retail design

Here’s my newest Brand Experience Brief, a video audit and analysis of a new or interesting retail or restaurant concept — and this store certainly is interesting. 

This Brand Experience Brief covers Best Buy. I visited the location in Richfield, MN, and found that instead of presenting a cohesive Best Buy brand experience, the store provides a collection of shopping experiences for different brands. Take a look:

Marvellous. Fantastic. Terrific.

I thought I was in a minority of one, as somebody who gets frustrated at the waste of time when the supermarket I shop at decides that for my benefit it is going to change the layout. I muse to myself that some silly sod in their HQ has latched onto the latest theory of retail layout and is thinks that by putting the milk where the dishwasher tablets once were it is going to make my life easier.

Those of you who are Star Trek fans would have felt right at home with me the other day. I went to check out the new Microsoft store which just opened at Fashion Valley mall here in San Diego because I wanted to do a compare/contrast to the Apple store in the same mall. My fellow fans would have felt at home in the Microsoft store not because it was a cool look at the future of culture and technology, but rather because it seemed to be the Mirror Universe.

by: Idris Mootee

This is the toughest time for retailing since many decades. It is also a perfect storm for many retailers from department stores to chain stores to refocus and strengthen their core and rethinking positioning. Many department stores and fashion chains have been operating without a real strategy for a long time, many turned themselves into landlords.

by: Dick Stroud

Tesco, the mega UK supermarket group, has just announced that it is pulling out of building an eco-town.Overseas readers - you really don’t want to know about eco towns other than to say it is a UK Government initiative that has created widespread anger and derision. Corporates who were daft enough to become associated with the project are now doing the proverbial rats and sinking ship trick.

by: David Polinchock

This was at the heart of our discussion about the socialization of place and now there seems to be some numbers to support the theory. Here's what we think. As more & more people do their actual purchases online, what's to become of the physical real estate of retail?

by: Roger Dooley