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JGA designers fostered the consumer connection to Lenox Group's brands—Dansk, Department 56, Gorham, and Lenox—by incorporating residential icons to establish a homey lifestyle environment in the company's new retail concept, All The Hoopla. Display pieces with sculpted legs resemble dining room tables. A green hutch serves as the backdrop for white platters and dinnerware. The storefront within the mall also suggests home, with teal shingles and friendly double doors flung wide open to welcome shoppers.

“It’s cues and codes of what’s familiar,’’ says Kathi McWilliams, JGA creative director.

Turning a residential reference upside down is a whimsical "chair chandelier" over a café-table display. “Found” chairs hang from custom wrought-iron single and double hooks of several lengths on a metal frame to form the shape of a chandelier. Bare incandescent bulbs sporatically dangle between the chairs to complete the effect and add accent lighting. While saving floor space, the 8-by-16-ft. award-winning visual presentation dominates overhead space and beckons shoppers into the store.

JGA’s design features an array of textures, tones, and personalities. In addition to delighting shoppers, the eclectic nature of the store uses varied design styles to define the different display areas. Hot pinks pop in the stationery area, while rich wood tones dominate the giftware section.

“The entire design was created with the intent of capturing customers’ interest through varying textures, colors, etc. We wanted to create solutions for our products as much as possible, so creating a lifestyle environment was important,’’ says Jenn David, director of store planning and special projects for Lenox Group.

The eclectic personality of the store also applies to the fixtures. Midwest Woodworking built about 150 custom fixtures whose designs specified an assortment of materials and production techniques.

Among the noteworthy fixtures is a sleek round tower, about 5 ft. in diameter, displaying giftware items within individual lighted segments.

Another high-profile piece is an elliptical fixture that supports an elaborate display showcasing the miniature buildings in the Department 56 Village Series. The elliptical piece is formed with four separate fixtures pushed together, says Don Depke, president of Midwest Woodworking. The fixtures, which are on casters, roll apart for easy access to the hidden electrical equipment.

A key aspect of the design is versatility and flexibility. The fixtures allow store personnel to rotate merchandise. Tables of various proportions hug each other in individual groupings or shift easily into alternate set-ups for different types of presentations.

Initiated in Lenox Group's inaugural store in Michigan, the JGA design was used in stores that also opened in 2006 in Orlando and Wellington, Fla. A fourth store is planned for 2007.