+ Design in Detail

Design in Detail is an incentive programme for the cooperation between designers and retailers. It is focused on creating innovative retail outlets in the Brainport region.

The retail sector is the world’s largest branch of industry. And what’s more, it is a business that we all have to deal with, day in day out.  Fact is though that fewer people go out to actually visit shops, because leisure time is valuable, and you can get what you need from the Internet shops. Should this development worry retail traders? Not at all! The international retail sector increasingly discovers the inexhaustible potential of design, and this is not only about product design, but also about retail formula, product range, service, staff, shop interior architecture, in short all the aspects that together create the perfect shopping experience.   

Meetings with retailers and designers
To inspire the retailers and to to jointly generate ideas and provide new impetus to the retail trade in the Brainportregion, Design Connection Brainport organizes Design in Detail meetings with retailers and designers. During the first meeting Louk de Sévaux of design bureau Day - which also developed retail concepts for Orange, Nike, and Porsche – explained his vision of successful retail in seven steps.

Seven steps to succesful retail
1 – Good retail begins with a good brand. The shop is the place where the customer meets the brand, and that is where customer retention plays an essential role.
2 - Customer and ‘brand’ experience. Excel the customer’s expectations by tempting and surprising him. Create an ‘experience’. 
3 - Diversification. Make sure that the encounter between customer and product takes place in a range of different ways. Orange, for instance, runs alongside ‘ordinary’ shops also online stores, temporary stores for events, and a flagship store in Rotterdam.
4 - Roll out. Once you have developed a good concept and a good strategy, roll them out consistently.
5 - Staff. Your store may be the most beautiful of all, but it won’t help you if your personnel isn’t up to the mark. Make sure that your staff likes working for you, and that they are and stay motivated. Nike, for instance, every year invites the full staff to a party and a show of the new collection at a pleasant location.
6 - Service. “Answer the questions the customer didn’t ask yet” is in this respect the appropriate line of action. Again, you have to excel the expectations of the customer; offer him better service than he had hoped to get.
7 - Momentum. Improve your competitive strength by continuously offering new incentives. A good example is the H&M strategy of occasionally inviting leading designers to design exclusive H&M collections. And, last but not least, feel good about what you’re doing.

The retail approach of Michel van Tongeren of STV Branding, specialist in the development of retail formulas for amongst others Albert Heijn, and ABN AMRO, is based on people’s needs. By means of branding, you determine the identity of the store. Be consistent. Everything must match the identity: the exterior, the product range, the interior, service, staff, and so on and so forth. What a person thinks of the store when he sits on the couch at home must correspond with reality. Retail has a mirror function, and a good retail concept should reflect what is going on in (part of) our society.

Registration
You can register for the next meeting by sending an e-mail to info@designconnectionbrainport.nl stating Design in Detail as a reference.

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