and to want reassurance or certainty. But I’ve come to realize that there’s really no way to control the outcome and if I do try to control things, it can actually stunt and even hurt the process and the eventual final product.
So, I would say, my new movement is to stay open and present and to embrace the unknown. It’s not easy to embrace the fear and the discomfort of the unknown, but it’s important to try in order to stay open to possibilities. And again, this is not easy to do, and I have a lot of empathy for the internal struggle with ambiguity. But it’s also very rewarding and even magical, because at the end of the day, you just don’t know where you’re going to end up or what you’re going to create in the design process and often, it’s a better solution or outcome than you ever imagined. So, I would say, trust the process, trust your team, and trust yourself. You will get through this, and I tell myself and clients and teams that we will get through this, and we will get through this together.
How can our readers further follow your work? This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this!
Sure, absolutely, you can follow me on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/gloriachow]. You can also feel free to reach out directly at https://imagination.com/contact. I am always open to new conversations and look forward to hearing from you!
Thank you so much for sharing these important insights. We wish you continued success and good health!
Gloria Chow of Imagination On How To Create A Fantastic Retail Experience That Keeps Bringing… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.