There is more to a winning brand than a good shopfit. Once in place it has to be capable of being updated.

Watched all the commotion that followed the Supergroup trading update last week, not least on the news desk of this magazine and so, at the risk of being a late arrival at the casualwear retailers ball, an observation. Having visited a couple of Superdry stores last week, in Manchester, I am happy to report that they looked very good indeed.

Two problems however. There were no shoppers, and on previous visits there have been lots of them, and the stores were consistent. The latter point might be seen as a positive in some arenas, but not here. There is a Superdry fit-out that has been taken across the country as the retailer has expanded and it consists of large pieces of metal display fixturing accompanied by outsize letters spelling out the word Superdry.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this for the first two or three forays to a Superdry branch but after this the thought begins to dawn, however sub-consciously, that you have seen this before. The argument could me made that this holds true for almost every retailer on the high street, but the fairly chunky nature of this fit-out means that re-merchandising, to provide a modicum of variety, can be achieved only with the stock, not the kit it is displayed on.

Back in the dim and distant days of the last millennium, Retail Week referred to Marks & Spencer as being possessed of stores with “Stalinist” shopfits. That changed, and Middle England now shops M&S stores that can readily be altered because the store fixturing is lighter on its feet and more susceptible to being moved around.

The same, sadly, cannot be said of a Superdry store. On first inspection, there was a real wow element to this retailer’s stores, but like all wow factors, it dims with continued viewing. Things do need to change and this just doesn’t appear to be happening in Superdry, to an extent because the store format is limited by the attractive, yet prescriptive nature of what has been put in place.

This is not to say, of course, that there isn’t a lot that’s good about Superdry and the doomsayers who have been predicting its rapid demise will probably still prove somewhat wide of the mark. That said, if you really want to make things difficult for yourself, design a store fit-out that’s tricky to move around and which will cost money to do so. Superdry stores have a particular appeal, but changing this to maintain interest will surely be challenging.