THE POINT OF SALES EXPANDS THE FRONTIERS
It’s been a long while since the time when a shop only served to sell merchandise to the consumer. Our improved well-being, the ever wider and more diverse range of offers, and especially the aim for more visual merchandising techniques have led to the birth of shops over the years that aren’t only showcases of products they sell, but also showcases of themselves.
We enter a shop not just to look at the merchandise, but also to keep in touch with the new trends, the latest furnishings, and last but not least, to have fun, surrounded by music, lights and music videos. This trend is much more common in stores specializing in clothes and fashion, as they are closely linked to people’s lives and outlook. This is even more the case if the point of sales crops up in the most central street of Milan, the leading city of fashion all over the world for decades.
REPLAY: A SHOP THAT’S A LOT MORE THAN A POINT OF SALES
REPLAY in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Milan is a clear example of how healthy marketing principles united with the sales techniques and good taste can be highly fruitful. Entirely renovated, enlarged and restyled in September 1999, this is one of the 200 company’s points of sales and one of the 4000 worldwide points of sale, franchising companies and shop in shops belonging to the company Fashion Box, which manages the brand REPLAY.
However, it’s the first REPLAY clothes “megastore”, where all the elements combine to create a hyper-realistic yet anti-conventional dimension, beyond space and time. Covering a surface of 1,000 m2 and 50 linear metres of shop window, Replay takes up two floors. The conventional merchandising layouts have been overturned, eliminating the traditional clothes hanging sequence, and replacing them with horizontal shelves on various levels. Large stairways link up the two floors: the ramps are discontinued by wide mezzanines, that can be used for displaying particularly interesting products. The materials are genuine and authentic: wooden shelves and decorations, steel cash desks, marble walls on the lower floor, resin tables, porphyry and wooden flooring. There’s even a little lake with running water, with garments laid out on the soft, synthetic grass lawn lining its “shores”. Instead of being used for displaying the merchandise, the surrounding walls are treated with materials deriving from rock, intensified by the lighting effects. The floor is divided into “fields” indicating a path across space. The warm, cosy colours remind us of the earth, the subsoil and mineralogy.
THE IMPORTANCE OF LIGHTING EFFECTS
Lighting plays a fundamental role in all this, designed to enhance the materials, colours and environments. Therefore, the lights are not just lamp structures, but lighting effects that are perfectly functional for making products stand out. Integrating so well with the setting, they constitute proper furnishing elements.
The V.I.P. 300 projectors of the Clay Paky’s Display Line particularly stand out from our vast range of light sources: a product line for visual information which has already found a perfect niche in many points of sale, being versatile, easy to use and economical.
DISPLAY LINE: PROMOTING THE BRAND
The V.I.P. 300 products project the brand REPLAY in huge letters on the wooden wall towering above the counter. This wall is made of several beams that seem to be arranged haphazardly: “On the contrary, they are the result of a very precise design – explains Luca de Milato, manager of the shop Replay in Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
“The beams were collected, selected, worked and hung together, to function as a projecting wall for our company’s brand. The Display Line projectors have been incorporated in the design by the architect Mauro Bacchini, as they can make the brand REPLAY stand out clearly and vividly, even in a setting that’s already well illuminated.
Furthermore, thanks to the elegance of the projector’s body and the total lack of unaesthetic wires, the V.I.P. projectors blend in perfectly with the other furnishing elements.” The three V.I.P. were installed by Eliano Girola’s Light Video Sound, which has been distributing Clay Paky products in the show, entertainment and architectural sector for many years. Eliano Girola commented: “Owing to the development of interior design and communication techniques in the points of sale, even more effective and flexible instruments are needed. Display Line, consisting of 5 models designed to satisfy every need, offers a totally innovative instrument which can simultaneously illuminate, colour, enhance, inform and promote.”
REPLAY WITH DISPLAY LINE WORLDWIDE
Studied to the smallest detail and costing 17 billion lira, the REPLAY shop in Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Milan is now a point of sale capable of producing an annual return of 10 billion lira and healthy profits. This first “megastore” will soon be followed by others: by the end of the year 2000, stores are expected to be set up in Berlin, Hamburg, London and Paris. Each store will have the same characteristics as the one in Milan, both in terms of the display techniques and the materials and instruments used.
The Display Line V.I.P. projectors will be integrated into the new buildings, and will therefore be able to project the brand REPLAY on many walls all over the world.
Display Line’s V.I.P. 300
V.I.P. 300 is part of Display Line, the series of Clay Paky projectors for communicating with the light. It consists of an illuminating body using a long lasting 300 watt lamp.
Two electrified guides are connected to the illuminating body which can integrate the electricity transmission into their structure. Powered by a low voltage (24 Volts) and protected by short circuits, they also guarantee maximum operative safety. The two guides are fitted with the projecting lens and one or more of the optional accessories chosen from a very broad and flexible range, offering diverse static or moving effects which can often be combined.
This effects serve to project brands, writings and animated images, drawing the attention in a pleasant and unusual way. The guide electrification is highly innovative: not only is it practical for positioning and handling chosen effects, but it also preserves the elegance of the projector and its setting, totally eliminating the problem of having visible cables for powering separate lighting effects.