Show Business
Retail designers are acting more like stage managers to bring stories to life, while embracing a test-and-learn approach.
With consumers no longer attracted to old-world retail’s cookie-cutter look and vending machine mentality, stores are being reinvented as dynamic spaces that align retail with stage-like programming to engage shoppers.
Korea’s designer eyewear brand Gentle Monster’s flagship stores are in effect rotating visual exhibitions presenting a blooming post office, a crystal palace of mirror fragments, a scent laboratory, and an urban hotel offering naps to visitors. The brand has a total of 16 contemporary art-museum-like stores in 4 countries. The model helped its stores to account for 35% of its $260m revenue in 2016.
The retail-gallery concept of New York venue Story hosts a range of retail items curated around ever-changing themes. For Now is a retail incubator that provides a place for a rotating cast of digitally-native brands, bringing them offline in Boston’s Seaport District where their story can be seen and felt. Russian department store Trend Island offers free retail space to new international talent in exchange for a commission. Having only opened for a year, hundreds of brands are already on its waiting list.
Sources: Gentle Monster (Stores) | Business Of Fashion (July 17, 2016) | Story | Boston Seaport (For Now) | Trend Island | Image: Laura Pittaccio