Tough times call for creative thinking. Industry stalwart Sarah Gale assesses how global retailers are using visual merchandising during the financial crisis.
The High Street players
H&M, USA
In the current climate, it is wise to emphasise your "pop" pieces through visual merchandising and window displays. The H&M windows in San Francisco were far too safe; to choose basic products within a basic window display doesn't help to entice customers in store.
I think a more aspirational product mix should have been used to attract passing traffic along the footpath. If a basic product range is your business, there is room for this product within window displays but it needs to truly capture the customer emotionally through elements like colour, texture and interesting installations.
Bershka, UK and Barcelona
This is a good example of a fast fashion retailer using a story to entice and engage a customer. Bereshka has close to 600 stores across 36 countries and is owned by the Inditex Group in Spain, which also owns and operates the Zara chain. For the northern hemisphere spring/summer season, Bershka used 'The Garden' theme for its London flagship store and 'Back to Spring' for its Barcelona windows. Both concepts were fresh, enticing and great for their youthful target market - they also tied in with the floral-inspired merchandise the retailer was offering for the season.
The Middle Market
Anthropologie, USA
Anthropologie produces clothing, accessories and home décor for the women's market. It captured the feeling of a carefree spring day with their flock of blue and white birds. Blue and white are traditionally renowned as calming colours and, in contrast with the bright colours on some garments, jumped out and created an engaging window. I felt the use of paper birds was a beautiful way to engage the consumer creating an aura of peace and serenity, whilst giving them a well-deserved break from the constant bombardment of "recession" news in the media.
GAP, USA
The American retailer launched a series of windows around "The New..." theme. These displayed "new" versions of basic garments such as The New Cuffed Shirt, The New Button Down Shirt and The New Cardigan. These windows did nothing to entice or excite and the product didn't look inspiring enough to be declared a "new look". In this economic environment, I believe stores need to truly look outside the box to come up with new and exciting ways to engage with their consumers, particularly if it is fairly mainstream basic orientated product. Neither the "new" message nor the basic display windows work.
The High-end Market
Selfridges, UK
This luxury department store is infamous for its elaborate window displays. For the [northern hemisphere's] spring/summer season, they used a Greco-Roman theme to emphasise the toga influences coming through in the ready-to-wear collections. White backgrounds were offset with metallic accents, installations and paper cutouts - the sculptures they used were made out of flat cardboard but appeared as though they were 3D. It is theatrical, engaging and mesmerising.