Category: visual merchandising
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Spanish Impresario: Stradivarius’ Virtuoso Performance
Stradivarius makes its first public performance in the biggest venue in town, Westfield Stratford, as the Inditex family sends forth another member making “bridgeheads” and “inroads” into the UK mainland. As with all consummate professionals Stradivarius can’t fail to impress and delight its audience as it pitches the high notes of current fashion, with…
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Defining Desigual: Putting a Price on Personality
Always the unashamed showcase for unique creativity and distinct colour combinations and designs, Desigual sometimes felt like the awkward overdressed guest at the party that was the hugely successful Spanish high street. Against the mass market commercial appeal of its rivals, their fast fashion footwork, and intelligent interpretations of the catwalk, Desigual had many admirers,…
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Pharmasuckables: Happy Pills for your Retail Tills
In a Barcelona backstreet no wider than a hospital cubicle, Happy Pills provides the confectionary cure for tired tourists and sickly shoppers. An antidote for a sterile sweet sector, Happy Pills combines a cute brand, acid whit, pristine packaging and a whole new perspective on pic ‘n’ mix. The passing pedestrian can see this is…
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Home Successaries: Zara puts its House in Order
The attraction of Zara Home could never be denied for the fashion conscious householder with a desire to decorate their rooms with a stylish mix of distinctive design and a spectrum of colour basics. In line with Inditex’s clothing concepts, Zara home combined eye catching image makers with a core assortment of products appropriate for…
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Debenham’s Designer Diet: Fashion Food for Thought
Fashion week has stimulated the creative juices to flow through the hearts and veins of London’s window dressers and creative merchandisers. From monotone and monochrome to coordinated costumes and colour explosions the windows of the city vie for visual supremacy and a slice of the passing traffic. More ingenious than most is the clever…
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Tiger Earns Its Stripes: The Cat In Search of the Cream of London
Natural survivors evolve and expand beyond their traditional habitats widening their historical distribution. Tiger, with its impulse offer and low prices, is thriving and turning up not only in secondary locations and low-rent backwaters but on some of the most expensive streets in London. After a trial in Tottenham Court Road, the Danish destination…
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Should VM be “as good as possible?” or “as good as it needs to be?”
As a firm believer in the mantra “Things should alway be as good as possible” I have always been a little unnerved by those who work by the alternative principles of “things only have to be as good as they have to be” The problem with the second way of viewing visual merchandising standards is that…
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We are all Retailing in a Hostile Environment!
When it comes to turning your stores into selling machines, one solution rarely fits all. If you sell through wholesale or are in partner with franchisees you’ll know only too well about the challenges of working in a “hostile environment.” “Hostile” of course covers a multitude of sins, and it has to be said, sometimes…
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“UFO lands in NYC!”: Uniqlo’s Universal Appeal
Uniqlo is on an international mission from its Japanese heartland to become truly an international fashion destination. It is already the 4th biggest fashion retailer after Inditex, H&M and the GAP. The new 5th avenue store is as impressive a brand statement as you could ever wish to see. The store is spread over…
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“Gone Fishing!”: Satisfying Eddy’s Eclectic Taste!
In one of the strongest retail sectors in the world which has spawned such benchmark companies as Crate & Barrel, West Elm, Williams-Sonoma and Pottery Barn with their precision space planning & slide rule store presentation, there is another homeware retailer whose apparently chaotic store environment masks an equally shrewd commercial strategy. Fish’s Eddy feeds…
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