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The Tough Get Creative

Smart designers see that the way to cope with the economic crisis is to spot opportunities and try new things.

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The official buzzword of the current economy seems to be “creative.” As in: “What’s the best way out of this crisis? Get creative.” (And I’m guessing that, by “creative,” nobody means the investment strategies of Bernie Madoff.)

Norman Roberts of nakaoka/roberts reminded me that the whole concept of industrial design began with Raymond Loewy during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when brands sought to differentiate themselves not by improving their products but by improving their products’ looks. So Loewy began designing streamlined train engines, sleek cars, art deco refrigerators and rounded, shapely vacuum cleaners that gave the impression of higher quality even though the guts of the products were often exactly the same as before.

On a recent Sunday morning, “creative” was all over the TV talk shows. Lee Scott, outgoing ceo of Walmart, was on “Meet the Press.” Walmart is proving to be very creative from a design standpoint – upgrading its stores at a time when, by its own assessment, it’s already perfectly positioned to thrive in this down period.

Why is the world’s biggest retailer doing that? According to Randall Stone, senior partner at Lippincott (New York) – which does business with Walmart – the idea is to make itself attractive to the new shoppers flocking to the retailer right now so that they find the experience so satisfying they’ll remain, even after the economic crisis is over. One company’s crisis is another company’s opportunity.

Stone shared these insights with VMSD during a panel discussion we hosted among several of our Editorial Advisory Board members, in conjunction with our annual Design Firm survey (see page xx). Normally, we ask the industry’s design consultancies, “Do you think next year will be better than this year?” and “What’s your biggest challenge?” But we already know, too well, the current answers to those questions. So we drilled down with these eight participants to see how daunting the challenges are, both for their businesses and their retail clients’ businesses. One of the things we found is that, as with Walmart, there’s opportunity growing in the rubble.

For example, we’ve all read about how major retailers are slashing their capital expenditure budgets for 2009 and cancelling new-store projects. But the smart retailers know they can’t stand still. And the smart design consultants are bringing smaller, less-expensive improvements to clients’ existing stores to make spaces fresh and dynamic. Some of those improvements fall under the umbrella of visual merchandising, so most of these firms – engineers and architects by training – are developing their firms’ visual merchandising capabilities. As David Kepron, an architect who is studio principal, store design, at Little (New York), said, “It’s ironic, because the whole core of our industry is about merchandise.”

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Yes, it always was. And, for now, visual is taking center stage again, at least for the creative.

Steve Kaufman 

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