Retail branding that reaches the shop floor
A retail brand is not a logo with a store behind it. It is what a customer concludes from the facade, the entrance, the smell of the bakery, the wording on the shelf edge, the tone of the staff and the state of the trolleys. We design retail brands as the whole of that, and we design them so that a store manager in another country can apply them correctly on a Tuesday morning.
From positioning to shelf edge
We work across the full range: positioning and proposition, naming, visual identity, facade and signage, in-store communication and category signing, packaging and private label expression where relevant, and the tone of voice that holds it together. The test we apply is always the same. Can this be executed in a four-hundred-square-metre store in a secondary town by people who have never met us, using suppliers we did not choose, and still read as the same brand?
Rebranding an existing chain
Rebranding a live retail chain is a logistics problem as much as a design problem. Facades, interior signing, uniforms, trolleys, receipts, carrier bags, vehicles and shelf communication all change on different timelines and different budgets. We plan rebrands in waves, starting with the elements that carry the most recognition per euro spent, so the chain looks converted long before the last item has been replaced. We did exactly this for the D43 to Danah conversion in Saudi Arabia.
Branding and format are the same project
Handing brand identity to one agency and store design to another is how you get a strong logo on a store that contradicts it. Because we do both, the brand is developed against a real floor plan and the floor plan is developed against a real brand, in the same building, in the same weeks. That integration is most of the reason retailers come to us rather than to a brand agency and an architect separately.
Applied across formats and countries
Handing brand identity to one agency and store design to another is how you get a strong logo on a store that contradicts it. Because we do both, the brand is developed against a real floor plan and the floor plan is developed against a real brand, in the same building, in the same weeks. That integration is most of the reason retailers come to us rather than to a brand agency and an architect separately.
Test it in a store before you commit
Brand work is usually approved in a boardroom, on screen, at a size and distance that flatters everything. Then it goes onto a facade in rain, onto a shelf edge under fluorescent light, onto a uniform worn by someone at the end of a shift, and half the decisions turn out differently. We build the critical elements at full size and put them in a real store before the roll-out budget is committed. Facade lettering at actual scale, category signing at actual reading distance, shelf communication in the actual light. It is a small cost in the schedule and it routinely changes something: a colour that greys out under LED, a typeface that stops working below a certain height, a sign position nobody sees because of where the trolleys stack.
FAQ
Do you do brand strategy or only the visual side?
Both. Positioning and proposition come first; identity is the expression of a decision that has already been made.
Can you rebrand a chain that is still trading?
Yes, and that is most of what we do. We sequence the change so stores stay open and recognisable throughout.
Do you work with our existing brand agency?
Regularly. In that case we take the identity as given and translate it into the store, and we will say clearly where the identity does not survive that translation.
Contact us
Repositioning, renaming or refreshing a retail brand? Contact our studio in the Netherlands or Dubai.