Lifestyling For Today

Lifestyle Department store, a part of the Dubai based Landmark Group, has a national presence with 49 stores across different markets in India. The stores are on an average size of 35,000 to 60,000 sft, offering fashion apparel, accessories, footwear, beauty & fragrance and travel accessories for the family. Recent developments in the evolution of customer expectations, the increase in consumption of the younger generation and the foray of international fast & democratized fashion brands in their markets has prompted them to relook at their store experience.

This strategy was rendered in the mall stores with high youth and boutique quotient in the context of the availability of many competitive international fashion brand options. This concept design was meticulously done in-house to ensure that all design, merchandise presentation and customer convenience needs were met through rigorous detailing and planning. The store design was planned to be flexible to enable the movement of departments overnight. The partner brands within the store were also collaborated with to make this make-over happen for a win-win for both. The brand appearance norms were laid down to give the overall environment a'Lifestyle Signature' within which the brand identities were nested using both'brand In-fill' and'controlled design' policies. Except for a few brands, most of them were presented in the former format. The design and detailing mission for the fixtures concept and configuration was that it had to be flexible enough to be reconfigured'overnight without the expense of capital' with store resources.

The'young fashion' touch to the store experience was given using clean contemporary forms and finishes to the interiors and fixtures in the store. The Fixtures were predominantly designed in metal finishes to ensure better endurance and maintainability. The colour palette helped differentiate the different key departments in the store. Sasi explains, "The fixtures and wall were differentiated with colours to give uniqueness to each department. With the forms being in the Lifestyle Design Signature they helped render a brand proprietary environment and also deliver a differentiated presentation to the main categories”. 

To bring a local connotation to the locality of each Lifestyle, design and communication elements were used in common areas, like the escalator walls, to express this. For instance, the Lifestyle in Koramangala in Bangalore had'Lifestyle Koramangala', Lifestyle in DLF Mall, Noida, has'Lifestyle Mall of India” boldly communicated in the common areas like the escalator lobbies and the cash counters. Some of the key changes made in the store design in terms of the environment interior elements to create the Lifestyle store design signature are: new special floor tiles of a higher size (600x600mm to 800x800mm); the use of flexible aiming accent track lights to give the accented boutique effect; the use of color and patterns in strategic feature points; clean simple forms for furniture, fixtures and interior elements and the use of wear enduring materials like metal.

The Visual Merchandising of the store was also strategically planned, plotted and configured like in a mono-brand fashion store with power cluster displays of stylized mannequin clusters strategically located between category zones. The clear race track circulation and the standardized brand appearance norms create convenient sightlines for the customers to be able to conveniently go through the whole store offerings with ease.

On the phy-gital strategy of the store to address the needs of the young shopper today, Sasi explains,” We don't want to introduce digital interface for the sake of having it. The criteria for its adoption should be clear customer benefits in terms of delivering more convenience in the shopping process. We are planning to do it in two stages. The first for pure dynamic imagery and the second for engaging with the store offerings. We are on Stage 1 on this front and will soon be implementing Stage 2.” The current concept has large format digital screens that feature Lifestyle institutional communication. With the launch of its online store, www.landmarkshops.in, we will soon see Stage 2 being implemented across all Lifestyle stores making Omni-channel shopping possible for its customers.

The whole exercise of creating the new concept took about 6 to 8 months for the in-house resources to study customer in-sights, plan and conceptualize. For Oasis- Koramangala refit, the execution was done in phases without the stores being shut even for a day. The portion under renovation was cordoned off and worked on with minimal obstruction to sales in the rest of the store. Though there were many new changes made and effected in the design and build of the store, the cost of renovation per square feet of the new store concept was commendably maintained the same as the previous one.

Going forward, Lifestyle is looking at refurbishing its stores across India and also opening 8 to 10 stores per year in the new concept. The stores would be about 25,000sft to 50,000 sft collocated with 25,000 sft of their home improvement concept, Home Center, to create a compelling destination for fashion and lifestyle for the discerning Indian family.

Sasikumar Ramaswamy, Sr VP Store Design and Projects for Landmark Group in India explains, "The key reasons for the design evolution were, the need to make the store look fresh, young and cohesive for its customers. The store had to be appealing, by offering a young environment experience to the discerning family. To add to that was the Lifestyle signature that could be recognized by our customers consistent across the store. The key deliverables of this exercise was to enhance youthfulness, fashion, accessibility, service and easy navigation for our customers”.