Three floors of fashion, 56,000 sq ft and the first of its kind in the UK. This was the prospect that greeted shoppers queuing outside the Forever 21 store in Birmingham a couple of weeks ago.

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The US teeny fashion retailer had chosen Britain’s second city as the first one that it would make European landfall in. And the number of people who had arrived up to an hour ahead of the ribbon being cut was testimony to the level of anticipation that this retail debut had generated.

What they were confronted with was a fashion behemoth that put its competition in the Bullring into the shade purely by dint of its size and the width of the offer that it contained. There was, however, rather more to the store than being big.

For a start, it is about taking three floors each with a large footprint and making in-store visibility possible while at the same time avoiding the pitfall of a large space that might feel like an American football stadium. This has been done by the fairly obvious expedient of lifestyle zoning - making the whole store a series of connected areas that will strike a chord with different parts of the Forever 21 shopper’s day or life.

The other point about the store is that it knows its customer wants and provides them by the spadeful. This translates as a store that has everything from upscale faux marble black and white chequered floor to fairy tale chandeliers and accessory tea parties. The one thing that is avoided is any hint of the industrial - there’s enough of this already on the high street. A good store then and one that will be joined by a branch on Oxford Street in 2011.