Store of the Week
John Ryan's weekly spotlight on excellence in retail interiors and store design
Store of the Week
Reischmann, Kempten, Germany
Outdoor activity stores that seek to make you part of the action while within the confines of a shop are something of a cliche.
Verkkokauppa.com, Helsinki
Verkkokauppa.com is quite a mouthful for those not conversant with Finnish, but this is the name of Finland’s second largest electronics retailer.
Phones 4U, Oxford Street
Phones 4U midway along Oxford Street has been around for a long time and probably isn’t the first place that might spring to mind when considering visual merchandising novelty.
The Locker Room, Brent Cross
Wander past the average branch of Foot Locker in this country and the impression may be of a store that has a lot of trainers, but not perhaps of a highly wrought interior.
Foyles, Westfield Stratford City
Westfield Stratford City can overwhelm as you are assaulted by retail brand messages at every turn across all three of its long, long floors.
Svensk Tenn, Stockholm, Sweden
Sweden is known for its interior design, and in a retail context, this usually means stripped back minimalism with a lot of wood to emphasise the natural qualities of the great Scandinavian outdoors. And to an extent, the newly refurbished Svensk Tenn store in Stockholm is a case in point.
K Town, Goettingen, Germany
German department store Karstadt has not been without its share of problems – not least of which has been its inability to garner sufficient sales to convince those who need convincing that it is a good long-term prospect.
Aigle, Covent Garden
Shops selling a single category are thin on the ground – width, as well as depth, is normally deemed desirable by most retailers.
Francesca’s Collections, Paramus, New Jersey
Look carefully and then look again. It’s an independent fashion store, right?
John Lewis, Oxford Street, fourth floor
John Lewis used to the place that your mum took you where you were forced to hover while she inspected the haberdashery department and assessed the school clothing that you were going to model.
Topshop, Santiago, Chile
There’s been a lot of news recently about Topshop beaming down in Chicago, but putting the US to one side for a moment, what about Chile?
Marks & Spencer, Edgware Road, London
Style Online, Kiosk Corner, call it what you will, the new digital area just inside the door of the Marks & Spencer store on Edgware Road is perfectly placed for time-pressed shoppers.
Illy, Sao Paulo
In the popular imagination, Brazil’s famous for a few things with samba, caipirinhas, a very large river and maybe Copacabana beach being among them.
Weekday, Mitte, Berlin
Weekday in Berlin’s Mitte district stands as an example of why this part of the German capital is always worth a visit and how it is one of the more important places to grab a slice of the retail zeitgeist currently.
Penhaligon’s, Singapore
If you’ve ever had an idle moment and considered the ill-advised purchase of something smelly, Penhaligon’s might well have been on the shopping list to find something.
Dr Martens, Westfield Stratford City
Cobblers! Well, lasts to be more precise. Ever since Levi’s deployed used versions of these as part of its visual merchandising in the Regent Street flagship, they have been appearing in more fashion forward stores to lend a note of ‘authenticity’ to an interior.
Harvey Nichols Foodmarket, Liverpool
The traditional Scouse-Manc rivalry has taken a new twist since the beginning of this month, when Liverpool at last got a taste of luxury eating Harvey Nichols-style as the retailer opened a ‘Foodmarket’ on St Peter’s Lane.
The Museum of Everything, Selfridges, London
This is a first for Selfridges – store windows that contain no product.
Dobbies, Peterborough
There are moments when it’s a little easy to be somewhat cynical about the green movement and its retail manifestations, but the eco department in Dobbies’ new garden centre in Peterborough goes some way towards restoring flagging faith.
Vans Spitalfields, London
Blink and it’s gone and as you read this, the removal men will only be a couple of weeks away from descending on Spitalfields to empty the Vans pop-up store that has been trading on Brushfield Street since August 12.
Quiksilver, Fistral Beach, Newquay
Fistral Beach in Newquay is, for many, surf central UK, or at least that’s where you may go if you want to imagine yourself a bronzed god (or goddess), effortlessly riding the waves coming in from the Atlantic.
Gap, Via del Corso, Rome
Gap understands the notion of what makes a flagship to judge from this 14,110 sq ft, two-floor branch that has just opened on Rome’s Via del Corso, one of the Eternal City’s principal shopping streets.
Desigual, Oxford Street
Desigual is one of those curious beasts where you tend to look at the shop ahead of the stock.
Intersport Stähle, Bad Dürrheim
German sports retailer Intersport Stähle’s store in Bad Dürrheim is an example of how a large store can be transformed by a makeover and the thoroughly impersonal made personal.
Nike 6.0 pop-up, Mondello, Sicily
Pop-up stores tend to be fairly ephemeral affairs, quite frequently here today and gone tomorrow and this one, from Nike, is no exception with a lifespan of just two months.
Little Waitrose, Tottenham Court Road
You can tell you’re in central London from the packs of chorizo Iberico, the perimeter chiller devoted to sauces and ingredients for pasta and pizza, as well as the Italian deli-style arrangement of the dry ambient goods next to this.
Tsvetnoy Central Market, Moscow
There aren’t many opportunities to build a department store from the ground up these days.
Fashionation, Peek & Cloppenburg Berlin
Putting things politely, German department store Peek & Cloppenburg might be labelled somewhat conservative in its approach to store design and visual merchandising - this is probably not where you come for radical thinking.
Carrefour, Aubervilliers, Paris
All too often, you get to see a ‘concept’ store from which you are told ‘learnings’ will be extracted
Rabot Estate, London
Tucked under the arches of London Bridge, in the foodie haven that is Borough Market, is the latest venture by Hotel Chocolat founders Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris: the Rabot Estate store.
Nike Town, Oxford Circus
The Champions League celebrations in Barcelona and Wembley seem a rather distant memory a few weeks on, but Nike Town did its best to prolong thingswith an in-store event that seemed to be capturing the imagination of everyone entering the store.
Las Arenas, Barcelona
Yes, you did read correctly and no, you’ve not dived into some kind of alternative Ernest Hemingway sub-culture. This is Las Arenas, the vast, former bullring in the heart of Barcelona.
Make Up Store, Carnaby Street
Make Up Store is a Swedish retailer with shops across Europe and North America, which has had a lone store in Westfield London for some time.
La Rinascente, Milan
Milan’s La Rinascente department store is the flagship of a chain that has seen the likes of Giorgio Armani serving their visual merchandising apprenticeships and although it has been around a long time, its knack for novelty visual merchandising always makes it worth a look.
Manchester City Football Club
Newly victorious FA Cup winners Manchester City should find fans flocking to the doors of its new CityStore.
Charles Tyrwhitt, Jermyn Street
Charles Tyrwhitt is a relatively small retailer where the central proposition is men’s shirts.
Aura Riyadh
Aura is a 26,910 sq ft fashion homeware store in Riyadh and acts essentially as a black box in which selected areas are highlighted.
Pure Pharmacy, Terminal 2, Dublin Airport
Arrive at almost any airport in the UK and the first thing you’ll probably do before you finally head for your gate is visit what is normally one of several branches of Boots.
Foot Patrol, Berwick Street, London
Think trainers and you might picture Niketown at one end of the scale or perhaps JJB Sports, if funds are rather more limited, at the other.
Energie and Miss Sixty Carnaby Street
Energie and Miss Sixty are two gender-divided sides of the same coin, from the same Italian company.
Princesse Tam Tam Paris
From a visual merchandising perspective, the conventional way to display lingerie is to put bra and matching panties on a headless mannequin or, in extremis, just to have a bust wearing the bra.
Landmark, Mumbai
This 42,000 sq ft store on a single floor, from Indian book and music retailer Landmark, aims to do that which retailers operating in the sector everywhere are seeking to do: arrest the stagnation or decline of business owing to online alternatives.
C&A São Paulo, Brazil
C&A in the UK - until its disappearance at the beginning of the last decade - was one of those stores you didn’t really visit for store ambience.
Clarks Originals, Regent Street
By the time you read this, the Clarks Originals pop-up shop will almost have popped down.
HannSpree, Westfield London
Ever considered buying a crab-shaped TV, pincers included? A visit to HannSpree might make this improbable prospect at least a possibility.
Harrods Wine Shop London
Pay a visit to the Harrods wine shop and you might be forgiven for expecting premium prices to be the order of the day.
Mr Simms Olde Sweetie Shoppe, Fulham Broadway
Mr Simms Olde Sweetie Shoppe in the shopping mall directly above Fulham Broadway tube station is proof that small really is beautiful and that you really can use stock as an integral element of a store’s design.
The Tesco test
Tesco lost ground in the UK over Christmas, but are mid-sized superstores well placed to help it bounce back? John Ryan reports.
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New York store design: A year’s a long time in retail
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Primark: Making its mark
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In Pictures: Hotel Chocolat unveils chocolate factory store
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Arcadia: More from less
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Beyond Retro: Back to the (retro) future
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Waitrose: A Bracknell beauty
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Milestone in the garden city
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The Conran Shop: Designs on the future
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Austin Reed: In an upper class of its own
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Christmas future
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Going for glamour
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Store design: Balancing cost and creativity
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Uniqlo: Colour it in
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Is Westfield London standing the test of time?
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Steamer Trading: Recipe for success
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Let it Simply Be
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All Mod cons
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Westfield Stratford City: Best in show
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The streets of San Francisco
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Reinventing Waitrose
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Coffee shops and retail
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New river flows into Swindon
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The Next big thing
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The luxury shop around the corner
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Super fashion in supermarkets?
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Topshop: Old kid on the block
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How retailers are selling the Sales
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M&M’s World: Sugar rush
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Dudley. Now more?
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Super markets
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The world, C&A style
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Back to Asics
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A whole new lesson in Anthropologie
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Swindon’s finest
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HobbyCraft: Honing its Craft
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The fairytale continues
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Co-op puts the fizz back in its stores
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A Manc for all seasons
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Signed, sealed and delivered?
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Window of opportunity
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A royal opportunity
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The green wall of Sheffield
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Putting Theo-ry into practice
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Snap happy
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Putting the super into Superdrug
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Rose: Entering the 21st century
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Euroshopping
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Frasers: Northern star
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A glimpse of the Morrisons of the future
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Mills & Boon Selfridges, Oxford Street
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Tesco’s different shades of green
