Unique designs, styles & attractions to represent brand & products

Retail environments all have their own unique designs, styles and attractions to represent their brand and products. These work together alongside the elements of design to create a relationship with the customer, attract attention to their brand and to enhance the customers shopping experience resulting in maximum sales. Valentino is a worldwide luxurious brand that is well known for its elegance, creativity, and ‘ sense of beauty’ (Valentino, 2018).

The brand has a stand out design due to the well-known, unique creations and how their creative direction enhances the customers shopping experience in different ways. The designer’s success has been shown in ‘ 100 countries, through 175 Valentino directly-operated boutiques and over 1500 points of sale Valentino has used many different marketing methods to enhance the brand and the retail environment.

One of the brands strongest marketing techniques is to build a customer relationship through social media. Instagram has been an extraordinary platform for the brand to engage with its millions of followers ‘ and has earned the spot as the topper forming luxury brand on the platform. The Valentino flagship store in London was designed by David Chipperfield.

A sophisticated and luxurious vibe is presented at initial contact to the store. They have created this by using bright white, LED lights to create an eye catching exterior display while highlighting the products and styles within the window displays. The architectural characteristics of the building also complement the products on display. This is the first statement the customer will see and will help them decide if they would like to enter the store. This design draws attention and curiosity to potential customers and provides personality by engaging with the customer. The interior of this flagship store has been designed with a varied selection of shapes, materials andtextures and has created a spacious, welcoming space with a familiar scheme most Valentino stores tendto have. Like many of the stores they have used ‘ hard Venetian terrazzo and marble surfaces’ and are‘ paired with soft carpets to createthe impression of a grand Italian house’ (Howarth. D, 2016). This brings familiarity to the customer as well as enhancing the reorganization of thebrand itself.

The flagship store located in New York has the same image as the flagship storebased in London. This store has beencreated with eight different stories witheach story relating to differentcustomers wants and needs to create asimple, organized, flowing space. Thisstore is simply elegant with illuminatingfeatures that represent the Valentinobrand and products perfectly. The Valentino pop up storelocated in boulevard Haussmann was open for seven weeks andwas created with simplicity andluxury. The Valentino sign is themain feature of the design andbrings instant attention. The store was an excellent opportunity to advertise the brand and create a new.

Urban outfitters are an ‘ american multinational, lifestyle retail corporation’ (Wiki, 2018)operating worldwide targeting teenagers and young adults. The brand, products, stores and added extras are what bring Urban outfitters to stand out from the crowed, this is due to the level of detail and creativity used to build a relationship with new and existing customers. Urban outfitters follow a similar décor scheme in each of thestores to bring familiarity and tend to have a rustic, edgy style with its own signaturelook. Most stores are created with minimal changes to the building, i. e. brick walls onshow, saving historical features, heating and piping can also be seen, this helps tocreate the brands own unique style. Urban outfitters relationship with the customers isimproved by blogs and social media, this will always keep the customer up to datewith new products and help the advertisement of UO rewards and student discount toencourage the customer to shop the brand again.

There are many Urban outfitter stores worldwide, each designed with the customerexperience in mind. The largest, stand out store opened in 2014 featuringentertainment on a brand-new level. The Manhattan store consists of a hair salon andbeauty section as well as a music area and coffee shop. Each section of the store canrelate to the customer in some way which generates customer traffic and sales whilecreating a one stop shop for a hassle-free shopping experience. Products have been used to create feature walls around different areas of the store relating tothe products being sold in that particular area. The rucksack and tent walls mirror thenaturalness of the outdoors, they’re fresh, easily visualised and attention-grabbing displayscreating the atmosphere of a camping environment. Personalization can be a hugemarketing technique when it comes tothe younger generation.

Urbanoutfitters have added stations such asdesigning and printing your owntrainers, photobooths with extramerchandise on sale as well as bikerepair and trendy display set ups. Eachentertainment devise will bringcustomer traffic and unique attention. Overall, both Valentino and Urban outfitters create high quality designs that bring thecustomer and the brand closer together with the same intention of generating maximumsales. This relationship has been created with entertainment, product knowledge and eyecatchingdisplays all matching the target audience’s needs and relating to the brand, products, stores and websites.