Retail was once a personal preoccupation. An intimate experience. 

Think women shopping in private apartments, being served and fussed over. Very French. Champagne, chatter, et al. 

Also think about how your grandmother used to shop, the seasonal visitors who’d show up at home from places near and far—not just selling everything from bangles, grains and handloom textile, but also sharing stories and news from their travels.

In both cases, the focus was on building relationships, picking up on personal tastes, and offering tailored services. Shopping was an experience. It was as much about the encounter as it was about the purchase. 

The rise of organised retail, though, killed this vibe. People began fancying larger, impersonal stores. It screamed efficiency and uniformity, an experience that was predictable and…boring. 

Sellers’ obsession with building an honest personal connection with potential buyers, something that was once at the heart of commerce, was replaced by a focus on products and processes. In this transformation, the person—the customer as an individual—was subtracted from the experience, marking a shift from intimate service to a more transactional form of shopping.

Mass retail had you believe that the tiny flaws of the handmade were actual dealbreakers. Since when did we start thinking that bland perfection was cool?

Team Object dreams of disrupting this pattern. We believe retail should be personal. We believe you should be pampered. We want to build a community of buyers, designers and craftspeople: small but highly engaged. 

The Object Apartment is a baby step in this direction. No impulse buys here, only intense conversations around the object you’d like to take home.