Habitat has introduced new elements at its latest store, in Liverpool One, but is it a format that could be used elsewhere.

Hear the words concept and store together in the same sentence and a certain amount of caution is required. What a concept store usually means is a one-off that has been put together by the store development department to please the directors and the press and which has about as much chance of being rolled out as you have of feeling Christmassy in early January.

Yet retailers do have a habit of creating concept stores and sometimes they have their uses, especially when it comes to providing the design direction for a brand. While it may be unlikely that all elements of a concept store are taken across a chain, it is fairly common for specific parts, such as graphics, fixturing and layout to make their way from concept store more generally into a retailer’s estate.

With this being the last store to open before Habitat was taken over by Hilco last month, a trip to Liverpool seemed a sensible option. Habitat had just opened a two-floor, 12,915 sq ft store, and yes, this is a concept store, but one that is appropriate. This is not a wild leap in the dark (there are those who might recall the ill-fated M&S Lifestore in the mid-years of the last decade, which was just that). It may be a concept in name, but this is a gentle version of breaking new frontiers.

It also happens to be about 4,000 sq ft smaller than the average Habitat, principally because it’s in the heart of the Liverpool One development and this was the unit that was available when the store was signed in July.

A new record

22 weeks later, the furniture retailer has achieved Habitat’s fastest ever lease signing to store opening, according to head of visual retail Lucy Engwell. Liverpool once more has a branch of Habitat. The retailer did in fact trade in the city in the, at the time, increasingly down-at-heel St John’s shopping development, but it gave up the attempt at making money from the location in1990.

However, it is a measure of how far Liverpool’s rehabilitation as a retail destination has come that retailers such as Habitat are taking the plunge and setting up store in the city.

And walk towards this branch and you are confronted by a pretty unusual Habitat store. The exterior, with its red brick patterning set against a cream brick background, is a pastiche of an elaborate 19th century industrial unit, rather than the more usual slickly contemporary structure that tends to characterise a Habitat store.

Step inside and change is also apparent. Engwell, whose project this store is, notes: “We’ve done a lot of fairly subtle, but significant things. The first of these is that you walk from the street straight into home accessories.” This, she says, is a reflection of the two-floor nature of the store and that it is, in effect, a high street shop. This means that putting furniture at the front of the shop, the normal Habitat modus operandi, is hardly likely to attract impulse purchasers into the store.

Creating a destination

Instead, furniture is upstairs, a destination in its own right and somewhere that those in search of it will find

their way to. And they will do so courtesy of a lot of very clear signage, an uncluttered area, and large, dark-grey tiles that have been used to form walkways to take shoppers around both floors - a first in a Habitat store.

The other benefit of putting home accessories at the front of the shop is perception. Engwell says that in locations such as Liverpool, research has shown that there is a whole generation that has grown up believing that Habitat is not only a design-led outfit, but also distinctly aspirational in terms of pricing. This may be the case in certain instances but, as she observes, there is a lot that is competitively ticketed and the store is also a good place to seek out everyday household items. “It’s about accessibility and affordability,” she says.

Before leaving the area, it’s also worth noting the “welcome” and “thank you for visiting” signs at the front of the store. Engwell says that a lot of work has gone into the tone of voice of the in-store graphics and the point-of-sale material to give it a more friendly aspect.

Move into the middle of the shop and there’s a tall, matt steel internet kiosk, where shoppers can order from the Habitat catalogue. Like the ground floor layout, this is an experiment that Engwell says is about connecting shoppers with the notion that Habitat is both a bricks-and-mortar and online retailer.

The mid-shop area is also home to a “seasonal” department, which at the time of visiting was filled with Christmas gifts and decorations, but by now will have been remerchandised, probably with lightweight furniture. And at the back of the floor is a modestly sized furniture area, home to folding chairs that are small and cheap enough to be impulse purchases, in contrast to the heavier duty nature of the offer upstairs.

The selling point

This is also where the “gallery”, housing framed pictures, is located. This is merchandised almost to the full 5.5 metre height of the back wall, acting as a magnet to draw shoppers into the store’s deeper reaches.

The merchandising on this floor is, in fact, quite low-rise compared with many Habitat stores and seeing from front to back is simple. Interestingly, the gallery obviously works. Upstairs, in the back office, it was flagged up as the department that had garnered the biggest sales in the week before Christmas.

Care has also been taken to soften the overall look of this floor. Overhead, white suspended rafts have been positioned 3.5 metres above the floor, to avoid the appearance of trading from a barn and to hide the very industrial-looking black ceiling void and associated air-conditioning and electrical elements that tend to be part of any building’s interior.

Head upstairs and the initial thing that is apparent is the lower lighting level. Engwell says that this is not an accident. “We decided to keep the lighting fairly high downstairs for the home accessories, but for the furniture floor, where we have roomsets, we wanted the lighting to be more domestic; like you’d find at home,” she says.

This floor is altogether quieter and more peaceful than downstairs, which, as Engwell says, is part of making people comfortable when they are making a more considered, and expensive, purchase.

A number of changes have been wrought on this floor too. Just beyond the staircase that takes you up to this floor is the kid’s department, which has green walls to demarcate it as a separate department.

Other differences include a bathroom with a perimeter towel display fixture that creates impact, a faux-library, stacked with books that you’re pretty unlikely to want to read, and a new-look “chair-wall” on the perimeter.

There is also a monochrome graphic of a Habitat shopping bag. The image has been raided from the company archive and dates from 1966 - an illustration of the brand’s heritage.

A concept store therefore of the best kind. This is a store that is a departure, in many ways, from a standard branch of the homewares and furniture retailer, but where the new elements are eminently capable of being replicated elsewhere.

As Habitat has, once again, changed hands, having been sold to Hilco by Ikea at the end of last year, this is one of the stores that looks likely to survive any future cull of non-productive stores.

Habitat, Liverpool one
Size
12,915 sq ft on two floors
Project leader Habitat head of visual retail Lucy Engwell
New design features Emphasis on home accessories and walkways for clearer navigation
Graphics Tone of voice changes and Habitat archive used for imagery