The same shop, in every city, on the same day
A retailer opening quickly needed its stores to look identical whoever built them. We manufactured the whole fit-out kit on our own machines and shipped it as a system.
- Countries, our own plants
- 2
- Colour standard, Pantone matched
- 1
- Fabrication processes in-house
- 4
- Kit, shipped per store
- 1
What we were asked
The retailer was opening stores faster than a design guideline can travel. Each new site was being fitted out by whichever local contractor was available, and the results ranged from close to unrecognisable. Illuminated signage was the worst of it: the same brand colour was arriving at four visibly different values depending on who made the box.
How we approached it
This is not a design problem and it cannot be solved by writing a stricter guideline. Guidelines are interpreted by whoever is holding them, and a document has no way of stopping a fabricator from using the acrylic they have in stock.
So we stopped shipping a document and started shipping a kit.
What is in it
- Illuminated signage built as a complete unit on our own machines, colour matched to Pantone under the lighting it would actually sit in, not on a desk.
- CNC-cut dimensional elements in a numbered set, so assembly on site is an assembly job rather than a fabrication job.
- Gondolas, podiums and point-of-sale units designed and manufactured together, so the display and the shelf were never specified by two different people.
- Printed material for the opening produced in the same run as the fit-out, which is the only reliable way to get the same colour on paper and on plastic.
Why the plants matter
Owning the offset, large format, CNC and signage lines means a colour correction happens once and applies to everything in the batch. When those four processes sit with four suppliers, a correction is four conversations and at least one of them will not get the memo.
What happened next
The kit ships per store. A local contractor still installs it, which is right and much cheaper, but what they are installing is finished.
Have something like this to run?
Bring us the stage you are stuck at, whether that is the research, the plan or the build. The first hour is free and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right people for it.