Homewares retailer HomeSense has opened a larger footprint store, but can shoppers make sense of their surroundings.

If you are what is colloquially known as a large footprint retailer, you have a rather more difficult store to manage than those leaving more dainty tracks. And if the single-floor shop that you own covers an area of 27,000 sq ft then that job is particularly tough if you want to get shoppers to inspect all your wares.

There are, of course, exceptions and the most obvious of these is food. Supermarkets tend to start at about 25,000 sq ft and then head on up, and it is probable that every inch of shelf space will be subject to close inspection. The reason for this is simple: food retailers follow a highly prescriptive pattern, with fresh food first, ambient to follow and then, depending on the size of the offer, home, with booze alley right at the end of the journey.

And journey is exactly the right word for what takes place in this kind of retailing, because shoppers trawl up and down the aisles until they have reached the end and then head for the checkouts.

Retail dilemmas

Now imagine that you are predominantly a furniture and homewares retailer. None of the foregoing received wisdom will apply, meaning that the chances are high that persuading shoppers to visit the deeper recesses of your store will prove difficult. This is the dilemma that faced discount homewares retailer HomeSense when it looked at opening a large-format store at Merry Hill in the West Midlands.

This newly opened store is indeed 27,000 sq ft and is located on one of the several mini-retail parks that surround the main shopping centre. If you are driving to the centre the chances are that, along with the new Best Buy shed, you won’t be able to miss this one. The increasingly familiar pale green background with black and white writing that forms the logo is almost as visible as the neighbouring Comet and, probably, rather more tasteful.

It is also a destination. You won’t arrive at this store (which is one of the largest HomeSense branches to date) by accident, insofar as this is a shop that will involve a conscious decision to visit, rather than a distress food purchase where you are likely to end up visiting for no better reason than geographical proximity.

Having arrived therefore, the problem for HomeSense’s management was how to get people around the space? Even allowing for the obvious pull of messages inside and out stressing the fact that the merchandise on offer will be “Always up to 60% less”, the challenge of dividing a space of this size in an attractive manner and one that makes sense typifies the big box retailer’s task.

To be fair, HomeSense has risen to the task through a mixture of new signage and very clear departmental segmentation. However, the first thing a visitor to this store is likely to encounter is the furniture that has been strewn about the entrance.

There are probably a good number of commercial reasons for doing this but it is hard to escape the feeling that a perfectly good exterior (in terms of retail sheds, at least) has been compromised. Admittedly, the chairs and tables that have been used are respectable, but it is obvious that little thought, other perhaps than ‘get them out’, has been employed in the creation of this merchandise vignette. It also serves to distract from the pylon that stands proud of the store, bearing the words “HomeSense”, which is considerably better than any of the other retail sheds in the area.

Now step across the threshold and the sheer scale of the problem facing HomeSense becomes apparent. This is a very big store and furniture, by its very nature, is bulky, meaning that getting sight lines across the store, let alone any kind of departmental definition, is not straightforward.

Step forward the ceiling, parts of which have large curved recesses where the raised section is painted a different colour. This is immediately visible and even before you have looked at the signage you are aware that there are different parts to what might otherwise appear an undifferentiated whole.

Practically, this means that the circular area above the kids department is painted turquoise, immediately promoting visibility.

There is also a relatively small orange sign that states “Kids”, but the eye is taken by the architecture, rather than the signage. Another way of putting this is that the in-store architecture acts like a telescope, helping to identify a particular thing, while

the signage acts as the focus, making sense, from a distance, of what you are actually looking at. The device is used to carve up the whole of the floor. Where there is any doubt, green Perspex overhead signs, with black font, help to make sense of the mid-floor.

After that, the major merchandise departments are defined by the stock itself. Broadly, there are eight of these and a totem at the far end of the car park outside tells you all you need to know with everything from “Bath” to “Bed” and “Kids” to “Kitchen”, on offer. This is an eclectic mix but for shoppers this store is probably first and foremost about home furnishings, as this is the category that has been placed at the front of the store. Kitchen occupies an area to the far right, with utensils along the perimeter, while more esoteric items, such as “Men’s Gifts” and “Homecraft” are also consigned to the back wall.

And so to the checkout, which bears close comparison with many TK Maxx (which has the same parent company) stores in terms of its curved shape and unexpectedly glamorous appearance. And the white message on the wall behind the cash desk rams home the value-for-money message that is central to the format: “Please pay up to 60% less here”. The colourful small pendant lights above the tills add to the notion of being in a store where the concentration is on contemporary homewares.

So is this what all future branches of HomeSense are going to look like? Unhelpfully, perhaps, the answer is that it depends. Debora Dolce, director of brands and business development at parent company TJX Europe, says that the form this store has taken is an architectural response to both the size of the space and a desire to increase the width of the offer.

First joint store

Later this summer, a joint TK Maxx and HomeSense will open in Gateshead’s MetroCentre with a combined entrance, confirming that they are from the same stable.

What the Merry Hill store does show is how well the format is developing. Dolce’s statement that HomeSense, like TK Maxx, is predominantly patronised by ABC1s with a broad age range does hold water when you look around the car park at the generally flashy cars in front of the store.

Richard Collier, a partner at design consultancy The One Off, which worked with HomeSense on the project, is clear about what has been done: “Navigation is a key issue and so we created a series of stage areas to help. It’s about living style rather than lifestyle - showing how your home reflects your lifestyle.”

It is just over two years since the first HomeSense opened - on the outskirts of Bristol - and in that time it appears to have made positive strides, particularly in view of the crowded marketplace that is the UK furniture and soft-furnishings arena.