This Rusher’s kiosk makes shoppers flip for Flip Flops

Flip Flop brand Rusher’s has recently opened their retail kiosk at Forum Mall, Hyderabad. The vibrant and fun shop-in-shop kiosk showcasing trendy Flip Flops with the tagline ‘make your own style’ has certainly managed to drive in shoppers looking to add a dash of style to their casual look.

Adhering to the small store format, the 12 feet by 12 feet store has been modelled as an experimental kiosk, allowing customers to easily navigate around the store. The kiosk is made using various elements including metal, wood plyboard, MDF, paint, lacquer, glass and printed vinyl. The unit is compact and uses space optimally leaving room for the billing counter and iconic props, such as the coconut palm replicas. These manage to drive home the imagery of a typical beach holiday – a destination that the Flip Flops are best suited for. The interior also houses the shelves for products display.

The kiosk is designed and executed by a Bengaluru-based multi-disciplinary design firm KREO Design and the idea was to position the brand with an international identity.

Talking about the objective behind creating the mall kiosk, Darshita Thaker, Founder & Managing Director of KREO Design & Innovation explained, “Rusher’s Flip Flops are trendy, classy and much-admired by today’s generation of fashion-conscious youth. In this context, the objective of the project was to position the brand with an international look and appeal while giving complete expression to its vibrant, fun and colourful side.”

“The kiosk design seamlessly complemented the relaxed and joyous mood of the Flip Flop collections, allowing for memorable and unique visual merchandising opportunities. The result was that we were able to create more than just a kiosk; we recreated a novel and vibrant highlight destination within the mall. In many ways, this helped create a new aspirational level for the Flip Flops,” she added.

By going for a retail kiosk strategy, KREO Design essentially wanted to promote brand awareness and loyalty, and lead the customers to a more holistic and enhanced buying experience.

Highlighting the advantage of creating a kiosk for a Fip Flop brand, Thaker further explained, “The kiosk allows for easy and quick access for enquiries about the product and the brand. The brand is easily able to engage, excite and educate the customers about the products, pricing and offers available.”

Additionally, as the products are Flip Flops, the kiosk helps in creating a good opportunity for impulse buying, and thus generating more sales.

According to Thaker, positioning the kiosks at strategic locations also helps the brand to reach more customers in a cost-effective manner. The kiosk can be positioned based on the customer journey and direction of the mall visitors,for high visibility and impact of the brand.

Unlike a store, a retail kiosk strategy helps the brand offer more services at a lower cost. “By saving on rental and structural costs, the business and in the process the brand, is able to invest more on the customer experience and service to the customers. With an impactful kiosk design, it encourages more footfall from mall visitors and thus leading to better store performance,” Thaker highlighted.

Talking about the challenges in executing the Rusher’s kiosk, Thaker said, “One of the challenges was creating a balance between visually impactful design elements and maintaining high SKU count while adhering to restrictions set by the mall. Special treatments were required to be done to the materials used, to achieve the required design and shape of the fixture.”

“Since it was an open kiosk located on the mall floor, importance and consideration had to be given to product / kiosk security after the closing hours, for which we incorporated a pull-down shutter mechanism for the space,” she added.

KREO has so far designed and executed one kiosk for Rusher’s, with more in the pipeline in the near future.