Retailers are sprucing up their store window displays in a bid to stand out from the crowd. | |
| Springtime windows at Knightbridge's luxury retail giant Harvey Nichols cuurently feature unlikely industrial shapes "" tall ladders, ropes, pulleys, and mannequins in whimsical attire amid construction site clutter. |
| |
| At the other end of the retail spectrum, a small family-run bakery in Notting Hill showcases its latest tasties in mini versions on, what else but a Mini Cooper, sitting in their window. |
| |
| In cities like London and New York, people brave the weather to trudge to the theatrical Christmas tableaus at the windows of Selfridges, Saks and Lord and Taylor. Shop windows haven't become quite an item of fascination in India yet, but retailers are recognising that store layouts and window merchandising influence consumer behaviour. |
| |
| Window decorator Yamini Namjoshi balances on a stool trailing ribbon after colourful ribbon off of the ceiling at the window of a furnishing design store. "We're so used to cheesy thermacol cut-outs, shoddy mannequins and set-wallah designs in our windows," she says. "I try and colour-coordinate props with the product, so it's easy on the eye." |
| |
| For Christmas, Namjoshi wanted a non-typical display, so the colours were non-typical black, white and red, put together with a cluster of white paper stars, and a backdrop of red and black striped hologram paper for 3-D effect. |
| |
| Other retailers spotted Yamini's windows and invited her to do theirs. So now, her days are pretty full. "I think with so many international brands and retailers entering the country, local retailers are beginning to think 'why should we look the worse for it?'," she adds. |
| |
| "Windows take up shop space, so when we started retailing we took a very conscious decision to make constructive use of that space," says Kevin Nigli, designer, and window dresser by default, at Abraham and Thakore. And cheap can be chic. |
| |
| Nigli reveals, "A window once cost us under Rs 1,000; we had a clothes line, some patterns cut from paper, measuring tape, fake grass and a tin tub, but that window created such a buzz with customers." They never use mannequins in their windows, it's "too explicit"! |
| |
| Okay, so granted a design led store will be ahead of the rest, but a suburban kids' store? For Scram, an emerging childrens' clothing brand in Mumbai, the cost of changing their window diplays every 30 days is not an inexpensive proposition. |
| |
| But as owner Manoj Jain explains, "In a mall environment where you're one among 10 other kids shops, you have to grab eyeballs; an attractive window always creates excitement." Scram's windows use different arts-and-crafts (cuts outs, origami, cut-and-paste shapes) props to court their target audience. |
| |
| The Raymond's flagship windows "" conventional but engaging "" have been an attraction for 20 years now. "We realised early on that a smartly executed display is an important parameter by which a brand is perceived," says Aniruddha Deshmukh, president, Raymond Retail. |
| |
| With Raymond's expanding heavily into branded outlets and with 310 exclusive Raymond's stores Deshmukh indicates there just aren't enough specialised visual merchandisers. "It's a great wave to ride on," says Namjoshi who indicates freelance window dressers pocket five-figure incomes per window. |
| |
| Some stores, like fashion store Amara, look to a combination of creative forces, for decorating their store front windows that look over one of the busiest thoroughfares in Mumbai. |
| |
| Says Amit Dholakia, partner at Amara, "Savio Jon (Goa-based designer) did the visual design for us the first time round, but now we enlist the creativity of different people for our windows, from an architect one time, to an artist the next... we prefer changing perspectives." |
| |
| Pantaloon, on the other hand, has over 30 merchandisers. For large-format departmental stores selling similar product categories, the need to stand out is crucial. |
| |
| Bina Mirchandani, head-category management, Pantaloon Retail says, "As soon as our design team starts creating the product, our visual merchandising team starts planning the store design and the window design; the process is aligned through the workforce." |
| |
| Sonia Manchanda, a director at Bangalore-based Idiom Design that executes Pantaloon's retail design, believes that earlier, when choices were limited, people had a long-term relationship with stores, they knew exactly what to expect from them, what the store stood for. |
| |
| "Today, the shop window has to be like a magazine ad or a billboard that you drive past, it has to clearly and quickly communicate brand essence. |
| |
| Nigli says window-spotting can be great escapism, "When you're in a rush to get somewhere and you spot an unusally attractive shop window, you will have to stop for a minute and for those few seconds you can't help but be taken in by the fun and fantasy of it all. And it will either shock you, or make you smile." Maybe that's what window shopping is all about. |
| |
