Strengthening a Young Company‘s Brand Identity Through Interior Design Felicia Schneeweis Spring Semester 2020 Master‘s Thesis Berlin International University of Applied Sciences Advisor: Prof. Yüksel Pögün-Zander, PhD Second Examiner: Prof. Javier Martin Table of Content 1 Introduction 5 1.1 Aim of the Thesis 5 1.2 Methodology 6 2 The Change of Retail in the 21st Century 7 2.1 Historical Development 7 2.2 Online Shopping vs. Retail Shopping 12 3 The Value of the Brand Identity for the Future of Retail 16 3.1 Branding Through Design and Architecture 17 3.1.1 Apple Store 5th Avenue NewYork City 18 3.1.1.1 The Brand - Apple 18 3.1.1.2 Architectural Elements Implemented in the Store 20 3.2 Best Practices of Branding in Terms of the Use of Interior Design 32 3.2.1. Freitag Flagship Store Zürich 33 3.2.1.1 The Brand - Freitag 33 3.2.1.2 The Store 35 3.2.2. MYKITA Store Berlin and Barcelona 42 3.2.2.1 The Brand - MYKITA 42 3.2.2.2 The Store 44 3.2.3 Aesop Stores London, Geneva and Brussels 48 3.2.3.1 The Brand - Aesop 48 3.2.3.2 The Stores 49 3.2.4 Camper Stores NewYork City Lab, Milan and NewYork City 60 3.2.4.1 The Brand - Camper 60 3.2.4.2 The Stores 61 3.2.5 Valentino Store Rome 68 3.2.5.1 The Brand - Valentino 68 3.2.5.2 The Store 70 4 Conclusions 75 5 Practice - Design Project 78 5.1 The Brand - YOU MAWO 78 5.2 The Design 79 5.2.1 The Task 79 5.2.2 The Concept 81 Bibliography 88 1 Introduction Digitalization is a permanently present topic in the 21st century, that changes almost every part of our lives and shopping is no exception from that. These days a large amount of the things we buy are purchased online. Online shopping is faster, easier and simply more convenient. That raises the question if we need physical shops at all anymore. But people still have the longing to go outside and have a stroll through actual stores. It is like drinking coffee, of course you can make a coffee at home, but it is just way more intriguing to have it in a cafe. What makes the latter more charming is not the coffee itself but the experience. Brick-and-mortar stores need to do the same and become more competitive to their online competitors. Since online shopping wins regarding convenience, the physical stores have to make up for it when it comes to experience and engaging in sensory perception. When people go to a store today, they want a special shopping experience, that makes it worth their while. The trend does not go to any kind of experience, but more specifically to a brand experience. Creating a special shopping and brand experience requires a thoughtful store design, including architecture, interior design, product design and graphic design aspects. The design and architecture need to reflect the brand and make it physically accessible for the consumer. This is quite a challenge, when we consider what a brand actually is. A brand is just an abstract concept, the idea of certain kinds of products, values and characteristics. Rolling those rather abstract things into a physical, tangible design seems quite complicated. While the goals might be clear and there is plenty of good advice, the different strategies and approaches behind achieving these goals are often just vaguely explained and nebulously presented. There are plenty of books that give functional advice and present successful retail designs, but the relation between the brand and the actual design and the concept behind this relation most often stays incomprehensive. Yet most designs have two layers, the directly functional aspects, for example circulation, logistics etc., which serve as the foundation of the design and a second layer which is the aesthetical part, which serves for the branding and experience. The functional aspects are usually clear and based on hard facts that can be read up on. But the second layer,where the designer's creativity comes into play and which makes the brand experienceable by the customer, is hardly anywhere explained. There are some simple and obvious strategies apparent in some designs, but in other cases it is much harder to pinpoint down why exactly a design is successful and how exactly it refers to the brand it is representing. 1.1 Aim of the Thesis This thesis aims to explore the relationship between brand and retail design in times of modern shopping and the brick-and-mortar store as a tool for brand experiences. It looks at what kind of spatial strategies can be applied for branding in retail design and differentiates various strategies through which retail design and architecture represent brands, the influence the brand identity has on the store design and the stores impact on the brand. These insights will be used in the process of creating a new store design for the brand YOU MAWO. YOU MAWO is a German eyewear manufacturer that uses modern technologies like face-scans and laser-sintering1 to create eyewear that is individually adapted to the customers face. 1 Additive manufacturing technique, that sinters metal or synthetic materials by using a laser 5 Currently the brand only sells through selected opticians and has no individual stores or brand space. This is why a specially designed retail system would enhance the brand recognition and presence at their external sales points. Additionally, a complete individual store design would create a totally controlled environment and brand space, which will push the brand identity and value to the next level. The design concept will include a system that can be used as a modular shop in shop system for their B2B 2 sales channels at external optician stores, but also serves as a base for the brands first flagship store. Based on the results of the previous research, the concept will engage with the brand identity and create a brand experience which is coherent with the brand’s background and values and translate them into a spatial strategy. 1.2 Methodology This will be approached through various complementing steps. In the beginning a brief summary of the historical development of shopping, retail and stores will be presented, to understand why retail is at the point where it is today and facing so many new challenges. This will be followed by a comparison of shopping in traditional brick and mortar stores and online shopping, to respond to the current situation of shopping. This will identify the potentials and weaknesses of physical stores and show how online shopping and brick and mortar stores can complement each other. Afterwards the value of branding and the brand identity will be discussed, accompanied by the example of an especially remarkable store design. The example is the Apple store on the 5th Avenue in NewYork City. This example will show how in this case the store design and brand identity are connected and how certain architectural elements can support representing a brand. To do so, first the brand Apple will be analysed, regarding their history, products and values, followed by analyzing the store, separated into the different important architectural elements and its interior. Since the new demands for stores have spawned outstanding examples of interior design in the retail field, it seems best to learn from them directly. Therefore several case studies will be reviewed as best practice. Each case study includes a summary of the brand and its products, before reviewing the corresponding store’s interior design. The selected case studies include the Freitag Tower in Zurich, the MYKITA stores in Berlin and Barcelona, the Aesop stores in London, Brussels and Geneva, the Camper stores in NewYork City (Camper Lab), Milan and NewYork City, as well as the Valentino store in Rome. The goal of the case studies is to extract different schemes and strategies behind their design approaches. The results will be collected in a table, which enables a clear understanding and comparison of their features and characteristics. Based on this table the store designs and their concepts will be compared and conclusions drawn from that. The results will be incorporated in the strategy for the design of a modular store design for YOU MAWO, in regard to their brand identity. This will be approached similar to the case studies, as at first the brand’s history, products, values and concept will be analyzed. Following that, a design theme which represents best the brand identity will be created as a base for further functional aspects. The design theme will be matched with the functional and logistic requirements of the store and the B2B channels. The result will then be finalized into a complete design for a flashipstore and its complementary B2B system. 2 Short for business-to-business, retail system where the manufacturer sells goods to another business and not directly to the customer 6 2 The Change of Retail in the 21st Century 2.1 Historical Development To understand the changing needs and challenges of the retail world, it makes sense to go back first to understand where retail is coming from, in order to understand where retail is going. This requires a brief historical recapitulation. The way we shop has evolved and changed enormously since its beginning. Originally shopping happened in the form of markets, the earliest known of being the market at Thebes around 1500 BCE (Chung et al.2001, 30).