By Clotilde Chenevoy | the
| In-store marketing
Discover the first Solana store opened in New York, in the Hudson Yards mall. His role? Discover all the uses of this technology with a very entertaining course. Reportage.
In the very chic Hudson Yards mall in New York, above the Louis Vuitton store and not far from Neiman Marcus, the Solana blockchain opened its first store 6 months ago. A surprising investment but which has a very specific objective: to make people discover this technology and its diversity.
Walls of glass allow for a view of the entire store from the outside, with Solana’s name enthroned above the till. On the left side, we can see different frames on the walls with different Ape Bored Yacht type designs. Opposite, a giant screen on the wall shows other graphics that also recall the world of Web3 and give some indications to the visitors of the shopping centre. But to encourage them to come back, Solana mostly promises them $10 after discovering the shop.
10 stops for 10 different uses of Solana
An employee, or rather an ambassador, greets every visitor who enters the one hundred square meter shop. This is how he measures the degree of knowledge of the blockchain while he explains the concept.
The space is organized into 10 zones and each stop allows you to discover 10 uses of Solana in a very entertaining way. But before embarking on this discovery, the visitor must have the Phantom wallet on his smartphone. You need to flash a QRCode to facilitate the download. During this operation Ambassador Solana indicates the importance of the password – a series of automatically assigned words – which must not be lost. “If you lose it, you will no longer be able to access your wallet, you will have to recreate another one,” he insists. Solana has made available a small cabin so that visitors can carry out this operation in complete privacy and small cardboard sheets are available where you can write down your password.
Once this step has been completed, from the Phantom wallet it is possible to navigate between the different areas. Everyone has a tablet on which the topic covered is specified and will display a QR Code which must be scanned with the Phantom wallet. This manipulation then activates the animation, whether to discover Solana Pay, Solana Mobile, or how to make a transaction or even receive your salary in cryptocurrency… Videos, short text, images with sometimes an MCQ quiz, the formats to push the content are varied. Each stop lasts approximately 3 minutes and a reward is given at the end of each scenario.
$10 worth of cryptocurrency offered as a reward
After completing at least 4 steps, the visitor is invited to show an ambassador their badges to recover the promised 10 dollars in the showcase, received in Solana cryptocurrency. This passage demonstrates the speed of cryptographic operations. The visitor then has the option of using this money immediately by purchasing goodies in Solana’s colors (pair of socks, key rings or even stickers) or by keeping his own cryptocurrency. Obviously it is also possible to receive an NFT to prove that you have visited the shop…
New York was Solana’s first address, and she has since opened a similar boutique in Miami two months ago. One can wonder about the sustainability and above all the profitability of the concept but the bet of making the topic of the blockchain accessible has been won.