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Fixtures in Physical Stores Are Changing for the Digital World

Increasingly, store fixtures are being charged with creating environments that tell the brand story in the digital world

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STORE FIXTURE DESIGN has changed dramatically in today’s retail world. There will always be the need for functional, high-density, merchandise workhorses. But increasingly, as with other elements of store design, fixtures have become part of the branding effort, the environmental attitude, the architectural intent.

ABOVE Drawing from the concept of music as a “universal language to express yourself,” designers aimed to connect specific colorways and makeup application techniques with different music styles through imagery representing physical media like vinyl records.

Drawing from the concept of music as a “universal language to express yourself,” designers aimed to connect specific colorways and makeup application techniques with different music styles through imagery representing physical media like vinyl records.

ARS
GRATIA ARTIS

“A trend is to make fixtures [part of] the interior architectural structure or a piece of an art installation,” says Li Kang, Managing Partner, Asia and Pacific, of Amsterdam-based design firm Storeage. “As such, it’s part of the retailer’s storytelling, creating an eye-catching point to attract consumers starting the journey.”

However, as Kang points out, fixtures have also become messaging units in the digital age, “to cooperate with the new technique of display tools like touchscreens, or to extend the display to the personal devices in consumers’ hands.”

All this came together in Storeage’s project for B+Tube, a cosmetics retail brand owned by Shanghai-based CCE Group.

📷: DUNO Studio

📷: DUNO Studio

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The brand wanted a young and energetic vibe focused on the idea of “freedom of expression.” The floating element of the design is based on the idea of immersion, referencing the Chinese proverb of a mouse that fell into a rice jar. So Storeage chose double layers of iridescent perforated steel for the feeling of being immersed in colorful water.

A digital-age fixture installation brings function as well as design issues. There are more than 100 touchscreens in store, each one connected with a sensor in the fixture. But, notes Kang, “how to hide the electric and data wires is also one of the biggest challenges in fixture design.”

With gentle illumination, the fixtures in Jacques Marie Mange’s new eyewear gallery are designed so very little reflection bounces off the handcrafted glasses within.

With gentle illumination, the fixtures in Jacques Marie Mange’s new eyewear gallery are designed so very little reflection bounces off the handcrafted glasses within.

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OF GLASS

Excitement and mood were also the objectives of the new eyewear gallery for Jacques Marie Mange (Los Angeles) in Venice, Calif. In this high-concept luxury store, even the handcrafted glasses themselves are design objects requiring an appropriate presentation.

It’s the brand’s first retail location, and the interiors are outfitted with custom, rare-wood furnishings and decor that includes a custom artwork by Connor Tingley and carefully sourced art deco and Native American memorabilia.

📷: Grant Puckett and Dimitri Coste, LA

📷: Grant Puckett and Dimitri Coste, LA

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“We focused [the fixture and display designs] on illuminating the interior of the fixtures in the most diffused way possible,” says Cédric Hervet, Co-Founder (with cousin Nicolas) of Hervet Manufacturier (Paris), “to properly showcase the product but also to conceal the sources of light, allowing for the least amount of reflection to occur from the glasses themselves.”

In retail fixturing, it’s clearly the Design Age.

PHOTO GALLERY (33 IMAGES)
📷: DUNO Studio | Grant Puckett and Dimitri Coste, LA

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