Taste is not an option for the ever-over-performing Club Monaco. Store and stock in faded harmony as sun-bleached beauty is applied to fixtures and fashions, to windows and wardrobes.
Category: branding & visual communication
The Collaboration Club: Monaco Muses & Makers
Credentials through collaboration, endorsement by association.
Club Monaco strengthens its reputation as the effortlessly stylish purveyor of timeless fashions by forming links with a select number of discrete and discerning designers and doyens of quality chic.
From exclusive jewellery and favoured footwear, to accessories for ipads, and facsimilies for footnotes , these hand-selected, hand-makers are the ideal complement to Club Monaco popularity.
Where rubbing shoulders enhances reputations, and creates destinations.
The Monaco Book Club: Faded Fashion & Yesterday’s News
Taste is not an option for the ever over-performing Club Monaco.
Store and stock in faded harmony as sun-bleached beauty is applied to fixtures and fashions, to windows and wardrobes.
Yesterdays news is scattered with precise abandon, in picture frames, focal walls and POS where clean & corporate is disguised as disarray and disparate.
From sun-washed shorts, to faded flannels, the process of newness applies a shower of shabbiness, that turns safe fashion into seductive style.
Urban Inspiration: “Your Coolest friend’s new place!”
Wandering around Urban Outfitters, for its customers, is like wandering around your coolest friend’s new pad – their bedroom, their living room, their record collection, their kitchen and most importantly their wardrobe.
The defining attraction of Urban Outfitters is its distinct personality expressed through its often random but always eclectic mix of fashions, home accessories, music and novelties. It is impossible to resist picking up things that you have not seen before or rediscovering old favourites that you just can’t help touching again.
The total experience reflects the very specific taste with innovative and unusual display techniques in a store environment which is all about curiosity and exploration. Store materials and fixtures are often unfinished or distressed giving a feeling of newness and anticipation.
That being said the Urban Outfitters store is a successful commercial proposition which cleverly combines best selling and profitable lines with strategically selected curiosities, image makers and locally sourced ranges appealing the regional taste. The brand mix is a careful balance of traditional good sellers such as Levis and Dockers and the more risky but eyecatching new brands which are the core of its proposition.
“Commerciality and novelty in a world of curiosity and exploration.” An inspiration for us all.
Take a tour around Uniqlo “the UFO that landed in NYC!”
The new 5th avenue Uniqlo store is as impressive a brand statement as you could ever wish to see. The store is spread over 4 floors which are used to create a jaw-dropping entrance where the full store height is awash with colour and excitement.
“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 4 floors which are used to create a jaw-dropping entrance where the full store height is awash with colour and excitement.
The customer is taken on a definitive journey, firstly up 3 floors on an escalator into the sky. The customer then enters the main store through an illuminated corridor where best sellers, classics and image makers are presented with enticing graphics and flashing LEDs.
The collection is displayed through a series of rooms where the product grouping is still largely in the traditional Uniqlo categories.
However silhouettes are brought together on mannequins and focal displays and the collection also includes coordinated themes for women.
Hero categories have special status such as the mezzanine floor dedicated to the Uniqlo T-shirt and displays in museum fashion all of the designs and characters that have been used on the T-shirts over its history.
Uniqlo is developing a multichannel presence where its focus is currently to create an international fashion community.
On websites and mobile platforms an international audience recommend and model inspirational ways that customers can mix and coordinate the range of Uniqlo classics and new fashion pieces.
Watch this space. you won’t be able to take your eyes off it!
Proof of the Pudding: “Rice is certainly not skin deep!”
Cast away those pungent memories of school dinner halls – the world has changed. Scratch the surface and “rice is certainly not skin deep.”
Rice to Riches takes a staple of world diet and explodes it into popular culture with imagination, humour and a degree of good taste. If its possible to do so it communicates rice pudding with “its tongue …in its cheek” – don’t try that one at home!
Brand communication both in the stores and on the website carries a “tone of voice” which is fun, friendly and a little challenging at times. It succeeds in propelling the scourge of many a school dinner into a desirable and versatile fast food.
The assortment offers many imaginative and, it has to be said, delicious flavours and combinations with fruit, nuts, preserves and sauces.The temptation to explore and experiment is irresistible. Although don’t expect to be walking that quickly away from the restaurant t the end of your experience.
Rice to Riches is an exercise in idea development. The concept is fully coordinated across channels allowing customers to buy in store, click & collect or have the Rice delivered to your door. Something to consider for Valentine’s Day perhaps.
The brand is beautifully extended across the format into spoons, bowls and rice accessories to maximize completely a simple yet unique concept.
Visit the Rice to Riches experience when you’re in New York and get your just desserts!!
Take a Video tour – “Gone Fishing!”: Satisfying Eddy’s Eclectic Taste!
Fish’s Eddy feeds the growing appetite for vintage, individual cookware products as an antidote to modern mass commercialism and product standardisation.
Listening Booths: Playing a Popular Tune for the Local Crowd
Minimising assortment for the same or increased sales is the deal that soothes many a headache for an over-stretched buying team. More for less is a wise choice, but a risky and brave one for the ill-informed.
Grocery stores exhibit the ultimate and most topical examples of the tailored assortment as every brand clamours to convert from the massive megastores to the convenience and cost-efficiencies of the smaller format. However without the attraction of the wider choice, or the lure of the lowest basket price in town, many retailers must strive to add-value and benefit to the edited assortment through service, selection and the store experience.
Booths supermarkets serve local communities and limited catchments increasingly from decreasingly sized stores, with a focused offer built from sales analysis and customer research in a continuous virtuous cycle of refinement and replenishment.
The icing on the cake of popular demand is whipped together from price comparison promises, outstanding fresh-counter service, in-store exclusives, product tastings and demonstrations and the advantages of the store loyalty card.
Complete the creation with a sizeable portion of history and heritage, and for the correct customer loyalty and patronage can be bought for the right price, the value-added price, which makes the lowest price no bargain at all.
E-Rapha-lite Movement: The Art of Cyber-Cycling
The true omnichannel customer experience embraces and evolves every touchpoint. It makes the customer dream and aspire, reassures their concerns, educates their knowledge and supports them before, during and after every purchase, from their first purchase. Rapha does all of that and more.
Rapha is the yellow jersey of cycling branding, king of the multi-channel mountains and the sprint king of content management and customer engagement. In the peloton of professional competitors, every corner is covered, every breakaway anticipated as Rapha builds an enviable position as every cyclist’s aspirational accomplice.
The website communicates a genuine passion for cycling from the sponsorship of world famous teams to the evolution and development of events and races for everyone from the enthusiastic amateur, to the aspiring professional. Blogs, videos, interviews and competitions are all harnessed as the brand illustrates its journey on the road to designing and building some of the most innovative equipment on the market and allows their customers to rub shoulders and saddles with the giants of the sport.
With a team of tens of thousands, cyber-cycling becomes a commercial reality, in the trusted hands of Rapha.
VM-Unleashed monitors, benchmarks and celebrates best practice to provide the most relevant and expert analysis & conclusions.