Martin Pegler, widely considered one of the world’s foremost experts on retail design and display, likes to say that to make a real impact, the retail store should be theater. With the panel of gia (Global Innovation Award) judges, who described the measures all 15 of this year’s retail winners took to accomplish that goal, Pegler said the winners have developed brand identities that are strong and finite. They all have definite sensory and emotional appeal. They all make lasting visual impressions and – as a group – they are all different and unique.
“Some stores are surprisingly contemporary, while others make a great effort to maintain some of the space’s old character,” he said. “Others relish in the mixture of textures and materials or in reclaiming and recycling for startling visual effects.”
Whatever the choices, store brand is the goal. It is what your store stands for, your taste level, sales staff, customer relations and the shop environment. They all come together, Pegler said, to make the shopper’s experience in each store the vital factor in making a purchase.
Gia winners did that with a dazzling array of choices that included:
- Changing the look and theme of the store with the arrival of new product lines.
- Creating separate zones according to prices.
- Offering shops within the shop.
- Moving the physical store at timed intervals.
- Installing a huge cooking island in the middle of the store.
- Focusing on architecture with the same functional character of an art gallery.
- Creating well-furnished room settings that feature many products and suggest a home layout to the customer.
- Housing the store in a building complex from six centuries.
- Using ambient lighting and sound.
- Providing live screens that project what is happening in the store.
- Serving coffee, tea and cake in a deliberately relaxing part of the store that gives customers a chance to refuel amid a collection of cookbooks.
