When Selfridges opened its Denim Studio on the third floor of its Oxford Street flagship in June, a waiting world rushed to take a look at the 26,000 sq ft jeans leviathan.

All well and good, but once the initial brouhaha has died down, how do you ensure that shoppers make their way up to the relatively distant part of the store?

As a rule of thumb, the number of shoppers who make it to the upper floors of a multi-level shop is inversely proportional to the distance from the ground floor. And perhaps for this reason, the visual merchandising team at Selfridges has decided to bring the Denim Studio to all of the store’s floors by making use of the massive escalator atrium that is at the heart of Selfridges.

Pairs of jeans are stitched together to form garlands that have been strung across the space between the up and down escalators and the legend ‘The new Denim Studio on 3’ has been attached to them.

Visitors to the store who use the escalators will be hard pressed to miss this one. But should the shopping mission involve just the ground floor, the store windows have been filled with references to the new area, from denim horses to a 3D sign in the young fashion area.

The latter is an exercise in simplicity, consisting of a large arrow with the same message on it and pointing towards the nearby escalator.

The outcome is that any visitors to Selfridges will be aware of the Denim Studio, whether they are interested in the category or not. This is a department store that knows how to make a marketing splash.

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