Opening its doors for the first time in the land of leeks, John Lewis has made a serious style statement with the arrival of its second largest store in the Partnership. The Cardiff-based four-floored flagship store stretches across 170,000 sq ft and does exactly what it says on the tin.
As a flagship, the John Lewis Partnership has made a bold shift in terms of retail design and presented a much more fashion-focused layout, re-establishing the company as a serious contender in the department store fashion stakes after years of being sidelined by the likes of Selfridges.
The biggest challenge has been in striking a balance between the needs of the company’s sales and floorspace, and the specific retail environment requests from brands the store will stock.
With top end merchandise that is usually presented in low density stock displays, due to the high footfall and frequent stock rotation on the shop floor at John Lewis suppliers’ brand guidelines have had to be relaxed in order to be incorporated within the store.
As part of the new style mantra, John Lewis has swept in with big and bold visual merchandising, a network of floor-to-ceiling screens dividing sections of merchandise that are formed by a lattice of bronze-coloured metal attached to white suspended ceiling rafts. Sounds grandiose? It should.
After losing the traditional “John Lewis” walkways around the store, merchandise zones have been created for shoppers to intuitively find their way around. The designer zone is a semi-discrete part of the Women’s floor which is gilted with gold walls, dark wood fixtures and lower stock densities as you would find in the standalone outlets of LK Bennett or Jigsaw.
