Like Nambé's product, high-end metal and crystal home accessories, the fixtures in this award-winning store are clean, elegant, and curvaceous. The undulating store fixtures meld into one continuous line vertically and horizontally, drawing the customer in. "Fixtures were the pivotal element of the store," says Bob Borden, vice president of design and creative director for Nambé, based in Santa Fe, N.M. When he and designer Karim Rashid originally envisioned the store, they imagined the shape and feel of the product engulfing the entire environment, emotionally connecting the customer to the product and making the space an extension of the merchandise.

Borden is proud of the store and the people who built it. "The engineering and craftsmanship that the fixture manufacturer, Capital Contracting, put into this store, and the way that they worked with the designer and the creative team was great. They really took ownership of the project," he says. Since this was Nambé's first foray into retail store design, Borden was amazed by what went on behind the scenes in the creation of a new store concept. Designing, engineering, and building a store of this type in a short, 45-day window without compromising quality was certainly a challenge, notes Don Finley, president of Capital Contracting& Design Inc., Plainfield, N.J. The next challenge was turning the designer's and retailer's unique ideas into working store fixtures.

Matching Veneer by Hand
To make all of the shelves and tables, which extend the length of the store, appear seamless, Capital Contracting laid up book-matched veneer by hand. "It's like matching wallpaper, except you're working with a material that doesn't have an inherent pattern like most wallpaper designs," explains Finley. In laying up veneer, a thin piece of veneer is glued to a substrate-in this case the shelf. To make the surface of the shelf appear as a single piece, the store fixture manufacturer carefully chose sheets of veneer, laying the pieces on the plant floor and rearranging them until they were happy with the results. With shelves that run along the walls of the store for 37 to 40 feet, this was a time-consuming and labor-intensive process-but necessary to create the high-end look the retailer wanted.

Hidden Vertical Supports
The shelves were engineered to handle significant weight without visible vertical support. Cantilevered shelves like the ones in Nambé are supported from the back. Unfortunately, supports across the back of the shelving block the lighting and create shadows. To make the job more challenging, shelves positioned lower on the walls are spaced closer to the shelves below them. To solve this problem Capital Contracting created custom brackets and buried them in the hollow cavities of the shelves above the lights.

Nambé
Colorado Mills Mall, Lakewood, Colo.
Dimensions: The store is 70 ft. by 26 ft., with a center fixture 38 ft. long
Materials: Clear, hard maple; polished chrome; imported leather
Time Frame: Fabrication, 45 days
Project Type: New store with two more units scheduled to open in 2003
Designer: Karim Rashid, New York
Fixtures: Capital Contracting & Design Inc., Plainfield, N.J.
General Contractor/Installer: Donnalee Development, Bernardsville, N.J.
Retailer: Nambé, Santa Fe, N.M.
Photographer: David Marlow, Marlow Aspen, Aspen, Colo.

This store won three awards in the recent NASFM Retail Design Awards competition: Store of the Year; Grand Prize—Fixture Grouping; and Grand Prize—New or Remodeled Hardline Specialty Store up to 3,000 sq. ft.

Is your fixture supplier a member of NASFM?

NASFM is made up of over 400 store fixture manufacturers with corporate headquarters across the world, and over 700 plants worldwide. Combined, NASFM members produce about 85% of the store fixtures manufactured through the U.S. and Canada. When you bid out your jobs, make sure your suppliers are NASFM members.