If consumer brands are playing the lead role in store design innovation, fixtures are carrying much of the weight.
By Steve Kaufman, Editor-at-Large

Call it “Planet of the Brands.” After a destructive catastrophe caused by man rendered the retail landscape desolate, a new order has emerged with a new, dominant species.

And with a new language, too. Pop-up stores. Vendor shops. Branded concepts. Merchandise Kiosks.

As traditional retailing reacted to the recession with store closings, consolidations and smaller footprints, individual consumer brands have grabbed the rein of retail innovation. The brands are using space design, merchandise presentation and fixture systems to establish and maintain their identity in a crowded, competitive world dominated by shoppers with the entire Internet at their fingertips. So it seems appropriate that judges chose, as the fixture of the year in the 2013 Association for Retail Environments (A.R.E.) retail design awards, a 100-square-foot merchandise kiosk designed to sit in the aisle of a mall by day – and to fold up for locked storage by night.

The kiosk was designed and built for JanSport, the backpack brand that is a division of VF Corp. (San Leandro, Calif.), by Twenty Four 7 (Portland, Ore.), to give it a noticeable retail presence in a compact space. It was rolled out last year in the Mall of Georgia (Buford, Ga.).

It’s a clean and modern blend of powdercoated metal and reclaimed wood, with blacklit lifestyle graphics and glowing brand signage that seems to shine down the hall.

Surprising for such a small footprint, there’s plenty of room for shoppers to enter the environment, move around and interact with JanSport associates. And, perhaps most importantly in this do-more-with-less world, there’s an abundance of merchandise opportunity.

This is not to suggest that 21st Century retailing is headed in a shop-in-a-box direction. But it does show the innovation that must be brought to the table if brands are to establish their identities in all realms of retailing, whether it’s their own stores, branded concept shops, individual departments, single fixtures and racks or a kiosk in the middle of a crowded mall.

“We all have our stories to tell,” says Bob Higgins, vp, global real estate, for Fossil Inc. (Richardson, Texas), one of the A.R.E. judges. “And we’re all looking for that way to reach out and talk to the busy shopper as she navigates the crowded retail world.”

About the JanSport kiosk, Higgins calls it “an ingenious solution for how to speak to customers. It brands JanSport in a positive way, and fulfills a number of any brand’s objectives: First, it’s very branded;
 

CANTILEVERED WINE FIXTURES
Duty Free Shoppes, Changi International Airport, Singapore
Retailer: DFS Asia Group, Hong Kong
Design: rkd retail/iQ, Bangkok