New Balance

Three Dogs was initially approached by New Balance to handle the retail design of its Taipei flagship store. Three Dogs reviewed New Balance’s retail design standards and documentation and produced a design and documentation pack for this store that significantly improved the quality of the outcome by tightening up and clarifying details, connections, and functionality. The process was continued in a design for a Flagship store in Malaysia.

 

Three Dogs also worked closely with the New Balance team on a multi-brand footwear concept and guideline and the Flagship portion of its Global retail guideline.

Carft

CARFT is an innovative retailer specialising in beautiful and useful things for the home. CARFT SHATIN is the first concept store located in the largest one-stop home furnishing shopping mall in Hong Kong, HomeSquare.

 

Three Dogs designed a conscious break from the homeware retailing mold. The store design creates a seductive continuous perimeter the presentation that maximises display and stock storage.

 

Presenting the products at table height invites browsing and handling by customers. The striking orange color theme is part of the visual identity, in-store communications, and signage programme.

HMV Central

A different approach was adopted for HMV’s second store opening, choosing a color palette of blond wood and extreme repetition of a wall bay design and exposed tube-lighting to create an expansive retail space with a fresh, clean and contemporary character.

 

An iconic service counter with neon signage is the landmark in this shopping square. Directory signage, visual merchandising tools, and modular furniture is all designed to easily modify setups to adapt to changing needs.

HMV Emporium

This entertainment emporium occupies the three top floors of the Pearl City Mall in Causeway Bay. The building structure is typical for shopping malls of the seventies: low ceilings and deep floor plates with little natural light.

 

The client brief asked for an extremely short design and construction period, a layout that offered flexibility to adapt to changing needs, a way to bring more light and space to each floor and a raw and ready-made aesthetic.

 

The solution was the construction of a new atrium, visually connecting the three floors. This was combined with an interior design scheme that left most of the original building structure untouched. It was simply cleaned, sealed and left exposed. Building services were carefully designed so they could be left exposed too and contribute to the aesthetic.

 

Brick partitions and a couple of design ‘events’ such as signage, cashiers, bars and Dj booths were strategically placed throughout the space to create focal points and guide the visitors. A lighting system was installed to enhance this experience. Level 1 contains music a movie collection, level 2 contains lifestyle and audio products and level 3 a bar, restaurant, and music stage and a small retail area.

 

MBT

The ‘sensor’, MBT’s logo form, sits inside the sole of each MBT shoe. It was only natural to use it as the basis of MBT’s retail design.

 

Sensor shaped stackable shelving can be chain linked to adjusting to any site condition. Height adjustable tables and wall panels have sensor shaped perforations. These visually striking elements, combined with the strong red-white color scheme delineating casual and sports products, created a strong retail presence. The design was prototyped and manufactured in China and rolled out in stores worldwide.

Wild Bounty

The store design is based on the idea of expressing the power harnessed in New Zealand natural environment.

 

Cues from the brands’ packaging design, a controlled palette of materials and forms are combined into a distinctive retail experience that elevates the products. A large plant wall creates a striking shopfront image, while inside long tiered solid wood display shelves stand out against the subtly angled lines of the perimeter walls and the soft tones of the terrazzo flooring.

 

A lot of care was put into designing the product presentation. A selection of display and tester trays, graphic displays and visual merchandising guidelines make the product range very accessible. Cork display columns with plated steel inserts showcase key offers. A graphic wall with a striking three-dimensional treatment acts as a background for the cork-and-glass service counter. Playful details such as the handles and railings, display tools and the yellow gridlines that lead the first-floor treatment room complement the experience.

Lee Jeans

Three Dogs/ Retail design developed a store concept based on the black and white of the Lee logo and the industrial/chic brand positioning.

 

The concept stores consist of a black men’s department, a white women’s department and a glass pavilion with imported premium denim. Products are displayed on a combination of specially designed furniture and found objects, including furniture consisting of bases of industrial machinery.

 

This resulted in an exciting, vibrant shopping environment that managed to introduce the brand to a younger audience. The concept was rolled out in dozens of concept stores and in a modified version in hundreds of shop-in-shops.

SmarTone

Three Dogs / Retail Design was appointed by SmarTone-Vodafone to work on the design development a new retail experience, seeking a departure from the existing operational model consisting of a counter with staff seated opposite customers. The client realized that sticking to this generic operational model limited their options in offering a distinctive service standard and retail experience to customers. In response to this, Three Dogs proposed a design process that could explore innovations in the mobile phone retail formats. Three Dogs carried out a study of existing retail operations and flow. The analysis leads to the formulation of several new layout options and display formats. These assumptions were tested in several simulations. After evaluation, adjustments were made and tested again, ultimately leading to the concept of product walls and display islands at the front of the store, service stations at the rear and a cashier near the entrance.

 

With the new operational model defined, Three Dogs moved ahead designing a visual style and functionality for the various furniture components: a modular product wall display system, cashwrap and service stations. Approved design concepts were built as prototypes and tested by staff to further refine dimensions, detailing and ergonomics to ensure maximum comfort, functionality, integration of electronic equipment and durability. The design was subsequently rolled out in all stores. SmarTone-Vodafone has become the benchmark of Hong Kong mobile phone retail interiors. Other operators have copied many of the stores’ innovations and design solutions. Smartone-Vodafone’s same-store traffic increased dramatically after renovation and the design provided many benefits including the ability to change the appearance of the store overnight to keep up with product developments.

Crocs

Crocs designs, manufactures and retails footwear, using its patented Croslite material. Driven by Crocs’ Asia marketing office the project involved developing a retail environment design that could showcase the product collection and work as the basis to build up brand recognition through its retail network in Asia.

 

Our approach to the project involved analysis of clients’ product line, proposed retail formats, brand identity, customer expectation and competitive landscape. On the basis of this analysis, Three Dogs designed a very flexible and simple fixturing system. To simulate their performance with end users all fixture and furniture elements were tested and modified in prototypes prior to manufacturing. After opening a prototype store, a retail environment guideline was developed. Currently, the design has been implemented in hundreds of Crocs stores across the region from Japan to South Africa.

 

Ever since introducing our design Crocs shops are consistently top performers In terms of sales per square foot. Three Dogs continues to be involved with Crocs designing new fixture programs,  store formats, and planning of stores throughout the region.