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One undeniable, truth in our world village is that today's cutting edge idea or product is tomorrow's accepted Norm. The miniaturisation of the mobile phone, the calculator becoming the computer, and many more are all examples of rapid progression and the rapid dissemination of exclusivity. But, how does a retail proposition lend itself to exclusivity?

Building a Brand

In the retail sector, we see this at the fashion shows. Not all of us can afford Haute-Couture, but the moves of the fashion industry leaders shape the landscape for us all, and filter through to our local mall or Main Street.

In retail presentation as well, the top luxury brands vie for increasing differentiation and the scaling up of their brand presence, and this inevitably filters through to retailers at all levels. store is two fold:

• To differentiate
• To make a lifestyle statement

Creating a brand: Developing an Identity

A successful Retail presentation to a customer is a fusion of identity and brand, and to understand the fundamentals of the aspiration of the retailer, we just need to spend a few moments talking about Brand, Logo and Identity.

The Identity of a retailer is a combination of:
• The logo,
• Their advertising, and
• The overall store ambience
and all of these taken together represent the brand.
By creating a distinct identity, the retailer differentiates themselves from the competition and creates a unique position or offer. As competition intensifies, and more brands appear on the scene each day, the need to be noticed and to make a statement of difference become ever stronger.

Our customer's world is one of choice, and the successful Brands deliver this choice through the conduit of design.

Through the design of their Retail outlets, each retailer is able to give real and tangible expression of their unique corporate philosophy of design, quality, and reliability of their products.

The store design is also an opportunity to identify core values inherent in the Brand, and many retailers challenge their store designers to manifest new lifestyle environments for their customers.

Retail Presentation

As we have seen, individual Retail formats are in a continuous state of change, and the successful Retail development projects are those that capture the latest format of any Brand for their centre. The customer visits this latest shop design because it represents the best the Brand currently has on offer, and the Retail development itself benefits from this reputation.

In our view, the most successful retail environments are those in which the individual retailers are given opportunity for free expression of their Brand, and we try to encourage the developers we work with to engage with key retailers at an early stage in the mall design. You may be familiar with our project at Bluewater. The early concept sketches show this process of engaging with key retailers at the earliest possible moment in the design stage. Bluewater wouldn't have happened with at the 300,000 sq.ft John Lewis department store, so our first sketch was to propose a stand-alone Fragship building for them. Linking one face of the John Lewis to a mall, enabled is then to create Department Stores for M+S and Horse of Fraser. All these retailers were then signed up, and this gave the developer the confidence to build out the project. The rest is history….!

Dynamic Interiors

With shopping increasingly becoming a trip borne from choice rather than necessity, people will choose to shop in environments that embody their aspiration of a leisure day out. The mix of uses, the level of service, the retailers represented and their level of presentation are part of the story, the other area we can influence the total experience is the overall mall environment; the container that hosts the shops and customers.

The most successful interiors will have closely matched their interior design offer with the aspirations of their core customer, and we see examples of where there is a good fit between the two at Festival Walk and Pacific Place in Hong Kong.

For our Bluewater project, we worked with the developer to set guidelines and rules that gave some control, but also offered a substantial license to retailers to adapt their frontages. Diagrams were produced to define Pop-outs, signs; amount of glazing, 3-D signs and the Retailer's Interior Designer was challenged to produce their most innovative work.

At Bluewater, the design challenge was to create a retail environment for a customer that did not like to shop in malls! The solution was to use high quality natural materials, and to develop a layer of architectural narrative and civic art to make the experience have a partly cultural dimension. The scale of the site was harnessed to create outdoor landscaped spaces that were fully integrated with the mall to give opportunities for rest and replenishment on the shopping trip. The message was that a visit to Bluewater was a wholesome, relaxing and full experience.

For a younger customer base, projects such as Langham Place and the Selfridges store at Bull Ring offer environments that are hip, and cutting edge and that appeal to the target customer. The reason that people still shop, even in the internet age, is so they can socialise, and actually touch the merchandise.

One attempt at a Dynamic Interior in Hong Kong was a failure because it attempted to supplant shops with PC screens. The futuristic Cyber Express promoted cyber-recture, and offered the ability to shop and surf. Inevitably the technology was unreliable, but more importantly the customer rejected the notion of a non-social shopping medium.

So it is possible for retail environments to be too dynamic, and certainly the luxury customer is looking for innovations, authenticity, quality, and service, but not necessarily too much visual or aural activity.

In Shanghai, 3 at the Bund is a cluster of innovative retail, leisure and F+B outlets housed in a high quality environment. The target customer identifies with the mix of tenants and the added value of the Architectural Brand. At the predominantly F+B street-based project at Xintiandi (also in Shanghai), the target affluent customer is wooed to visit a collection of innovative F+B outlets, all housed in an authentic Shanghai street setting.

Of course, brand expression in a retail environment can be too free, and too chaotic, but with a measure of control, the retailer can be given a substantial opportunity to present their brand in highly creative formats.

Gateway Mall in Durban successfully encouraged retailers to show their product in creative ways, and dissolve the boundary between mall and shop. The same is true of the covered street format of Bugis Junction in Singapore, where shops display their wares in a market-type setting.

At our more recent, Bull Ring project in Birmingham, we moved this a stage further, and designed a series of individual buildings, so that each retailer could use this differentiation as a starting point for their own Flagship store.

In Hong Kong, where admittedly leases are relatively short, the norm for the shopping centre is for the developer to provide the shop fronts. This not only creates a sterile and monotonous shop display, it also costs money. Even where the developer will be providing the shop fronts at Elements Mall in Hong Kong, we have designed a range of “standard” store fronts so that retailers can select from this range, and help to create a little more variety.

Signage & Furniture

All of these solutions are striving to create vibrancy and differentiation. And create a perfect home for the retailer to display their wares. Of course, retail presentation is more than just shop fronts. The Billboard scheme in Japan clearly makes use of its facade and potential dead areas in the interior to offer opportunities for brand expression (and revenue for the developer).

Our project at APM in Hong Kong has 52 LED and plasma screens where airtime can be rented out for brand promotions to always keep the retail presentation up to the minute. The landlord benefits with additional revenue, and the shopper is treated to previews of the key brands within the centre. Then the overall Brand of the centre can be presented in surprising and large scale settings. The white cliffs that surround Bluewater presented an unprecedented opportunity to project the centre logo in an unforgettable merging of light art and branding.

We have seen how retail environments are shaped by variable factors such as the retailer and presentation and the architectural design, and the other key area to consider is the design of signs, furniture, and art pieces in the environment.

Increasingly the shopping customer is seeking not just richness of experience, but also authenticity from their visit. At Bull Ring, Bluewater and Dundee, rich architectural detailing is merged with sculpture and seating zones. At Roppongi Hills, a clear Graphic Brand for the retail centre was merged with art piece furniture installations to create a rich and surprising environment. At our project for Kowloon, the graphic representation of the elements brand has begun to fuse with the colour and form of the architecture to create a memorably whole experience.

At APM, the blank walls of the drop-off, car park and lobbies were used as an opportunity for graphic design that not only enriches the spaces, the carefully selected imagery also restates the values and aspirations of the core APM customer, the young shopper.

In an increasingly homogeneous world, shoppers are spurning the general, in favour of more focused experiences. Fashion Centres and Entertainment Centres are increasingly becoming the Norm. Langham Place in Hong Kong and Fashion Mall in Las Vegas know their customer, and strive to meet their needs and dreams with their design and tenant mix.

In the last 10 years, we have already seen staggering changes with the emergence of lifestyle centres and flagship stores, and all consistent with the evolution of retail. First, these were retail malls with quick stop food cafe's and fast food. Then there was retail and fast food allied to entertainment. Next, retail entertainment with a range of eateries from Fine Dining through to Family Food.

The most recent is all of the above allied to a Family and cultural experience, with Civic Art and Learning added to the mix to create a more complete and memorable Day Out. We believe firmly in the inevitability of a retail centre evolving, as societies evolve, to become far richer, expensive propositions.