INSIGHT
A retail interior designer's secret to compelling shop spaces
One of the first questions we sometimes find ourselves answering is, what is a retail interior designer? This may seem simple, but what do we do beyond just looking at the floor plan of commercial spaces and designing a beautiful retail environment? A retail interior designer possesses specialist skills in translating the essence of a brand into a physical shopping experience, a retail store, in a way that reinforces the brand world.
An essential requirement is to get under the skin of the brand to fully comprehend the commercial criteria of the brief. This ensures that the customer journey and merchandising strategy take full account of how customers will navigate the retail space. This takes us beyond beautiful store fixtures into optimising spaces for return visits.
The importance of creating compelling retail design experiences
The role of retail spaces has changed dramatically in a retail brand's omni-channel strategy. In our experience, legacy retailers find it more challenging to adopt new thinking to the role of stores in their retail omni strategy.
Often there is a focus on a store's individual contribution to sales rather than viewing the store as a key media channel, a retail brand billboard.
In contrast, many new emerging brands such as Fairfax & Favor, have built their brands and communities exclusively online, have a greater appreciation of what a physical retail store can bring to the business in the way of a compelling and memorable experience, brand visibility, customer acquisition, promoting deeper, lasting relationships with their customers and reinforcing brand loyalty.
Fairfax & Favor design by Caulder Moore to create memorable retail interiors
This trend has accelerated because of the increasing cost of customer acquisition online, for these digital to physical brands, and the increased difficulty of achieving cut through and visibility online.
In the modern retail industry the bar for retail store design is higher than ever, with many of these emerging retail businesses fully exploiting the opportunity for creating compelling retail experiences, retail spaces that become destinations, where customers love to visit, love to spend time with, and love to return.
Brands such as Glossier and Warby Parker have consciously adopted retail store design thinking to fully exploit their retail spaces as environments that attract, and encourage customers, as well as building their brand community and providing a retail space where their customers can physically experience their unique and distinctive brand worlds.
Library themed displays at Warby Parker in New York
Merging art and strategy in a successful retail design blueprint
Both art and strategy are employed by a retail designer to unite the twin requirements of the creative briefly as well as fulfilling the commercial space requirements of achieving optimal product densities and compelling retail display, effective store layout, and visual merchandising in a retail project.
An essential part of this is to understand the operational requirements of the store teams, and how the product is delivered to the customer. For example, the storage requirements for footwear brands, are far higher, often up to 40-50% of floor space than fashion brands.
Another example of integrating art and strategy would be the role of fitting rooms, and the amount of valuable floor space and investment in terms of design investment and quality of finishes, a retail business is prepared to devote to this essential dimension of the customer journey.
Comfortable & sensual fabric lined fitting rooms at our collaboration with Ragno to highlight their textile heritage
We would argue that this a vital conversion zone, an area where the more comfortable and relaxed a customer feels, the more likely they are to spend valuable dwell time in the fitting rooms and purchase. For us, investment in comfortable, welcoming fitting areas is a key factor in shaping customer perceptions of a brand experience.
Memorable fitting room customer experiences are also an important way to offer great service and build positive relationships, and encourage return visits and boost sales.
The Caulder Moore approach to retail interior design is to ensure that we understand the individual brand vision and essence of a retail brand as well as ensure that we have delivered against their commercial criteria in terms of sales targets and optimise the effectiveness of their retail environments in their omni channel strategies.
In our role as retail design specialists it is definitely not a case of one size fits all. We tailor our comprehensive interior design services to the needs of each individual client to ensure that the result is something which is exclusively attuned to their specific brand world, their commercial needs, their competitive context, and helping them to fulfil their future brand plans and ambitions.
Design services and scope - brand retail strategy to feasibility
Caulder Moore offers a comprehensive service from full architectural design services to adapting to site specific requirements for both local projects here in the UK and internationally.
We partner with brand strategy specialists, if required, to help our clients define and articulate their brand essence and vision. This clarity of vision is an essential first step in building a robust retail design brief, and is often most needed by independent retailers, and emerging brands.
This is also important for ensuring that the brief is future-focused and future-proofed to ensure that the design concept will deliver against future goals.
Quite frequently we are asked by our clients to undertake feasibility studies on a prospective retail space, where we can map out the customer journey and customer experience to ensure that the commercial space will deliver against the retail brand's business goals.
Key components of effective retail design
We describe our way of working almost as a funnel process, beginning with a broad creative approach, and through mood boards and visuals, together with our collaborative approach start to refine the creative direction into a singular visual route.
Our design process includes collaborating with specialists such as lighting designers and structural engineers to pull together a team that can deliver the retail project.
As retail designers, it is our role to balance aesthetics with functional requirementsFor example, we believe that great lighting plays an important role in both creating the right mood and ambience, creating pace and dynamism in the retail space, and equally ensuring that the product is shown to its best advantage.
Other elements such as colour play an important role not only in reinforcing the brand message and graphic signature but also in reflecting the individual brand world, especially if a retail business is strongly known for a specific brand colour. Texture can play an essential role in creating a more sensorial tactile impactful customer experience.
Cork wall details at Ragno to highlight their hexagon logo pattern, designed by Caulder Moore
Integrating the brand graphic language into elements such as shopfront, window displays, navigation, storytelling, product provenance and pricing are all essential elements in creating a sense of completeness as well as encouraging and enabling customers to navigate the space seamlessly and easily.
How to preserve the creative intent through implementation and design execution
At Caulder Moore, our way of working and close collaboration with our clients ensures a final outcome which remains faithful to the original creative intent.
We achieve this through providing detailed design intent drawings, ongoing design supervision on site and frequent site visits during implementation.
As a result of over 20 years of experience, we have a broad network of trusted contractors and specialists, including experts in visual merchandising and window display.
Evaluating and enhancing design outcomes
As part of our process, we set out, in collaboration with our client, in the first instance, clear and agreed KPI's (key performance indicators) in order to evaluate and benchmark the success of the final outcome.
In addition, we have a formal evaluation process, post project, to evaluate the concept, and to identify how the concept should be 'rolled out', subsequently investing in those elements of the customer experience that have delivered the most success in customer satisfaction and commercial performance in future stores.
The role of technology in modern retail design
Each client has individual requirements in terms of the role of technology in their store experience.
We have worked on digital first retail projects where the role of technology was front and centre, to projects where the role of technology was secondary or supportive in terms of guiding customers around the store and highlighting specific zones.
Integrating digital retail technology with comfort at Hotter Shoes by Caulder Moore
Digital technology at Hotter Shoes store designed by Caulder Moore
Each project needs, in terms of the role of technology, to be analysed to ensure that there is clarity, and clear purpose in the role of technology in the store experience.
Impact of Caulder Moore’s retail interior design on business success
It is essential to agree at the outset, the criteria for success. Once we have that, it is also important, in a modern retail context, to view the performance of an individual store. This is done, not in isolation in terms of specific sale performance, but also taking into account factors such as customer acquisition, encouraging customers, customer satisfaction, and its role in the broader context of omni channel brand strategy.
Challenges faced by retail interior designers
Common challenges include a lack of clarity on brand essence and vision, which is something, through our brand strategic skills, we can address.
As far as budgets are concerned it is important to have clarity around anticipated expenditure to ensure that expectations are clearly aligned to what is possible to achieve relative to investment levels.
It is also important to explore the competitive context, brand strategy, and evolving customer trends that will influence the evolvement of the optimum and most successful outcome.
The future of retail design and branding
The future of retail design is hugely exciting as many more brands understand the brand building role that great retail stores can play in securing a growing and loyal base of brand fans and advocates. This is particularly relevant in the context of the opportunities for forging deeper, richer connections with customers.
At Caulder Moore, we love working in close collaboration with ambitious brands, to ensure that they gain maximum commercial benefit from our partnership. The secret to great retail stores is not only to build sales but secure the future success of a retail brand in a highly competitive and fast-moving retail landscape.