Laws of attraction: Store design

Shopping is a bit like searching for the right partner. You want the place to look good, have some spark about it, a bit of personality and be dressed well - and finally it helps if it smells pretty nice too. Only after you’ve got over those initial impressions do you really start to look closely at the detail.

Get any one of those things wrong, and shoppers will high tail it away from your shopfront quicker than someone after their blind date rescue call.

We’ve gone from being what Napoleon called a nation of shopkeepers to a nation of shoppers, and shopping is now one of the top leisure activities in the UK. But consumers are so spoilt for choice with Bluewater, Westfield London and Lakeside et al that they have become fussy about where they buy, and the brands they choose to engage with. This makes it even tougher for shops to woo customers and maintain the excitement levels in their relationships with them.

But if shopping is like dating, then stylish jeweller Cottrills at Wilmslow in Cheshire is the perfect partner. It’s open and attractive from the outside, smart but welcoming, and has a central champagne bar that could entertain you in style for hours.

“It always amazes me that a restaurant can have the most fabulous décor and charge, say, £100 a cover, when a jeweller can be selling £10,000 items from an outdated, tatty and boring environment,” says Malcolm Rawle, managing director of Peter Dooley Design, which designed and fitted out Cottrills and Prestons of Bolton, as well as custom-making cabinetry for the new Stephen Webster store in Mayfair and interiors for Weirs in Dublin.

“A store should be able to attract customers into the shop without feeling intimidating,” says Leona Nicholas, director of retail design specialist Robert Nicholas.

Good looks definitely count high on the list of features that will attract a shopper into a store, but they have to be more than just style over substance, according to the experts. “Store design should accurately reflect the position of the retailer’s brand,” explains Rawle. “The design should state with confidence the proposition from the retailer to the consumer. Image is incredibly important and the materials used and the quality of manufacture are paramount. You often see shopfits that look like quality, but then on closer inspection you spot poor joinery or light fittings that are not flush. At whatever level you trade, this is important.”

Mark Giddings, owner of Giddings Design, agrees that getting the small stuff right is paramount. “At a stately home the first thing you touch is the beautiful door knockers. It’s this attention to detail that needs to mirror the aspiration of your customers,” he says.

Stephen Webster’s Mayfair store certainly ticks all the boxes - it has bespoke shrimp door handles that welcome guests into the store and mirror Webster’s love of marine creatures, which is a trademark in his jewellery, from the initial impression. The store surrounds shoppers with its brand values, making it impossible for shoppers to leave without wanting to take away a piece of the brand.

But while your shop must always be ready for its close-up, make sure it creates an impression from afar and looks good from the end of the shopping mall or from across the street. Bear in mind this is the distance from where you will have to pull in most of your customers.

Getting that detail right can pay dividends. Giddings has been designing shops for more than 40 years and has overseen projects as diverse as luxury jewellery and antiques retailer Wartski’s London store and Nicholas James’s futuristic jewellery flagship in Hatton Garden - he even masterminded the display cases for the Crown Jewels.

He believes that changing the store design can instantly affect your bottom line. He says that after completing its overhaul, Finnies the Jeweller in Aberdeen saw profits rocket. Rawle agrees that store design is not just about aesthetics, and can have a serious impact on finances too. “A good shopfit can grow a retailer’s turnover by 20% to 30%,” he claims.

Wow factor
It always pays to think about giving your store a central wow-factor feature. At Cottrills it was the champagne bar, at Prestons of Bolton it was an upstairs cafe in the colonial style, and at Swarovski it was art installation.

Last year, after a decade of running a successful chain of 1,150 boutiques worldwide, Swarovski created a fresh storefit to highlight its own-branded collections of crystal jewellery, accessories and ornaments. The shops were designed by award-winning store designer Tokujin Yoshioka.

Called the Crystal Forest, all the walls within the boutiques are textured with reflective white relief prisms of various lengths and both vertical and horizontal display cabinets break up the space and focus the eye on the product, even in such an elaborately designed space.

A key feature is the chandelier in every boutique. Backed by an LCD screen, the immaculately cut acrylic prisms and geometric icicles that make up the chandelier rotate, reflecting and radiating the LED lighting.

“The Crystal Forest highlights the infinite possibilities of crystal,” says Swarovski artistic director Nathalie Colin. “It represents the century-old heritage of Swarovski, its crystal-cutting know-how, its craftsmanship, creativity and innovation. It is light, friendly and fresh. It manages to be clean and pristine, yet warm and welcoming.”

Jaw-dropping store design is also possible in some of the most traditional retail areas, such as Hatton Garden.

“At Nicholas James we created a groundbreaking store,” says Giddings. “There is nothing like it in the world. James said he wanted a store that would make 95% of passers-by think ‘yuk’ and the remaining 5% think ‘wow, this is the place I am spending my money’.”

But it doesn’t always have to be something so dramatic to get you noticed.

At Finnies the wow factor was a little more understated. To back up the family feel, Giddings created a children’s area where the young could play with Lego and other toys while mum and dad checked out their equivalent of the candy store. “If the children are kept entertained, mum is happy browsing,” says Giddings.

But it is important not to get complacent. A shop that may once have stopped customers in their tracks needs constantly updating and changing. Just as you need to invest time to keep a relationship on course for success, so to do you need to do the same for a store. “However good the shopfit, stores tend to deteriorate over time and when you’re working in it day to day, it can be easy to overlook the worn carpet or scuffed wall,” says Rawle, who insists customers will notice all these things.

“Once you get the look right, it should just need a gradual tweak here and there,” according to Rawle, who says he only advocates a total change in extreme circumstances. “A timeless shopfit just needs subtle updates such as new display or carpet rather than wholesale changes. A good shopfit matures with age and looks better for it.”

Displaying the stock
Getting the displays right is vital, but Giddings says he commonly sees jewellers leave them to the last minute, worrying about all the other fixtures and furnishings first.

With jewellery, it’s more important than in any other kind of retail environment to highlight the products with fantastic lighting. Jewellery retailers need to draw attention to their best assets with the right choice of illumination.

Lighting can be used to create certain moods in high-traffic areas that are different to those needed in the more private areas. By doing so, lighting can back up the décor or flooring and create zones and a logical flow for your customer to follow throughout the store.

Rawle says that technology has moved on fast, and LED lighting uses about 85% less power than conventional bulbs and can last up to 10 years. He explains that ‘lux’ - illumination - levels and ‘kelvin’ - colour - can be varied to suit the product displayed, and that retailers could look into this to ensure they are showing off their stock to its best advantage. If your lighting has not been changed since you last refurbished several years ago, it’s worth getting in an expert to re-assess your lighting. Ensure the bulbs are bright and checked regularly by staff with replacements made to keep the focus on the jewellery. Nicholas says: “The emphasis should always be on the product.”

The other common mistake that retailers make is crowding the items, so retailers should consider how they can show off all the stock without confusing customers, Nicholas advises.
Giddings says that he has seen quite a few jewellery stores ruined by not having custom display units running throughout. “We create intimate displays using interesting materials that make people stop and stare. Don’t spend your time creating a beautiful shop and then just go and buy in boxes for your display,” he says.

The latest crop of stores in Westfield London shopping centre - Tiffany, De Beers, Omega and Tag Heuer - all present their jewellery and watches as a hero piece, with just one product standing out from the pack to capture people’s imagination.

At Tag Heuer, watches are set back into black displays attached to the window, with the watch lit almost like a rare museum exhibit; at De Beers, jewellery is displayed one piece per cabinet; and at Omega the bright, light space highlights the heritage and story of the brand. All of the product is allowed to breathe and made to feel special.

Links of London has always applied this philosophy of less really is more with aplomb: only two or three pieces from a collection are placed into each display window and they always tell a story.
Meanwhile, Ring Jewellers in Brighton is a bespoke, modern jewellery shop that wants to encourage customers to browse stock by navigating through the display cabinets. “Our design is basically a desk where we sit and design, with three freestanding cabinets and lots of free space for customers to wander around,” says owner Stuart Stanley.

“It appeals to our customers because it is more relaxed and not claustrophobic. Traditional jewellers can feel a little busy with rows of trays showing rings. If you create your own jewellery, you need to reflect that in a modern shop design.”

Stephen Webster is a master at this synergy between store design and product. In his Mayfair store the mood is set from the windows, where Webster’s trademark purple frames the jewellery with the shape of creatures from his Jewels Verne collection etched onto the glass.

Inside, the jeweller’s love of creatures used creatively continues. Stuffed black crows act as gothic-style mannequin busts to display the necklaces, while seagulls are caught in flight, suspended from the ceiling overhead with pendants hanging from their beaks.

Even away from the tactile taxidermy, the gothic sensibility of the jewellery is emphasised - coral that has been painted black is used to merchandise rings and necklaces while the cabinets are arranged to look like a spine curving throughout the shop, just like the wild articulated crustaceans and vertebrates that inspire the jeweller’s latest lines.

His design team has used found objects and painted them to create unusual niches that can hold jewellery as well as generate talking points in his store, while illustrating the artistry behind each piece that is for sale.

And while many displays are decorative, ornate and unusual, there are also chests of drawers that allow an impressive quantity of the designer’s lines to be shown. Tray after tray or rack after rack on display would have been boring, but by pulling out the drawers in the chests, staff can show customers more of the lines they are interested in without crowding the shop.

Let shoppers play
However, if you are displaying costume fashion items you need to find inventive ways to give customers access to the full range of products for them to play with. The more stock you have out on display, the more likely customers are to find something that appeals.

“It is ideal to view the full collection of the brand,” says Darren McCormick, managing director of DMJ Distribution, which distributes brands including stacking ring brand Spinning Jewelry, composable charm brand Storywheels and watch line Glam Rock. Spinning has created a display stand that enables customers to play with the pieces and try them on. Shoppers can also create their own itemised jewellery list using an in-store touchscreen.

But the displays must also be workable for your staff, who will be tasked with cleaning and changing them regularly.

At Domino’s new creative suite (see box, p31) the displays can be fully pulled out on a runner so product can be changed from the top and both sides. Giddings has made the art of window dressing even simpler by designing magnetic pictures that can be taken off the window simply and without leaving any mess.

Such leaps and bounds in design innovation could signal the end of the more traditional, fusty old jewellers. Nicholas explains: “We are finding silver jewellery is becoming increasingly predominant, and this in turn attracts a younger market. So a move to a more contemporary look is becoming more of a demand in store designs.”

Jewellery buyers, too, are becoming younger as more ranges and brands are being designed with more youthful markets in mind. “You have to have new blood,” says Giddings. “Stores have to do something to attract the younger market coming up.”

But beware of trying too hard to attract the young and missing the mark. It’s vital that the look of your store reflects the target audience you want to attract, says Rawle. “I’ve seen some horrible concept stores that have tried to attract a young and fashionable consumer, who would be exactly the kind of consumer who would think these stores were naff.”

Spanish jewellery brand Luxenter, distributed in the UK by Urban Armour, uses miniature dolls-house style furniture to create a fun, girly feel and appeal to its target youth market, positioning the display as an object of fun. In contrast, CK’s boutique on South Molton Street in London’s West End uses cool and sexy images of young male and female models to create that aspiration among its customers.

However, if you don’t want to turn over your entire shop to something that looks too cool for school because you are worried about alienating your more traditional watch buyer, McCormick advises that branded shop-in-shop environments work well to highlight specific spaces that will appeal to certain consumer groups.

Giddings believes that the younger look of branded shops with clean, simple, feminine shapes in almost an Ikea style is where the future of modern jewellery retailing is headed. “These give an air of tranquillity and calm,” he says. “There are elements of this in restaurant design, lighting and fabrics. This is something that has been present in Europe for years.”

Black and white
Timber may be the predominant look in jewellery shops because it lends warmth and a family feel. This was certainly the case at Finnies in Aberdeen, where Giddings used warm cherry wood.
But a good designer will know that different colour schemes can have instantly different impacts on the appeal of a shop, and won’t be afraid to experiment. At Nicholas James, for example, Giddings used a stark white with interchangeable picture panels at the rear of the shop, and at Domino he opted for black cabinets. As the customer gets younger, a colour scheme that appeals to them is also becoming more important.

At Stephen Webster’s Mayfair store, which was designed by interior specialist Kelly Hoppen, the interior uses a heavy dose of black in the colour palette. The cabinets look like treasure chests, creating the ambience of a shop of curiosities. The private space at the back features cushions with black lizards and bugs and slashed curtains made of a thick hessian. It’s art meets jewellery design, and it’s oh so cool.

Cottrills is decked out entirely in gleaming bronze around the champagne bar with zebra-print bar stools, while the layers of glass made to create the private room inject a sea-green colour.
But, warns Giddings, it’s important

not to get carried away with such design wizardry, and to ensure your store is fitted out for your customers’ comfort. “Wooden floors may be a modern design aesthetic, but do they actually feel nice under your feet?” he says. “Jewellers may want to consider having wooden floors near the entrance and then carpet inside to create a nicer feel for customers.”

Try to create a private area, if space allows, where customers can look through jewellery in more relaxed surroundings without other customers jostling them.

At Stephen Webster, for example, the private area is opened up most of the time, but can be divided off by a screen to create something cosier and more intimate if additional privacy is needed. The screen references sketches and inspiration for the jewellery.

Searching for inspiration
And it’s not just jewellery designers that need inspiration. It’s important to look around for ideas when you are considering a refit - not just at other jewellery retailers, but at top restaurants and galleries. “Think about your current customer base, and what you’d like it to be,” says Rawle. “If your store is within a stylish building, use some of the design features. Be as bold as you can be and differentiate yourselves.”

Giddings recommends a similar course of action - but not limiting it to these shores. “Travel around Europe with your camera taking pictures of other stores to brief your designer. The clearer the brief, the better your store design will be,” he recommends.

Looking for somewhere to buy jewellery and watches might not be as difficult as finding Mr or Ms Right, but if jewellery retailers get their store design bang on, they might just be able to make shoppers feel like they’ve found love at first sight. And that surely can’t be bad for sales.

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