The shoe retailer breaks many design rules usually held dear, but it works. John Ryan visits the newly refurbished store at Meadowhall

One of the problems facing any retailer that opts to give space to branded merchandise is knowing which brands to stock. In clothing, at any one time, irrespective of the

category, there will be hundreds to choose from and making the right selection will determine whether an enterprise thrives or beats a path to the offices of the administrator.

This is particularly the case when it comes to shoes where brand really does matter and in the normal run of things it’s a matter of being ruthless about the choices that need to be made. Unless of course the decision is taken that the best route to profit is to offer the greatest number of brands possible and to hope that this will prove attractive to the casual browser.

This appears to be the modus operandi at high street footwear retailer Schuh where you almost lose count of the number of brands in the window, and this before you even step inside a store and realise that there are further within.

Packed out

The retailer, which claims to have the UK’s largest online shoe shop, has just opened a new-look store in its Meadowhall branch and a quick scout round the centre reveals that this is probably a very astute choice of location to trial a highly-branded offer. Located on the mall’s upper level, it is just across the ‘High Street’ from a branch of Office and not far from Aldo, which has set up shop in the centre relatively recently.

What this speaks of is a shopping centre where brands matter and standing outside the refurbished 1,860 sq ft Schuh store, it seems this is the case: the store is full of customers.

Shoppers entering this store will have been attracted by a window that is full to bursting with different brands. All are given an equal shout by the simple visual merchandising exponent of blocks, some solid and others taking the form of transparent, internally illuminated cages that have been stacked, Lego style, on top of and adjacent to each other, to create the display.

What this does is maximise the number of individual styles that can be meaningfully shown off in the window, although it can become a little difficult to disentangle one brand from another. That said, this is a vision of plenty and the message is clear, if you want brands, and there are more than 50 on display in the window, then Schuh is worthy of your consideration.

It is also possible that the cheerful lower case Kermit-green Schuh logo may well have served to grab the shopper’s attention initially, but once up close this is a window that highlights the stock, rather than the shop and the display scheme.

Step inside and the shop is as busy in terms of layout as it is with shoppers. The latter seem not to mind the fact that there is an awful lot of mid-shop equipment.

Design and visual merchandising manager Sara Metcalfe says this is deliberate: “That’s what our customers like. The research that we have done shows that people come to us for the breadth of the products that are available. At any one time, we stock between 80 and 100 brands. Obviously not every brand is in every store.” She adds: “You either like it or you hate it, but the results show that most people love it.”

The store is long and narrow and the cash desk is at the rear, where a green tiled back wall ensures you look beyond the first piece of equipment and through the space. You may not be aware of it, but your gaze is also taken to the back of the shop by a suspended white raft positioned above the mid-shop equipment and studded with recessed spotlights. These culminate in a row of anodised metal, industrial looking matt silver spots, attached to a gantry, which brighten the store’s deepest reaches.

And in looking through the space in this manner, it is quickly apparent that the left-hand wall is about women’s footwear while on the right it’s men’s shoe world. Between the two, the centre floor is a mixture of both, depending on which fixture you happen to look at.

Jenny Hillier, of Briggs Hillier design, says that what is on view in the Meadowhall store is a cosmetic update of the formula she and her team worked on for the Oxford Street flagship five years ago: “We reviewed the existing concept, because the reality is that quite a lot of it works well operationally, so what we’ve done is a cosmetic redesign to bring things up to date.”

Practically, this means that the store is colour and material coded along its two longer walls with studded baby-blue and grey leather indicating that you are looking at a women’s offer, while a plum section of the wall is used for men’s sportswear. Couple this with a dot-matrix-style graphic that states “Mens” and a copper-coloured faux handwritten sign that says “Womens” (which appears to be missing an apostrophe for those of a pedantic bent), opposite each other, and the store makes sense. And the high-density equipment used in the mid-shop has also been given a makeover, with oak finishes being used to display some of the more obviously outdoor styles.

It would be hard to leave this store, however, without noting the pendant lights that run down the middle of the shop. These are space-age retro and look like the kind of thing you might find in, perhaps, a Conran restaurant or bar, but they work well here too.

Finally, the seating has been given new covers and the floor has new tiling that has been made with 40% recycled material, apparently.

Footfall format

All in all, this is a store format that is tried and tested and which may not be the most radical on the high street, but that’s not the point. This is a vehicle for a multi-brand operation, although there is a substantial showing of own-brand styles, where the object is to provide a wide choice in a modest area.

There will be those, inevitably, who will say that this is a format that is ripe for a major rethink and that a little thinning out would do no harm, but this is the exception that probably proves the rule. Chief executive Colin Temple is clear that this isn’t about

to change: “That’s where we are as a business and that’s where we need to be given the model that we use. As a business that sells brands the margins are a bit tighter than they would be if we were a brand owner with a store, so we need density.”

For Meadowhall, which is having a bit of a honeymoon post-refurb sales uplift, the new shopfit is clearly working. However, Temple is realistic: “We can’t always build in a sales increase when we refit a store, but it’s something that we have to do every few years.” What is different for Schuh is a store that has its own equipment with branded point of sale, rather than brand-supplied fixtures. This is a retailer that knows it position in the market and how to make shoppers reach into their pockets. More so than many, perhaps.

Schuh, Meadowhall

Location Upper level, ‘High Street’

Size 1,860 sq ft

Design Briggs Hillier

Proposition Brands, brands and more brands

Chief executive Colin Temple