Attending the Kyoorius Designyatra 2010 was in a manner reconnecting to the contemporary design discourse. Of course one is always part of the zeitgeist and is aware of the design and creative developments but meeting the makers is something else.
Listening to Rodney Fitch – guru of retail design and founder of Fitch one of the largest design consultancies in the world, highlighted my area of work, which has for so long been relegated to being the last part of a brand implementation exercise.
He started off with the inspirations that moulded and moved him – William Morris, Raymond Loewy and the Victoria & Albert Museum. It is good to know what, where and how people gather inspiration from their environment. We all have heard of them during the course of our design education but when someone particularly points them out, you do a little retake on the uniqueness they have to offer. That is the good thing about listening to an expert you pick up a lot of cues and links that widen your design consciousness and sensibility.
When one has specialized and is an expert on his subject he of course imbibes the very core of it. Rodney is a firm believer that “shopping is the purpose of life”. Being a retail designer for the last four years I thought rather sheepishly whether this would ever be my single life truth.
He pointed out that the uplifting aspect of retail/shopping is unlike any other aspect of our lives and he reiterated this with an example of when people were quizzed in a poll in UK they said they had more faith in their retailer than their govt. The reason, he said was that shopping is a completely democratic process, offering the consumer choice of product , experience and a great degree of control. The retail design strategy should therefore involve consideration of strategy context, innovation & communication.
He mentioned that overstating the cultural and social variations of India is rhetoric and at an innate level people across the world are similar in their sensibilities and the endeavor to appeal to that 70% commonality is irrespective of place, language etc. It is the other 30% that needs to involve strategy and design thinking that is more articulate to the aspirations and needs of the local exigencies. The major difference between the organized and unorganized retail as we term it and he pointed out that calling it unorganized is a fallacy, because it involves retailing an approximate of 25000 SKU’ s out of a 500 sqft store which has to be an exercise in great organization and skill. He said that the retail developments in India are no different from what happened in the US and Europe but are only happening at a faster rate and hence the jarring progression. The traditional and modern co-exist and as retail studies have pointed out will remain part of the Indian retail landscape.
The concerns and realization that I have had for a while are that while brands grow and penetrate markets all over, will our experiences become the same, more a part of global brand consciousness divorced from their contexts ? Because we know brands persist because they follow their core identity and ethos and retail being an extension of this would end up giving us a standard experience wherever we are. There is a comfort, trust and recognition in this familiarity but with no differentiation based on place I am worried about the homogenization of our collective experience. And Rodney did field this question with the 70-30 theory but I don’t see this in practice. Of course there is customization say that a McDonalds does in its menu in India, offering you an Aloo Tikki burger etc but the sameness of the space irrespective of whether it is anywhere within India or elsewhere is not a very happy one. And I find myself then gravitating more to the quaint little cafes’ and shops when visiting London that offer me the authenticity of merchandise & experience, rather than the proposition of monotony & sameness that I expect from a brand . The way forward perhaps then, is that brand space retailing, will have to in the likeness of google be flexible and adaptable to allow a level of customization and experience relevant to its context.
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Also Read
The brilliance and relevance of the Barbie store in its context and why it might not work in a similar avatar elsewhere. http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/malcolmmoore/9131846/The_worlds_first_Barbie_store_is_a_work_of_genius/
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A pictorial synopsis on Raymond Loewy http://www.life.com/image/first/in-gallery/35402/the-man-who-designed-america
image courtesy : LIFE
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Visit the Dr.Bhau Daji Laad Museum in Mumbai [ has its origins in the Victoria & Albert Museum ]
image courtesy – Dr Bhau Daaji Laad Museum
