Continued

4 Space Navigation, The Human Element of Navigable Zoning

Effective space navigation can drive customers across the lease line, keep them in the store longer, lead them to appropriate areas, and get them to spend more money. Zoning with color, texture, and graphics can make for a more navigable and comprehensive environment that drives sales. Retailers that excel at this include:

• Quick. This chain of about 400 fast-food restaurants in Europe uses color for zoning, which is further defined by the furnishings: a picnic table ambiance for kids, longer tables for teenagers to fraternize, and calm, soft, cozy booths with dimmer lighting for adults.

• Uniqlo. Klein Dytham Architecture of Tokyo created a humanly navigable space in a six-story flagship store of this European entry-price-point fashion chain. Gazebos in different finishes, colors, and shapes throughout the store helped net four times the expected sales in the first few weeks.

• Kult. In this underground fashion store in a former Berlin nightclub, merchandise categories are zoned within the triangular space via lighting, lower ceilings, and shiny colorful fixtures.

Click on image to enlarge
Photos courtesy of Corneille Uedingslohmann Architekten

• Epicenter. New York’s Walker Group has proposed converting unused department store spaces into pop-up brick-and-mortar spaces for online retailers to display their wares. Each store would reflect multiple e-retailers, with e-tailers changing regularly to entice frequent consumer visits. Shoppers would be able to scan items using a hand-held scanner, download the list of items and pay for everything at the checkout, and have the products delivered to their homes. E-tailers and merchandise could be chosen based on local demographics to help people navigate the space in a useful way.

• Marsh Supermarkets. Chicago-based design firm Jordan Mozer and Associates has laid out a supermarket so that shoppers enter a hub with 33-ft. ceilings. Like spokes on a wheel, the octagonal space features aisles so easily viewed that aisle signage is unnecessary. Lower ceilings around the periphery delineate “specialty stores” staffed by category experts.

Click on image to enlarge
Photos courtesy of Jordan Mozer and Associates Ltd.

• Thanks. Intuitively leading consumers to the vendor shops in the Mumbai store of this Indian retail outlet for luxury brands are high-shine black ceiling treatments, asymmetrical columns, and shaded gray flooring.

• O2. A seasonally adjusted interactive media band running from the front to the rear of this flagship store draws shoppers in. In winter, for example, ice seems to crack under shoppers feet, while in summer, consumers walk in a "meadow" with virtual birds flittering about. Adding to the navigational enticements is an interactive conveyor belt in the front window featuring the top 10 items.

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