Retailers are taking inspiration from the Super Bowl to create eye-catching displays ahead of the sporting extravaganza. John Ryan reports on the latest store looks in New York City

New York is supposed to be a location where change is the only constant - blink and one shop will have been replaced by another.

In the normal run of things this is the case, but what is rather unusual about the last 12 months is how relatively consistent and almost quiescent the New York retail panorama has been.

There have been few large store openings, although the makeover of the beauty department at Macy’s is on a scale that would dwarf many average-sized store debuts. But, as ever, the visual merchandising is to an exceptionally high standard.

The city that never sleeps tends to be event-driven when it comes to displays and windows. And on February 2 it’s Super Bowl time, the annual American football extravaganza where the entire nation goes into a frenzy.

Super Bowl 2014 takes place a few miles away in New Jersey, and for retailers it’s an excuse to roll out the bunting anew with everything from a line of football-player mannequins in Macy’s to Bloomingdale’s designer football helmets in its windows.

Also worth noting is the fact that, after the Sales rush, January is a quiet month in retail. In New York however, NRF (National Retail Federation) is in town, which means the retail IT world descends en masse to inspect the sector’s latest technological innovations. And with so many industry insiders in the city, it’s the perfect opportunity for retailers to show off their stores.

Macy’s, 34th Street

The world’s biggest department store, which occupies an entire block in New York, has not been without its problems over the past few years, having recently cut jobs and closed stores.

To judge by the new beauty department on the ground floor, however, the mood may be changing. Formerly, this 24,000 sq ft space, a small fraction of the store’s total but in prime ground-floor position, was filled with counters and staff poised behind them, ready to sell fragrances and cosmetics to those who passed.

It was absolutely standard department store stuff and looked like it. Now the tired-looking wooden counters and the wood-clad balustrade that runs around the perimeter have been replaced by a series of designer offers featuring the latest fit-outs from the big brands.

In practice, this has meant that names such as Burberry, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana and Dior all have strong representation and, as in Selfridges on Oxford Street, there is a semi-standalone Louis Vuitton shop at the back of the department (or the front, depending on which side of the store is deemed to be the front).

US flags are everywhere, but it is perhaps the newly installed line of mannequins in full American football kit that runs along the central aisle that is the most eye-catching element. This is not the kind of thing that might normally be expected in a beauty department, but it is a measure perhaps of the grip that the Super Bowl has on the nation that it is felt desirable to do this.

It also serves as an introduction to the National Football League shop on the store’s fourth floor, which opened last Sunday and covers a gigantic 36,000 sq ft. Even in a store as large as Macy’s, this is a major commitment and it is also the largest Super Bowl shop in the city.

ABC Carpet & Home, 8th Street and Broadway

Homewares and home furnishing stores are a feature of midtown Manhattan. There is none like ABC Carpet & Home, which is a repository of various brands and designers’ wares, all of which have a strong emphasis placed on visual merchandising.

With seven floors and high ceilings, there is a feast of plenty for the eyes. Herringbone wooden floors and cast-iron pillars contribute to the sense that the shopper has walked into a designer warehouse. Fixtures start from the ceiling and work down towards the floor. And for the fixtures that are anchored to the ground, it’s a case of no two tables, benches or plinths being the same.

For New Yorkers, this is a store that has nothing to do with technology. Instead, it has been designed to create an endless series of interesting homewares vignettes. It would be hard to replicate something of this kind anywhere else.

Camper, Fifth Avenue and 43rd Street

The quirky Spanish shoe brand has a unit on New York’s most ostentatious shopping street that is quite unlike anything else.

There are shoes everywhere, but the ones that are for sale are, in the overwhelming majority of cases, on low white plinths in the middle of the shop. The rest of the shoes are, in fact, white trainers that have been attached to the walls, from top to bottom, in a way that makes it look as if the store is a sound-deadening chamber.

This might seem an extraordinarily cavalier approach to using selling space in a location where rents are frequently the highest in the world. That said, it is hard not to want to walk into the store to see what’s been done once the interior has been spotted.

This is a monochrome vision, which is interesting to look at and affords the coloured stock greater prominence than might otherwise be the case.

Joe Fresh at JC Penney, Manhattan Mall, 33rd Street

As the anchor store for a mall that is looking its age, JC Penney has a hard job and its position in the basement of the shopping centre serves to compound this.

In 2013, JC Penney signed a deal with Canadian fashion brand Joe Fresh, owned by the Loblaws supermarket chain, to install shop-in-shops across large parts of its portfolio.

While this might have seemed like a good idea, providing new input into a brand that has seen its profits tumble during 2013, the reality in the Manhattan Mall store is lacklustre. This is less to do with Joe Fresh and rather more to do with the way in which the brand has been shoehorned in with a lot of point-of-sale material, but not a lot of stock. JC Penney is a mid-market department store proposition in a city where much of the action is upscale.

And to judge from the number of shoppers in the store, it may well continue to struggle in this location, even allowing for the Joe Fresh coup.