Disruption in Store Design

The restoration of the historic cinema hall created the stage for the “Today at Apple” project, where experts deliver lectures on various art, culture, and design topics.

Is the product still relevant? Does a business model based on unquenchable desire beyond price-performance and actual need still work? Post-consumerism manifestos act as catalysts for questions of this nature. They may be radical and overstep boundaries, but they always contain a grain of truth. We have compiled a list of the most ingenious examples: stores detached from space and time, where consumption is more a consequence of participation than its initial purpose. Retailment captures everything that the debate about supply and demand cannot resolve and provides a purpose for stores that embrace the experience factor in individual ways. The creative disruption in store design has flushed experience to the surface as the over-

riding premise. Text: Isabel Faiss

Post-Consumerism

Apple Tower Theatre/Los Angeles Welcome to the Capital of Entertainment

Photos: Apple Apple opened its newest store in July 2021 in LA’s historic Tower Theatre building, which was built in 1927 as the city’s first sound movie theatre. The entire concept encapsulates the sensory experience, the building itself, the personalised service at various touch points throughout the store, and the allure of Broadway. “Apple Tower Theatre is a tribute to the rich history and heritage of this entertainment capital,” Apple Senior Vice President Deirdre O’Brien explains. The free daily event series “Today at Apple” offers workshops and lectures on various topics by employees and representatives of the local creative community. The upper floor on the balcony level features fully equipped theatre chairs. Here, customers can wait for their Genius Bar appointment with an Apple expert in comfort. apple Tower Theatre, 802 s Broadway, Los angeles/us, www.apple.com

The idea of presenting consumer electronics and IT products in this setting deserves unreserved recognition. Embedded in the backdrop of Broadway, Apple Tower Theatre embodies service, experience, and authenticity.

Creative Director Alessandro Michele showcased Gucci‘s most iconic campaigns in the Gucci Garden Archetypes exhibition. Roblox temporarily translated this experience into a virtual world on its gaming platform. Cult status in Florence: Gucci Garden is considered a pioneer within the field of cross-media experience retail. Here, local colour meets international status symbols.

Gucci Garden/Florence A Thousand-Room Garden

Photos: Bea de Giacomo, Gucci Garden, Roblox When Gucci Garden opened in 2018 in the historic Palazzo della Mercanzia in Florence, the eccentric, multiple experience empire spread over three floors was considered the best practice in experiential retail. The Gucci Garden Galleria on the top two floors acts as an in-house creative hub featuring its own brand store, a bookstore, a cinema, a selfie room with Gucci backdrop, and a Michelin-starred restaurant. Most recently, it hosted the multimedia exhibition Gucci Garden Archetypes, which revived the most glorious campaigns in the company’s history to mark its 100th anniversary. In cooperation with the gaming platform Roblox, Gucci Garden Archetypes was transferred into the virtual world. Users entered the digital exhibition as a neutral, naked avatar and absorbed individual fragments in each room, meaning each visitor left the environment looking completely unique. It was also possible to buy virtual Gucci products for your avatar, which could then be transferred to other games featured on the Roblox platform. Gucci Garden, Piazza della signora 10, florence/italy, www.gucci.com

The store acts as a stage. The Playhouse in Tokyo relies heavily on the playbook usually used by theatres. Monthly changing pop-up stores, flexible walls, and event concepts transform the building into a colossal stage.

The Playhouse/Tokyo Raise the Curtain!

Photos: Kenji Seo, Pan Projects, Haruki Oku Design, Crazy Inc The new Vulcanize store in Tokyo’s city centre, dubbed The Playhouse, feels like it allows us to peek behind the curtain. Movable walls facilitate a constant transformation of the interior. On the ground floor, individual rooms and spaces house monthly changing pop-up stores curated by local and international brands. On the first floor, Vulcanize offers a bar, small VIP rooms, and, most importantly, its range of brands including Atelier Verdi, Victoria Beckham, Chinti & Parka, and Goat. Everything serves the purpose of presenting visitors with new, unexpected backdrops, to surprise and inspire them. The atrium in the entrance area offers space for events for up to 50 people, while the event agency Crazy Inc utilises the top floor, called BENE, for weddings from time to time. Vulcanize London@The Playhouse, 5 Chome-8-5 miniamiaoyama, Tokyo/Japan, www.the-playhouse.jp

The Playhouse toys with constant change and lifestyle orchestration. Vulcanize London presents its international range of brands on the first floor.

NTWRK/App Live Shopping Podcast

Photos: NTWRK Aaron Levant has not reinvented teleshopping, but he has dusted away the cobwebs by rejuvenating the genre with e-commerce. In 2018, he launched NTWRK, an app tailored to Gen Z, in LA. Live shopping experienced a boom during the pandemic and, in contrast to its biggest competitor Amazon Live, NTWRK enjoyed great success. The secret lies in curated real-time shopping of carefully selected products from all over the world, live shows and streams, prominent stars and influencers as cooperation partners, the most exclusive designer collectibles, and always being first in terms of hottest drops and limited editions by streetwear brands. NTWRK combines the fun of target-group-oriented entertainment with impulse shopping, but it is currently still primarily geared towards collectors and enthusiasts. Those who used to camp outside a store now join a virtual queue of 40,000 others and need to tap their smartphone at the right time. Companies like Warner Brothers have invested in the concept alongside basketball star LeBron James, rappers, and actors. Offering its own products and designs, the platform has long since transformed into a brand in its own right. www.thentwrk.com

Exclusivity as USP: desirability laid the foundations for NTWRK’s 300 percent growth rate in 2020.

Exclusivity was the first step: the new goal is to expand and broaden the scope and reach of NTWRK. With up to five drops a day at a conversation rate of five to 15 percent, NTWRK CEO Aaron Levant is eager to transform his platform in a department store for streaming.

A space of inspiration and reflection: Levi’s House in London, which resembles a design studio, offers deep insights into the creation, recycling, and redesign possibilities of denim fabrics. The iconic brand’s motto is “Buy Better, Wear Longer”, and it certainly provides concrete options to do so here.

Levi’s House/London Blueprint of a Trilogy

Photos: Levi’s An experiment that turned into a success story: Levi’s House, which opened in Soho at the end of 2020 as a creative textile laboratory and sustainability think tank, underlines Levi’s intention to fully commit to its “Buy Better, Wear Longer” campaign. Levi‘s House is anything but a conventional store. It is a meeting place in the spirit of circular economy, where the launch of the Levi‘s by Levi‘s collection consisting of returns, surplus items, and recycled denim took place. Customers can have their beloved jeans repaired, redesigned in Indigowares’ creative lab, or recycled. The store is not primarily an invitation to consume, but to delve deeply into the creation, intrinsic value, and sustainability of denims and their conscious use as a quality product. Levi’s house, 41 Great marlborough st, London/uK, www.levi.com

Circular economy explained: Levi’s presents creative ways for customers to enjoy their denim products longer at stations specialising in repair, redesign, and recycling. Donating denim items is also an option.

La Samaritaine, the largest department store in Paris, consists of four adjoining buildings and is located directly between the Louvre and Les Halles.

Magazine 4 is where the building‘s history converges with the future. Here, a gigantic concept store has been created, tailored perfectly to the needs of its Gen Z target group.

La Samaritaine/Paris Double-Faced Comeback

Photos: Gabriel de la Chapelle, Pierre-Olivier Deschamps It took 16 years to renovate the gigantic La Samaritaine building complex. The prestigious house of LVMH Group finally reopened its doors in 2021. Depending on the perspective, it is a traditional retail temple or the most exclusive department store in Europe, a steamboat or a speedboat. The restored Art Deco façade of the main complex contrasts with the reflective frosted glass front at Magazine 4 on Rue de Rivoli. La Samaritaine closed as a department store and reopened as a community hub for young Parisians. With a hotel, its own kindergarten, flats, 12 restaurants, its own spa, 600 boutiques, a private shopping suite, and the 1,000-square-metre experimental show space La Voyage for culinary and artistic inspiration, it is probably the grandest monument to experience-driven consumption. La samaritaine, 9 rue de la monnaie, Paris/france, www.dfs.com

Service, privacy, and comfort are paramount in the private spa and private shopping lounge. Floor space efficiency is clearly secondary to customer experience. Contemporary spirit is the guiding principle of the new La Samaritaine in every detail. A prime example: in contrast to online retail, the product range is largely comprised of exclusive products and collections.

Mirror allows Lululemon to focus on the future of interactive and personalised home training, and to further strengthen its position as a reliable training partner.

High-Tech Athleisure

Photos: Lululemon Maintaining close ties with the yoga and fitness community has always been an essential aspect of Lululemon’s strategy. To reflect this approach, the brand opened its largest store to date in Lincoln Park, Chicago in 2019. In addition to a conventional retail area, it houses a sports studio offering daily yoga and fitness classes, a sports bar with an ethically balanced menu, and a meditation area. The brand has created a comfortable environment for its clientele, aligned with their lifestyle and needs. Individual pieces of the collection can be borrowed and tried out in a class before they are purchased. The fitness start-up Mirror, acquired in 2020, offers an interactive smart mirror that functions as a virtual home exercise studio and allows Lululemon to embed itself even deeper in its customers’ lives. The live courses, as well as the extensive archive for streaming, have been vastly successful. Lululemon, Lincoln Park, Chicago/us, www.lululemon.com

The store offers the perfect brand stage for Lululemon’s products, primarily because it addresses customers when and where it makes the most sense.

Bonding in superlatives: Lululemon’s downtown fitness temple has created a store that acts as a community hub for its customers.

A store like a sensory playground: Park by Balabala in Foshan Shi has created a lifestyle centre for families that incidentally also sells fashion. Everything is geared towards providing a parent-child experience.

The name says it all: Park by Balabala is an oasis for family outings. Parents can enjoy a relaxing cup of tea while their children enjoy a varied entertainment programme.

Park by Balabala/Foshan Shi Green Playground

Photos: Jack Qin, Xiaofeng Here, there are no boundaries between store and nature. This store has created a modern multimedia park in Foshan’s city centre as an oasis that bridges the gap between two vibrant parts of the city – and the gap between the past and the future. The historic building in the Lingnan architectural style has literally been rejuvenated by the children’s store Park by Balabala. Designed like an oversized playground that combines fashion, family leisure activities, and culture in a playful way, the store also houses a children's hairdresser, a coffee bar, a parent-child teahouse, and a multimedia entertainment zone, as well as a playground on the leafy roof terrace. Park by Balabala, No 11 Chancheng district, foshan/China, www.balabala.com

Manifesto

We have thought. We have reflected. We have decided. The time of “click” has transformed everything. Consumers have changed. The time has come.

It is the time of POST-CONSUMERISM. Shopping space and it’s experience do not fulfill post-consumer expectations: responsable shopping, ecologically aware shopping, intelligent and informed shopping... HOW YOU SHOP DEFINES YOU.

Post-consumers don’t just shop. New ways of consuming require new ways of selling. To achieve these new ways we need to stop and think before we act. Because the post-consumer requieres POST-RETAIL and we need to invent it. Retail space is not a comercial nor an experiential space any more, retail space needs to be designed to satisfy the needs of the POST-CONSUMER. We need to create spaces that embrace POST-RETAIL. POST-RETAIL against technology’s, algorithm’s and omnichanel’s dictatorship! POST-RETAIL to go back to DISCOVERY! POST-RETAIL to demand human contact! POST-RETAIL to create a physical space that complies the expectations of the POST-CONSUMER outside the digital space! POST-RETAIL to create MEMORIES that will be embedded in your mind! Retail is dead...

Long live POST-RETAIL!

(Metica Retail Thinking, www.meticaretailthinking.com)