In 2018, I was invited by a Swiss design office to take part in a two day retail design challenge – they were looking for a new associate designer. As soon as I get there they set up the briefing: “We are a thinking in an alternative supermarket layout, in which all the fresh non packed food will be right in the beginning of the layout”. Then they gave me a layout sketch in which all the fresh goods were at the entrance of the market, the packed food in the end and non food dividing this both worlds. “Show us an idea, see you in the end of the day”.
It’s an unusual ideia make the consumer buy first the tomatoes, then soap, toilette paper and leave the pasta for the very end of the store. In oder hand, however, uniting all the fresh goods right at the beggining of the shop experience – meat, fruits, fish, cheese and so on – gives an unexpected vitality to the store environment. A vitality only achievable in street markets of pictoresque cities, as the ones often seen in southern italian cities.
The key issue to the project, therefore, was to enhance this particularly feature of the layout guideline. That was when the freshness insight came, freshness is an obsession – a reasonable one, I’d say – both for consumers and supermarket retailers, and bringing all the fresh goods to the entrance gives this feeling of a sea of freshness right at your foot.
Ok. But how to individualize this freshness feeling – every retailer claims to be fresh – in a particular statement with the voice and tone of the particular retailer? I’ve immediately started to research about the story of E.Lecrerc, and his founder Edouard. Like many other retail empires the story begins with a little shop, in a humble place, etc. etc. The key aspect of Monsieur Lecrerc mindset, however, was his opposition to the established retail beliefs of that time, he was known as the “champion of the people and enemy of monopolies” and his supporters “the movement”.
In his first store, opened in 1949, he developed a method of buying directly from the producers, and selling it 30 cents cheaper than other stores, causing several troubles to its competitors and joy among his consumers. Known as a trouble-maker by french retail industry Edouard was a pioneer and a revolutionary, he faced the oil retail prohibition of selling gas at lower prices at supermarkets and broke books, health and beauty products monopoly. The second insight was set: Revolution, and E.Lecrerc’s new battle would have the motto: Freshness to everyone.
To be fresh in the retailer the goods must be transported in a reliable mean of transportation, in the right time and schedule.
So we can assume that: Freshness, is all about logistics. What if we bring this logistic feeling, the local transportation to our store environment? Suggesting a direct connection between customers and the origin of the products.
The use of the means of transportation in the shop environment brings this feeling of connection between producers and consumers giving a strong ideia of freshness: “The products just got here, look there’s the truck!”.
Combining vehicles and merchandise also gives many attractive interior design possibilities
The signage with a street/road feeling also brings this concept of a “just in time” delivery of freshness.
And why not a boat in an Aquarium with living fish?
This two day challenge was a really fun and meaningful experience, and the results in this short period of work were really meaningful to me. At the end, however, I didn’t change my job.
External Links:
Edouard Leclerc: Businessman who built a shopping empire (from The Independent)
dudamachiavelli.wordpress.com 