2016 Good Stores Guide Inside: Global retail best practice explored 12 Months, 15 Cities, 24 Stores. 1 Essential Guide www.visualthinking.co.uk Visual Thinking is dedicated to inspiring retail performance. It was an early pioneer of brand delivery and has spent more than 20 years defining and transforming retailers’ most important and enduring assets— their instore experiences, and the retail teams who deliver them. Cover Design: Tom Doores, DSGNLAB, GB 2016 Good Stores Guide Visual Thinking #goodstoresguide Credits Design Dom Rugman Paul Harris Illustration Tom Doores Editorial Adam Womersley Marc Baker Contributors Karl McKeever Louise McJannet Suzanne Tanner Raw Materials, Amsterdam Grupo Trinitate, Mexico Designed by DSGNLAB 9 Davy Court Rugby Warwickshire CV23 0UZ www.dsgnlab.com Be inspired, respect copyrights! All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy or any storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Visual Thinking. www.visualthinking.co.uk Made in the UK Published by Visual Thinking © Visual Thinking 2016 Contents Intro 05 Featured Stores of 2016 06 Amsterdam Raw Materials 06 Chicago Restoration Hardware 09 Dubai GO Sport 12 Hong Kong Facesss 14 Leeds John Lewis 16 Mexico City Trinitate 19 New York City Barney’s 21 New York City L’Occitane 24 Reykjavik 4 Geysir 26 Stockholm Daniel Wellington 29 Tokyo Hunter 31 Washington D.C The Frye Company 33 Other Top Shops 35 Amsterdam, Denham 35 Chicago, Eataly 35 Cologne, Funktion Schnitt 35 Hong Kong, City Super 35 London, Dyson 35 Mexico City, Soriana 35 New York City, Room & Board 36 Paris, Herschel 36 Reykjavik, 66° North 36 San Francisco, Heath Ceramics 36 Stockholm, Bookbinders Design 36 Washington D.C, Shinola 36 Intro Why do we love inspiring stores? Perhaps it’s that incomparable new concept, or a store team’s irrepressible passion for the brand and the products they sell. Or the fact that discovering a new store or reacquainting yourself with a forgotten ‘friend’ will often challenge you to re-evaluate your thinking, even amongst those who believe they’ve seen it all. Inside our 2016 Good Stores Guide, we offer you a “local” experience, profiling retailers and stores that our global network of retail experts have been lucky enough to see as they dart from city to city, transforming instore performance. In many ways they are a disparate collection of stores, unified not by geography or sector, but by their determination to deliver eye-catching retail design, attentive customer service, and outstanding VM. Choosing a mere 12 of our favourites in 2016 proved just too difficult, so 5 for our 2016 Good Stores Guide we have also included a directory of other notable top shops that are worth taking a few minutes to check out. Amsterdam to Reykjavik, San Francisco to Tokyo, Washington to Mexico City, you’ll find some fascinating retail locations and stores. From local brands in lesser- explored neighbourhoods, to truly global retailers who are transcending geographic and cultural boundaries. As it should be, it is simply our latest instalment, in what will always be a continuous pursuit of retail performance improvement. Let’s explore 6 Amsterdam Raw Materials Exposed brick, unfinished woods and faded paint sounds more warehouse dereliction than homestore charm, yet Amsterdam’s Raw Materials manages to make such a setting collectively comfortable, relaxing and a truly beautiful retail experience. Find it Latitude: 52.372240 Longitiude: 4.876765 Origin: Stores: Netherlands 1 Raw Materials Rozengracht 229-233 Founded: Sector: 1016 NA Amsterdam 2008 Home rawmaterials.nl Amsterdam Raw Materials All the items we sell have their own story, and we love to tell them. — Erik and Niels Beemsterboer Owners, Raw Materials View Image Gallery 8 It’s important to note that Raw Materials and that’s the rub. Each and every is not another yellow and blue, flatpack product is more than a source of Our Rating: copy cat. In actual fact, it couldn’t revenue but also a once fine piece of Brand Experience be further from it. Each and every craftsmanship that has been reborn. product is unique, designed and crafted Product presentation instore is Instore Innovation from old desks, chairs, doors and suggestive, but it doesn’t give too much VM/Presentation a range of other materials gathered away, instead choosing to inspire every from around the world. Here, the shopper’s own creativity. Each area Customer Service story is one of rebirth and passionate of the store is presented in attractive, craftsmanship, and it shows. curated zones with fur rugs and warmer Retail Execution Raw Materials uses one-of-a-kind lighting to accompany the wooden, pieces taken from abandoned factories hand crafted products suitable for and old marooned ships, restores the comfortable lounge, and brighter them, redesigns them – giving them white lights beside bare brick walls a renewed sense of purpose. There’s to create an environment suitable for a charm to the process that it is worn metal chairs and furniture. almost impossible not to admire. Raw Materials is the pinnacle of The store itself embodies its unique product and environment, working offering through natural, rough cut together to tell a story and create an materials as fixtures and displays. instore experience that, much like the Old factory lighting and bare brick products themselves, is one of a kind walls help tell the product story - Read our Explorer: series here. Chicago Restoration Hardware A change of scenery is sometimes needed to rediscover just how much we love home. For US retailer Restoration Hardware, its stunning new store has not only reinvigorated the building it calls home, but is also redefining how we interact with physical retail spaces. Find it Latitude: 41.905996 Longitiude: 87.6 3 0 0 5 8 Origin: Stores: California 28 Restoration Hardware 1300 N Dearborn Pkwy, Founded: Sector: Chicago, IL 60610, USA 1979 Home restorationhardware.com 9 Chicago Restoration Hardware Located in the historic and now consider the way you want to interact beautifully restored Three Arts Club, – socially, and with a retail space. Our Rating: Restoration Hardware’s Chicago store Make no mistake: you will not stumble Service does not anchor a mall, but an entire upon this place while out shopping. neighbourhood. Originally developed There is no passing footfall. This is Design as a place for young women to study true destination retail – delivered in Experience the performing and visual arts, it lay the finest, and most intriguing way derelict for over 20 years. The stated possible. Its success is proof, if needed, Innovation aim of RH is to blur the lines between that shoppers will travel for a great retail, hospitality and home. The experience. Above all, RH Chicago Category result of this particular restoration demonstrates that to succeed in modern goes one step further, creating a retail, sometimes you have to be brave truly captivating crossover store. You can describe RH Chicago, but really have to see it. In almost every respect, C it is not a retail space: this is not about H the product. Instead, it’s about a social I and sensory experience. Everything you can see, you can buy. Everywhere you can sit, you can eat. The result genuinely makes you pause – to imagine new things, to think about the way you want Read our Explorer: series here. to live, the way you eat, as well as to 11 View Image Gallery 12 Dubai GO Sport This isn’t just a store for casual browsers looking for sportswear; it’s a true retail experience for the enthusiast, the fanatic and the professional. Find it Latitude: 25.204849 Longitiude: 55.270783 Origin: Stores: France 181 GO Sport Level 2, Fashion Catwalk Atrium, Founded: Sector: The Dubai Mall, Downtown Dubai 1979 Sport go-sport.com Without a doubt Dubai’s GO Sport simulate a high energy that is reinforced store is the pinnacle of the brand. by the dark colours and mannequins Our Rating: The store is huge – a warehouse of fixed into kinetic ‘action shot’ poses. Brand Experience sporting treats. Vibrant, innovative By far the most impressive areas are and packed full of energy, it embodies where innovative features have been Instore Innovation casual and extreme sports alike with integrated seamlessly into the store VM/Presentation an immersive instore atmosphere that experience. An indoor climbing wall makes shoppers both comfortable and and digital touchscreen displays bring Customer Service engaged, with wide selections of product, the action packed sport store to life. interactive experiences and a wealth of Dubai’s GO Sport offers the very best knowledge from store professionals. Retail Execution of this sportswear brand. Product From the cycling enthusiast to the runner, is dense with plenty of choice, but climber, hiker or footballer, product range not cluttered. The atmosphere is is impossible to fault. But it’s not just its powerful, energetic and active, but range that makes this store so valuable; not unapproachable. It all makes for a it’s the execution of store display that beautifully executed instore space and helps everything work together effectively. an exciting retail brand experience The store is organised into well- executed zones for various products where shoppers can choose to ‘Go Casual’ or ‘Go Run’. Throughout, neon lights line strong angular displays that Read our Explorer: series here. 13 View Image Gallery Hong Kong Facesss Part market, part shop and part spa, Facesss differs from the conventional approach to stores in this sector, opting for a fast paced, energetic retail experience that works, beautifully. Find it Latitude: 22.297083 Longitiude: 114.167384 Origin: Stores: China 2 Facesss Shop 202, Ocean Terminal, Harbour City, Founded: Sector: Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong 2003 Beauty labconcepthk.com/en/brand/623/FACESSS 14 View Image Gallery 15 To call Facesss a store is somewhat electric ambience – all rather fitting misleading.