Visual Merchandising and Store Design | VMSD.com

Joblessness has cut into the store design world. Some talented, capable pros are out there consulting for their lives.

By Steve Kaufman

I just saw a piece by Reuters saying people believe the recession is over because the unemployment rate has stabilized at about 10 percent. Tell that to any number of in-house store design professionals – architects, planners, brand marketers, visual merchandisers – who’ve lost their jobs. What seemed like a safe and secure, upwardly mobile job track in the 1990s for these well-educated and highly experienced specialists became creaky and unsteady this last couple of years. They found their desk chairs and drawing boards had been moved out to tree limbs and increasingly heard the sound of sawing.

Now they’re part of that 10 percent, victims of this recessionary economy, which has cut deeply into all sectors of our business world but into retailing the deepest.

And what a shame, because retailing needs their wisdom, strategic acumen, experience and perspective, now more than ever. When times turn bad, and when the true professionals ought to be relied on the most, that’s when too many of them have been thanked, promised a good reference and asked to clean out their desks, turn in their keys and please be out of the building by noon.

Some of them frantically started networking to find new jobs. What they heard, too often, was that it was the same story all over the place. And, so, they became “consultants.” We probably have more consultants in our society now than at any time since the Great Depression.

“I’m enjoying the break,” says Hak Kim, formerly vp of store design and merchandising for Bank of America, who has started his own company in Seattle called Studiohox. “Fortunately, I was able to land some work with Lane Bryant, to develop their store design for spring 2010. Otherwise, I spend the other 35 percent of my time trying to find a job and interviewing.”

Like most in this industry, Kim bemoans what has happened to store design as a strategic tool. “The large-scale concept development projects are mostly gone,” he says. “These days, design is just a small percentage of the package. It’s branding, communication, social awareness, environmental awareness and graphics/packaging.”

Perhaps, but veteran store designers understand the strategic initiatives of branding and communications. The good, smart store designers I’ve spent so much time talking to in the last 15 years ought to be the very people helping retailers carry out those strategies. Unfortunately, too many retail executives don't seem to see it that way. In a world of budgets and dollars, creativity is apparently regarded as a dispensable luxury.

And when retailers find they need some of that knowledgeable creativity, because their stores just aren’t working or their marketing plans turn stale? I suppose they turn to a consultant. Luckily for them, there are a lot of those out there right now. About 10 percent of the working force.