OUGD501 | Final Essay

How does fashion retail design contribute to a company’s brand and help sell the brands products?

Aesthetics and design are important in all areas of life; from food presentation to gardening to one’s personal look, time is taken to make things look good. This practice is no different when it comes to retail design as it is a significant factor in the selling of a product; so much so that companies spend millions of dollars to create a visually appealing space and concept to entice potential consumers into the store and to buy their clothes. This body of writing will explore how companies can make a physical space part of their brand as well as the relationship between consumers and the store design.

Branding is essentially a company feeding off both consumerism, and the masses need to reflect their lifestyle through different products, such as jewellery, clothing and cars. No brand can appeal to everyone, so they are designed and created to appeal to a particular demographic in order to sell their products. A brand that does try to appeal to everyone risks putting a vast majority of people off the product and the brand, therefore losing business. This leaves brands with the choice of choosing a small but specific demographic, who will like the products, or a broad but ambiguous demographic, which is harder for the brands to convey their values and purpose.

As Mesher says in ‘Retail Design’, ‘A brand can be defined by analysing its core values through understanding the product, communicating it to the right consumer audience and understanding that audience’. [Mesher, L. (2010). Retail design. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA Pub.] This statement rings true as a brand is more than what it seems on the surface. Take Nike for example; Nike’s goal is more than just selling shoes, it is to make the consumer feel like they are making their life better through sport and exercise, therefore making the customer associate Nike, to health and wellbeing. A brand like Nike that sticks to its values can stay in business for an extended amount of time, constantly battling competitors for the top of the market. ‘Brand values’ as Mesher explains are ‘what the organization’s morals and standards are and how they manifest themselves in the brand’. [Mesher, L. (2010). Retail design. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA Pub.] This includes what the brand stands for; whether it be equality, healthier living or function, it all depends on how they are manifested into the brand, and how the brand implements them into their products and design. This comes under the principles of a brand, along with other aspects such as culture, essence, and image. Brand image is one of the most important elements when both creating and analysing a brand.

Most of the time, the first contact a viewer and potential consumer has with a brand is through image. Whether the image is the logo or a poster, an audience will make an assumption about the brand and what it promotes almost instantly. It is important for a brand to have a strong image associated with it, this often grows over time and is not an instant success. A vast majority of the most successful brand logos are from companies that have been around for years, sometimes decades, and have proved themselves as an important part of their particular market; some examples are Apple, Nike and Chanel. These brands are all well respected in their fields and all their logos are now instantly recognisable and considered a ‘successful logo’.

There are many reasons behind visual merchandising in fashion stores. A fundamental reason is to increase traffic into the shop, therefore, increasing the chances of a sale. Designing to attract customers takes a lot of research as the brand needs to cater to its target audience and dedicated consumer demographic, but also not limit itself by not appealing to anybody else in a different gender category, age group or ethnic origin for example. There are many ways a shop can attract customers but the most effective is how the exterior of the store looks. The exterior design includes things such as the overall architecture of the shop, window graphics, window displays and even the lighting that crosses from interior to exterior.

Window displays play a very important role in the sales of products as they are usually what draw the customers into the shop; the environments created in store windows ‘are designed to strengthen the material essence of the product’, making them seem more desirable to the consumers. [Cuito, A. (2005). Store window design. New York: TeNeues Pub] There are four main areas in window display design that need to be covered in order for it to really communicate to viewers and do its job; the first being colour. The colours that are chosen can either be the brand’s colour or a colour that reflects a certain mood or emotion; it is important to use colour correctly as ‘colours produce an immediate stimulus that really lasts and brings with it a lot of information for the observer and for the potential client’. [Cuito, A. (2005). Store window design. New York: TeNeues Pub] This tells us that depending on the colour or colours used, the viewer then takes the initial feeling into the store with them, then altering and affecting how they behave and interact with the products. Another area of window display design is the materials that have been chosen to present the items and clothing. These materials set how the product is perceived by outside consumers and how they can then imagine and implement these products into their own lives. This is touched upon in ‘Store Window Design’ by TeNeus Publishers, when they say that materials ‘make the products displayed become wished objects and provokes the observer’s feelings, binding them to wish upon the purchasing of the products’. [Cuito, A. (2005). Store window design. New York: TeNeues Pub]

When setting up a shop window display, the lighting that is used is another very important element that needs to be considered as it is ‘one of the most powerful tools in window designing’. [Cuito, A. (2005). Store window design. New York: TeNeues Pub]  If done right, and used collectively with colour, materials, and furniture; it sets the mood of the display which plays on the observer’s emotions and mood. This will dictate how they respond to the shop and the shop’s atmosphere, therefore determining whether or not the observer will enter the store and become a customer.

With window graphics and displays one method used to grab attention is to keep the graphics simple and use a scale rather complexity to make an impact. This technique is a lot easier for companies that have an established brand with an instantly recognisable individual colour, colour combination or logo. One example of this technique is Nike’s use of it on one of their New York stores; a large ‘Nike Swoosh’ logo was placed directly above the double doored entrance to the shop without any type or additional images. This quickly and efficiently communicated that it was a Nike shop due to the widely recognisable branding and ‘the consumer’s ability to focus on the familiar or preferred’. ‘People recognise brands that occupy a share of their mind’; so much so that they are able to ‘filter them out from all he visual and verbal clutter’ that may be surrounding the store. [Calver, G. (2001). Retail graphics. Crans-Près-Céligny: RotoVision]

Another example where scale plays a huge part in exterior design is the Levi’s flagship store in San Francisco. The designers behind the client design were Checkland Kidleysides; they decided to go with a 100 x 35 display that showcases still-life and portraits during the day and digital work film work at night. Although this may not be directly representative of the brand and what people associate with the Levi’s, it grabs the attention of passers-by, enticing them into the store. Alternatively, the opposite of this can also be very effective if done correctly. The streetwear brand ‘Supreme’ goes in the opposite direction when it comes to impact; rather than going big and bold, it uses its existing brand qualities of small, quiet and limited for something less striking.

Supreme’s massive success has partly come from the fact that their products are extremely limited and hard to get a hold of. Due to the brand’s immensely dedicated fanbase that has been known to queue outside of stores for up to forty-eight hours, Supreme doesn’t need to advertise itself to the masses; this is reflected in their store design. With only a handful of stores around the globe, each one is almost entirely bare on the exterior using only a small sign with the infamous ‘box logo’ design. This simple design works well with the brand that Supreme has created, its quiet, subtle and not over the top - keeping to a minimal design inside and out.

In the case of Supreme and many other companies, the store itself often becomes part of the brand as the ‘store is often the only materialization of a brand’. [Willems, M., Schultz, S. and Bol, E. (2009). Powershop. Amsterdam: Frame Publishers] It is as important as the colour, the type or the logo. Brands are able to do this by making the shop a memorable experience for the customer, once the possible consumers have entered the store, the next challenge is to engage the customer enough to ‘convert interest into purchase’ through the means of displays, floor and wall graphics, and signage. [Calver, G. (2001). Retail graphics. Crans-Près-Céligny: RotoVision] Taking a brand’s essence and design and ‘turning it into a three-dimensional spatial experience is called brandscaping’; as described by Otto Riewoldt – ‘brandscaping transforms the brand itself into a location’. Supreme’s oldest store, in New York, was initially designed with a very open floor plan in order for there to be room for skateboarders to ride into the shop. This hasn’t changed, but more inspired the other stores around the world to follow suit in the simplistic design, keeping the products around the perimeter of the interior store. As explained previously, Supreme has now established its brand off how limited their products are, and this is reflected in the minimal layout of the stores. The artwork displayed in the stores is in-line with the brand and the demographic that it caters to, in the London store for example, the whole upstairs of the establishment is a gallery dedicated to skateboarding. The L.A store offers more of an ‘experience’ than any of the others with its full, double circle skate bowl that overlooks the front of the store. This adds to the atmosphere of the already iconic shop for the customers as they walk in and around the shop, able to hear the skateboarders – the very sport and people who started and influenced the brand in 1994.

The designers of the brand often set out guidelines in order for the store to correctly and accurately represent the brand in an effective manner; ‘guidelines often include logo information, colour references, typeface and imagery as well as examples of how to set out different types of signage and communication tools’. [Mesher, L. (2010). Retail design. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA Pub.] These guidelines are made from ‘understanding the aspirations of the end-user and through analyzing the competition’ and ultimately deciding ‘how the graphic identity would impact on the space’. [Mesher, L. (2010). Retail design. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA Pub.] A lot of the time the ‘flagship store’ plays a big role in how the rest of the stores are designed.

Flagship stores are there to ‘promote the brand in large, key retail sites around the globe’, by ‘influencing the brand choice made by the consumer through creating an exhibition-like experience’. [Mesher, L. (2010). Retail design. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA Pub.] The concept and design in these stores are a lot bigger and more complex than those of the regular retail stores. By immersing the consumer in the brand with different experiences, artwork, and products, they are then invested into the brand; when they visit the store ‘they may or may not purchase goods, but by visiting, they buy into the brand’. The hope is that now the consumer is dedicated to this brand, they will go to a shop elsewhere and purchase products there. It is ‘a clever marketing tool’ that is very effective in ‘subconsciously stimulating the consumer into choosing a particular brand’. [Mesher, L. (2010). Retail design. Lausanne, Switzerland: AVA Pub.]

Once the potential consumer has entered the store, it is important that they are able to make sense of everything and that their experience is as easy as possible. This is helped by the signage used within the shop to help direct and inform the customer of the products. The signage needs to be clear and legible enough for customers to be able to glance around and know the layout, but it also needs to stay in line with the store’s branding. The first thing to know is that by ‘understanding that customers don’t always behave in a logical, rational fashion affects the way interior signage is designed’. [Calver, G. (2001). Retail graphics. Crans-Près-Céligny: RotoVision] This means that a customer won’t always walk into a shop at point A, and walk round to point B, and so on. They are often in a rush, or have other things on their minds or want to purchase a particular item and leave promptly. This ‘places great emphasis on the need to simplify information, to make it immediate and meaningful and to make it impactful’. When it comes to keeping with the brand guidelines, there are an array of options that are available; a certain typeface or colour could be used, or maybe the brand has an existing identifiable layout that could be applied.

It is important for the customer to feel that they are making up their mind as to where to shop in the store and for them not to feel like they are being pushed round a certain way. This would only ruin their experience as they wouldn’t be interacting with the shop and making up their own minds. At the same time, they do need some guidance and information, this is the importance of signage within stores.

The in-store display of products also takes a lot of consideration when it comes to how to display them, where to display them and why to display them in a certain manner.

‘Only by understanding a retailer’s core customers can one hope to create an environment conducive to them. Only by understanding a retailer’s core proposition, its values and personality can one hope to create a store that reflects these, and which is sufficiently different and attractive for consumers to try it and prefer it. Only by connecting with their customers can retailers hope to engender interest and loyalty.’ [Calver, G. (2001). Retail graphics. Crans-Près-Céligny: RotoVision]

This statement made by Calver suggests that the only way a company can design and create a successful embodiment of its brand is to fully understand the values at the center of the brand, its customers and how the customers interact with those values. If a brand was to design a store based purely from function, this would feel sterile and boring if it didn’t fit with what the brand has already promoted itself as. There needs to be the right amount of balance between function and branding. As you walk into a shop it needs t obe clear that this store is the physical space belonging to this certain brand, while also being easy to navigate and enjoy. ‘Mums with pushcairs will hardly struggle up to the third floor to get their babies’ new nappies if there is a store on the same street selling them on the ground floor for the same price.’ [Calver, G. (2001). Retail graphics. Crans-Près-Céligny: RotoVision] This highlights the importance of physical product placement within stores and how all customers need to be considered and understood. By looking closely  at different stores it then becomes apparent how the brand has analysed their consumers and then made the connection to how the shop should be designed.

The shop design does affect the customers’ loyalty to the brand – something very important and something that brands go to great lengths to establish. A primary goal is to get a customer to return to a store, this can be done with other techniques such as flagship stores, which as been established, but the most efficient and effective is how their experience was in their ‘local’ store. A customer may return because of ‘the service or the range of products, but equally, it may be because the environment is right’. [Willems, M., Schultz, S. and Bol, E. (2009). Powershop. Amsterdam: Frame Publishers] Depending on the design and layout of the store, the customer may just feel at ease shopping there due to the atmosphere, the design and how it connects with them, this is the ideal customer for brands.

Companies use branding in order to establish a connection with consumers in order to get sales. Their stores are usually the only three-dimensional and physical aspects that portray their brand values, this is why so much effort goes into making sure the customer realises this and the stores are then used to their full potential. They are there to draw customers in closer to products, bringing the sales closer and bringing the money closer. Depending on how the store is designed this will determine which type of customer returns to buy more. It is clear that all different elements of branding and store design are put in place in order for the consumer to connect to a brand and dedicate their time, money and loyalty to a brand.