Snow Queen Fashion Stores RU
Fashion Stores
A leading fashion retailer in Russia. Store interior design, merchandising systems and brand communications.
Best branding and fashion retail store design for Snow Queen in Moscow.
Snow Queen is one of Russia's larger multi-fashion store chains selling fur coats and fashion apparel. The store design included interiors, merchandising systems, lighting and graphic communications.
Location - Europeisky Shopping Mall, Moscow.
Fashion is the armour of every day life
Snow Queen is one of Russia's larger multi fashion store chains selling fur coats and fashion apparel. The first store opened in Moscow in 1998. Today there are over 100 stores in the chain.
After hitting hard times during the global economic crisis, growth in the Russian retail market was forecast at 6% p.a. This kind of growth has spurred investment by foreign brands. In a market that has seen considerable fluctuation, the principle that fashion should ‘make us dream’ applies as much to retail design as the products on sale.
The management team of Snow Queen commissioned us to design a new fashion store concept at their flagship in the Europeisky Shopping Mall, Moscow. Their expansion strategy was to open 40-50 new shops. The management team wanted a less rational, more emotional design with a fashionable modern personality. The project needed to be on budget, workable, and inspire the staff and customers at the store level.
Following a store audit and benchmarking programme, we set to work producing a creative direction that would overcome many previous store design problems. For example, the colour contrast between and within zones was too busy, the own-brand navigation in the store needed improving, and the POS material used to differentiate zones was complex and varied stylistically.
We made the Snow Queen brand more prominent above the store entrance. We agreed on a single monolithic cash desk with integrated display cases to establish the brand presence in the store's interior and integrated prominent lighting effects. We promoted the 'private label brands' as they had to act as distinctive focal points in-store. So we reinterpreted the brand identities with new visual applications to walls, pillars, wardrobes and furniture. We introduced distinctive visual merchandising solutions with graphic elements to promote zones and we designed versatile merchandising systems to coupe with seasonally changing fashion stories and the inherent inflexibility of the previous concept.
Making a store concept a reality in less than 8 weeks requires experience, and our design concept makes the store much brighter, crisp and clean. There is confidence in style, reflecting optimism in the in-store experience. Product density, space utilisation was much better achieving higher sales per sqm and the black-tiled runway evokes style.
