Designing a branded retail environment for SinGaz

Abstract

SinGaz is a Dutch start up company that is going to design and retail electric scooters and bicycles on the European market, starting with Barcelona early 2012. The European e-scooter and e-bicycle industry is still in its infancy, and although this market is expected to be subjected to strong growth in the near future, its retailing situation has hardly developed to the same extent that many other industries have developed and most e-scooters and e-bicycles are sold through traditional, small scale multi-brand shops. This poses a great opportunity for SinGaz. In order to gain a strong position in the market, they want to build up a strong brand and sell their products through a branded retail formula that will be rolled out in large cities in Europe. In this report, a branded retail store is developed for electric bicycles and electric scooters for new start up company SinGaz. The challenge is to develop a brand that connects with the needs, desires and the daily lives of potential e-scoter and e-bicycle users, and to then translate that brand into a shopping experience. The first phase in this report explores how human behavior is influenced by the environment they are in. This is of importance because as a retail designer, one of your major responsibilities is to stimulate sales within the store. Research on how shop design influences behavior shows that some major sociological and psychological factors need to be taken into account when designing a shop. Personal control, respect and interaction are but a few key aspects of importance for people’s valuation of the shopping experience. A branded physical retail environment (as opposed to virtual retail environments) has the potential to express a brand to the maximum, because it contains all the touch points available to the brand, and all senses can be involved in the retail experience. Analysis of the market shows that the SinGaz brand, and subsequently the shopping experience should on the first hand be an expression of expertise of urban lifestyle, and in particular of urban travelling. The SinGaz shop should express that SinGaz offers more than just products, and that they have developed a complete transportation solution, where products and services complement each other. A second layer of the brand expression is ideological; research shows that communicating ideology in a shop is a powerful tool in engaging customers to a brand. SinGaz’s ideology is about sustainability, transparency and fair trade. Six emotional assets were found through interviews with people who live in Amsterdam, all of which cycled one hour every day or more. These emotional assets were visualized and used as guidelines and assessment tools for making and choosing between two mood boards, which in turn served as guidelines for design of the SInGaz shop. In this way I attempt to make sure that the design style will fit with what the brand expression. The result is a shop where service, information and inspiration are prominent features that supplement sales and thereby clearly expresses the benefits that SinGaz offers.