I am seeing more retailers use lighting, darkness actually, to great effect. I was in a Hollister store this week, in the US, and their use of darkness is excellent. The store is made up of a series of small rooms, each with a two or three spotlights.
What I like about the Hollister use of darkness is that it adds to the feeling of stepping off the street or out of the mall and into a completely separate environment. It’s very conducing to shopping.
While darkness would present challenges for newsagency businesses, it is something we could use in certain parts of our stores where we want shoppers to really immerse themselves in certain products that require different feelings. For example, some gift and homewares lines lend themselves to this as would the occasional seasonal offering.
In most newsagencies today, the lights are either on or off. Maybe it’s time we played with this.
A newsagency is not a clothing store.
Yes, Mal, I know. The newsagency of the future is not a newsagency of the past.
What we have found that works for us is to make the shop look slightly darker in summer by reducing lighting so it seems cooler and a bit brighter in winter for warmth, it does work even though the temp is the same. I’m not taking dark like in the picture but a bit dimmer or brighter depending on the seasson.
Most of these displays are professional and most newsagents could not afford to pay a display and merchandiser, Most of us need to use our own nouse. I am only just finding time to play around a bit with differant locations of stock. My recent re-arrangement for back to school saw me working until 10.30 Friday night and all day Sat & Sun. Mostly we just have to put up with same old or kill ourselves working these hours.
I would have thought there may have been WH&S issues with having a work area so dark and I would hate to think what insurance would say if a customer tripped over something in the darkened room andinjured themselves. It would be interesting to know how these issues are dealt with too.
Paul I think you will find there is plenty of light. It is a cleverly done and I have seen it in other shops and it is not really dark as it looks. Its is just that areas are more highlighted with bright lights.
If it was as dark as in that photo I wouldn’t even bother going in. Bright lights for me. I like to see where things are not just spotlights on certain things. Would also give it a pokey appearance I think.