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Store Fixtures Take a Bow

Today’s award-winning fixtures carry much more on shelves and racks than merely merchandise

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In the ever-evolving world of retail, with stores coexisting precariously with websites, store fixtures have become more than simply equipment on which to hang, fold and display merchandise.

They are increasingly being called upon – in manufacture, function and design – to carry the brand’s image and to solve real marketing problems, often going beyond the call of duty and surpassing basic functions like furnishing the store and displaying product.

The Association of Retail Environments (A.R.E.) | POPAI recognized the changing role of store fixtures when it bestowed its 2016 Fixture of the Year award upon a “concentrate bar” designed by The High Road Design Studio (Phoenix) for TruMed Dispensary.

Supporting New Concepts

TruMed, Phoenix, Ariz. / Photography: Tien Frogget, Orange County, Calif.

Phoenix-based TruMed sells medical marijuana and related products. The sector has been growing in the state since the Arizona Medical Marijuana Act was passed in 2010, legalizing the use of cannabis in its many forms for various qualifying conditions, including cancer, glaucoma, HIV/AIDS and hepatitis C.

There are now nearly 100 dispensaries in Arizona to date. However, store designer Megan Stone says most of them have not evolved much beyond the look and feel of a 1960s head shop – dark and kitschy, without much plan or focus.

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“The TruMed owners saw that, under the new laws, the market for medical marijuana would serve a wide demographic base,” says Stone, whose studio works primarily in the medical marijuana sector. “The typical Phoenix grandmother had to feel comfortable entering an environment where there’s serious professional intent.”

To that end, Stone designed a space filled with light and warm materials, “giving you the feeling like you are walking into a hip new hotel and not a pot shop,” she says.

The “concentrate bar” was designed to display the line of concentrates the retailer developed in 2014, a stronger, more intense version of the marijuana plant in an extracted form. Though this was a potentially profitable line of products for TruMed, Stone says, “There had been no merchandising space in the store for it.”

Stone’s concentrate bar was inspired, she says, by “boutique bakeries and jewelry stores.” The product comes in a variety of forms and consistencies, she says, so it makes sense to display them prominently for maximum visual appeal.

The bar also fulfills the need for customer service. It’s set up to invite consultation with an employee who offers knowledgeable advice and guidance. That employee working the bar, says Stone, is called a “budtender.” It is indeed a brave new world of retail.

Supporting Historic Brands

El Palacio de Hierro, Mexico City / Photography: Paul Rivera, Salt Lake City

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The Mexican chain El Palacio de Hierro still represents the luxurious tradition of the great department stores – especially in its home country. So the intent of its design, says Alec Zaballero, principal of TPG Architecture (New York), “was to create a world-class luxury department store; the flagship for the El Palacio de Hierro brand that would rival the great, historic department stores of the world’s capitals.”

The handbags and accessories department is prominently positioned at the end of the first floor’s main aisle. Dominating that space is a suspended handbag display fixture, seeming to rise from a circular cashwrap through a round opening in the ceiling.

“The composition plays the solid mass and converging planes of the ceiling against the transparency and lightness of the floating shelves,” Zaballero notes. “The handbags on display appear to float, surrounded by light, suspended between two sculptural objects, the ceiling and the base.”

He says the fixture functions as a central focal design element that draws customer traffic to the center of the department. “The hanging shelf fixture is designed to function in 360 degrees at the intersection of multiple aisles and paths of travel.”

Supporting a Luxury Image

Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry (Redwood City, Calif.) / Fontejon Photography, San Mateo, Calif.

California’s Silicon Valley remains one of the bastions of luxury consumerism. True to form, Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry (Redwood City, Calif.) – located just outside the tech mecca – supplies that market with watches and jewelry at “if you have to ask how much it costs, you can’t afford it” price levels.

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However, Oakland, Calif.-based architect Joel Miroglio says there’s as much of a branding and design challenge involved in meeting the high end of the market as there is creating a more moderately priced store.

The upscale watch shop created by Miroglio Architecture + Design (Oakland, Calif.) for Stephen Silver Fine Jewelry stands in the lobby of the Rosewood Sand Hill Hotel in Menlo Park, Calif., a spa resort where room rates can reach $7500 a night for a villa with a view of the Santa Cruz Mountains.

The fixtures – elegant side-by-side columns of maple veneer, glass and stainless steel, with interior LEDs – had to be visible on two sides, both from within the shop and from the lobby, and they had to present the merchandise in an opulent manner, befitting the location. And, perhaps most challengingly, they had to have a subtle security system to guard the five-figure timepieces without insulting the store’s affluent clientele.

“All the case locks are controlled by proximity readers,” Miroglio explains. “The computer documents who opened a case and when.”

And while the glass is part of the security, it also adds another aspect of luxury. “We designed the store like museum gallery,” says Miroglio. “Everything looks more elegant and more valuable under glass.”

 

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