Retail design

So, I’m back at school and working hard on my first project. We are doing retail design which is a new area for me, but very exiting. Together with Riis Retail we are designing a new space for the Danish brand Only at Kolding Storcenter. It is a fashion store for women, and they just launched a new brand for men as well. They call it Only & Sons.

We had to decide wether we wanted to make a store for both men & women or women alone. I had to choose both brands. It was just to exiting to try and make a store that fits both genders. I admit it is a bigger job, but don’t worry: I’m up for it!

I began my project by going to the library where I found a book that Mie, our contact from Riis retail, had recommended. Normally, I would begin searching the internet for inspiration and start sketching. But it was so refreshing to learn some facts about retail design before doing anything else.

I soon realized that the way I wanted to make a store was to give the consumer an experience. So I went outside in the rain to watch people shop, and I tell you it was hard not to become one of the shoppers myself. I managed! And actually received a great amount of information about our shopping patterns.

What I found most importantly was our interaction with our smartphones, which is not used in any stores right now. So I need to implement our smartphones with the user experiment. And I need to tell you about this amazing invention my boyfriend showed me. Hangers with Facebook likes on them so you know what other people think of the garment before you buy it! This is so amazing and never seen before. You can read about it here  

Another thing that I came across in my research was the way people are led through a store. I saw a lot of customers getting lost in shops and getting stressed not knowing which way to go. All this let me to an inspiration source that came from mazes. I want to lead the customer through the store, be able to use his/her smartphone to gain information and apply mirrors to make the store look bigger and brighter.

Oh my God, what a job I have given myself! So here I am. The deadline is Friday, October 3rd and I’m not done at all! How i will make it? I pray to the Gods to give me strength and maybe a little power for my computer. At the moment I’m staring at my PC and clicking the mouse every 15 min to make another rendering. It’s time consuming to be an industrial designer, but hey, also kind of fun and great.

I just hope they’ll love what I end up with and maybe have learned a thing or two about retail design.