Store tours

Never been one to bite the hand that feeds, so I'm always grateful when a retailer rings up and enquires whether I'd be available to take a group around stores in, say, London or Berlin. It's generally pretty straightforward and there are invariably a few new shops that are worth showing off.

The thing is, when you talk to many of those who come over for "inspiration", it doesn't take too long to find out that they're not really sure what they want to look at, so they go for the default position. More often than not, food retailers will want to have a gander at foreign supermarkets, fashionistas will want to check out Topshop and so on.

There is a school of thought however that says that if you really are looking for something new, then looking beyond your own sector is more likely to pay dividends. At the moment, probably the most dynamic interiors are to be found in the restaurant sector - so here's a piece of free advice. If you want to see something new, now would be a good time to pick up the phone and ask me out to lunch. I guarantee I'll be able to find you something interesting and if all else fails, at least you'll have had a good meal.

A new Bhs: in Uxbridge...and it's good!

Uxbridge, slap bang in the heart of Betjeman's Metroland is not the first place you'd think of when considering a whizzy new retail format. It is the choice for Bhs however for its new store design and what is on view is so much better than anything else the chain has to offer. A cynic might remark that this would hardly be difficult as the design bar is hardly at stratospheric levels.

That would be a mite unfair in this instance as Bhs really has pulled out the stops and more or less reinvented the brand. The tricky bit will be whether the roll-out button is pressed and just how much of what is on offer in Uxbridge makes it to other branches. The answer to this is hard to discern as Sir Philip Green's Arcadia, of which Bhs is a part, is not famous for its open-handed approach to telling outsiders about its strategy.

It seems a fair bet however that if this one performs even modestly well, we'll see things taking a turn for the better at Bhs in the not too distant future.

Making more of bookselling

The trouble with many booksellers is that they just sell books. And if that sounds like a statement or the obvious, it's perhaps because it is. In a world where the great majority of retailers all try to go the extra mile, whatever that is, booksellers seem, in many instances to be rooted in the 19th century.

Consider how nice it might be to have a bookshop where you could listen to music...of your choice...while browsing or just sitting and reading prior to considering a purchase. And for those who are a little older than the UK average, think how good it would be to have a pair of reading glasses on hand to take the place of the ones that you left beside the bed at home.

Dussmann, aka Das KulturKaufaus, aka the culture department store in Berlin, does all of this. Visitors can, for a small returnable deposit, walk away with a CD player, music and a pair of glasses. The aim is to keep shoppers in the store and with books accounting for 60% of sales in this city centre landmark, you can see why this might be important.

The only real question is why other retailers haven't done something similar.

And when you look at the pictures that go with this - look at the "Service Center" bit that's written in red.

Popping up

The word 'community' is much over-used and when seen in the context of a shopping centre is generally a shameless piece of marketing flimflam. Little surprise therefore to have seen this in the Whiteleys shopping centre in Bayswater. OK, there are a handful of pop-up stores that have opened on the scheme's first floor, but does this constitute a "community"?

Probably not. Especially when it is considered that three out of the four pop-ups that have made it over the starting line here are owned by the same company. It does also make you wonder about the nature of popping-up. If the name is any kind of clue, then, by definition, a pop-up store can never be part of a community.

Perhaps I'm missing something. But I rather think not.

Crime and punishment

From time to time, you come across signs that make you smile in spite of the severe message that they promote. This one, spotted in a trendy sneaker store in Camden makes stern reading and is, presumably not to be taken at face value.

Nothing much more to say about it really, other than that I particularly like the "survivors" bit.

Banana Republic goes to the dogs

Why do we stop to take a look at windows? What is it that makes you take a few moments longer to examine a specific scheme when all around there are rivals vying for your attention. The answer is simple: simplicity.

A single message well delivered will always trump an overtly promotional vehicle and to see how this can be done effectively, a trip to Regent Street at the moment is probably in order. Banana Republic is a doggedly metropolitan format and in the UK there are just two stores: Regent Street and Brent Cross.

And currently, the theme of the Regent Street store windows is supposed to be Chinos, but is actually, well, dogs. Stuffed doggie mannequins, of various breeds, held on leads by headless mannequins.

So what's that got to do with Chinos? Just about everything as it happens. The faceless dogs are chino-coloured and their handlers are dressed in preppy Chino-based outfits. This may sound a mite contrived, but then what window isn't and as a vehicle for making you stop and stare, this is a store that currently boasts a scheme that demands attention in a way that others along the way just don't.

Keep it simple and make it fun. Every visual merchandiser wannabe should bear these two strictures in mind.

Student Art

Design-led furniture store Heal's has set about marking its bicentenary by stripping its windows of the usual expensive-looking (and when you reach the cash desk, expensive in reality) stock and replacing this with, err, a bunch of art students from the nearby Slade art school.

We have, of course grown used to the idea of windows with live models, plants and even temporary art installations in our shop windows. But a scheme posited upon the idea of allowing shoppers to walk into the space normally reserved for merchandise and then to commission a quick and dirty art work would seem new.

The whole shooting match is in place for just a week and if you want a woodblock print, hot off the press, then at £20, this may be the place for you. But hurry, it's already three days old, the groovy studes are looking careworn and the whole thing is due to be dismantled on Friday.

Middle American bland

In New York and somebody said to me that if you really want a snapshot of American Retail, head for the King of Prussia. This somewhat surreal instruction turns out to be nothing more than an exhortation to visit a large shopping mall near to Philadelphia. It houses more than 400 shops and its management claim it's the largest of its kind in the US (and there was I thinking it was the Mall of the Americas in Minnesota).

Anyway, it is big and it is bland. Every US retailer seems to have taken a unit here and although there were a few voids, occupancy seemed higher than in most European equivalents. That said, it has also succeeded in strippping every tenant of personality and as you walk round, you can't help wishing you were somewhere else. If this is indeed Middle America writ large, then there are vast swathes of the country that I really wouldn't care to visit. Surely there must be better than this...and it was almost empty.

By contrast, the newly-opened American Eagle flagship in Times Square, shows what good, show-stopping retail is all about. See if you can guess from the pictures, which is which...

So here are those pics from the United Nude store in Amsterdam, which turned out to be as good as the build-up that was provided. And it also happened to be busy - quite an achievement in view of the esoteric nature of the product and the highish ticket prices.

A beautiful store

His dark materials

I'll put a few pictures of a store called United Nude, in Amsterdam, up on the site later this week - when I've been there. But meantime, been corresponding with the man who designed it - Rem Koolhaus, the person who designed the Prada store in New York and numerous other high-profile spaces.

This is what he calls a "dark store" - a place where everything is left unlit, apart from the stock. Koolhaus comments: "It's just one of a number of options that you have. Another good thing about the dark-shop concept is that it has a really high impact. You enter a world. It's the same reason that cinemas are dark."

He adds: "Without answering the question of what architecture is, I would just like to say that this shop is not really even interior design. to me, it's an installation or a machine. A very efficient machine."

Should make for an interesting visit I reckon. More Thursday.

Popping over to Prada

Stand at the Place Beauvau end of the very posh Avenue Martigny in the poshest part of posh Paris and you'll be hard pushed not to catch sight of Prada's "Temporary Space." Externally, this looks like a bridge - hardly an accident as the Italian architect responsible for the design took much of his inspiration from the nearby Mirabeau Bridge, a green-painted cast iron 19th century structure.

It is certainly impressive and, unlike many luxury stores, has a very open-door policy when it comes to welcoming shoppers, irrespective of the width of their wallets.

The point about this shop however is that while many are calling it a "pop-up" (it will only be in business until the end of March), it has a feeling of permanence, both in terms of store design and the quality of the fixturing, that rather gives the lie to this.

Which calls into question the notion of what we mean by a pop-up. Is it something quick and dirty, or can a super-luxe environment also qualify? Have a look and make your own mind up and decide whether the inherent snobbery implicit in the use of the word "temporary", rather than pop-up, is merited. And if you're in Paris, go have a look. You probably won't be able to afford much, but on the other hand, it is a trompe l'oeil spectacle.

Not a Colette store

Went to Brick Lane yesterday, supposedly on the promise of a Colette pop-up shop. For those not in the loop, Colette's a fashion store in Paris famous for being famous - for some of its clothes and for a broad range of ephemera. It also has a bar that serves just mineral water - or at least it used to have.

Back in London however, arriving at the address marked out as the Colette pop-up, it turns out to be a space in the former Truman brewery which has been comandeered and turned into the "Cube Store". Step inside, and this considerable space is home to series of red geometric installations, some of which contain objects "selected" by Colette, as the blurb says. So this is it, the fashion store as curator and as adjunct to a Nissan car launch, which is what this space is really about.

It's only around until Christmas, so go visit, but don't expect a Colette pop-up store. This is a spratt to catch a mackerel, or some such.

A poor show

I like bookshops and, in general, I like pop-up shops. The logic would follow that a pop-up bookshop should be a place to cut a path towards. Was on the King's Road early this morning therefore, eager to look at the Phaidon pop-up that's just opened and will probably trade until after Christmas.

A yellow sign in the window informed passersby that there was "20% off all books". Maybe so, but aren't there offers of this kind in almost every bookshop in the land? And bearing in mind that this is a pop-up store, you might feel entitled to rather more.

But what really grated was the store itself. Everybody knows that pop-ups have a limited lifespan, but there is no excuse for adopting a lowest common denominator position. This is, quick simply, the dullest shop on the King's Road and that is saying a lot. A white box, with white fixturing. Phaidon books are pretty, but not pretty enough to offset this.

And as if this were not enough, there's a concerted PR campaign to get it written about.

Well...at least that bit's worked...

Spreading across the West End

The temptation to write something about loving or hating ran deep this afternoon. I was at the Piccadilly end of Regent Street in seach of the Marmite pop-up store and in truth, I loved it. Two floors of nostalgia in celebration of a yeast-based spread wouldn't be the first thing that you might think of when deciding how to use an empty store unit.

And yet here it is, a store devoted to the breakfast and teatime condiment, complete with a pyramid of Marmite jars and a turntable on which jars of the black stuff rotate endlessly. Its product, ranging from toaters and tea towels, to branded bread bins and, of course, Marmite jars, is on the ground floor, while upstairs, there's a 50s-style tearoom where you can enjoy Marmite fingers with a cup of tea.

Only open till Christmas, this store, at 82 Regent Street, is worth a visit if only to admire the multi-coloured Union Jack at the back of the ground floor (with Marmite at its centre, natch), created by Royal College of Art graduates.

Go now

Proletarian small beer

This is not any kind of visit to a new store, but a visit to a bar. I was in Poland a couple of nights ago in a city called Posnan. Nice old centre, lots of brand new shopping centres - you know the sort of thing - and a Polish Communist Party nostalgia haven called "Bar Proletaryat." Pickled herrings and gherkins, brown beer and Marx - it's all there. The place is filled with Soviet era flotsam and jetsam and absolutely demands a visit when you're in town.

And surely the ultimate irony is that this is an enterprise celebrating control by the people which is only available to those who can afford it and which is, presumably, run by a well-to-do capitalist somewhere.

In true communist style, they stopped me taking a pic, so I'm posting an image of a decent-enough looking building in the centre of the city.

Deck the halls

If there's one thing that's almost as predictable as retailers rolling out the Christmas cheer, usually in the shape of a few lights and some streamers, it has to be the article detailing their efforts. And yet, there is always something curiously uplifting if you happen to wander through London's West End at this time of year, as long as it's post 4.30pm, because the only time to do this is after dark.

Cycling at speed down Regent Street is actually not a bad way to assess the displays on offer. If anything catches your eye as you try to avoid death by number 12 bus or motorcyle courier in a hurry to make the next drop, then it must be pretty good. On which reckoning, Habitat and the National Geographic store merited a quick pull on the brakes. Zara, Austin Reed and Nokia, among many others, did not.

The same exercise conducted on Oxford Street the previous night revealed only one highlight - Selfridges, where a somewhat camp intepretation of various fairy tales was eyebrow raising. It was the same story in Piccadilly, where Fortnum & Mason put on its usual display of baroque festive magnificence, including a reference to the Michael Clark interpretation of Swan Lake with male tu-tu clad dancers.

And finally, at the top end of Ken High Street, it was hard not stifle a yawn at the endless Warholesque repetition of the Wholefoods Markets windows - quite simply the dullest Yuletide iteration in town.

What was remarkable was how relatively few retailers were decking the halls. Many seemed not to have bothered at all. We may still be in recession, but this is definitely disappointing.

Went to Cardiff yesterday. Stepping off the train, for whatever reason, I was back 20-something years to my student days. Much has changed and there is no more obvious signal of the Welsh capital's renaissance, if you want to call it that, than the massive St David's 2 shopping centre, just opened, albeit a fair proportion of it remains tenantless.

Actually I was there to meet the men from Cult, the retail arm of Superdry and never let it be said that the high street is moribund. This store, open about four weeks now, is around 14,000 sq ft, making it large for a fashion store and if you want to take a look at a retailer that rings the material and design changes wherever you happen to look, this is as good an example as is out there currently.

What was the main shopping drag, Queen's Street, looked pretty much as I remembered it - very wet and busy, although at least most of the units were filled. The ghost of a girlfriend past walked towards me and then passed by - wonder what she's up to now... or where she is, come to that.

Germany, it's not all dull - really

There is an unfortunate tendency to group German cities into a homogenous whole that is wholly unwarranted. Having just returned from a Berlin jaunt followed by a Frankfurt foray the case could hardly be clearer. On the one hand there's Berlin, centre of Teutonic counter-culture, with its seemingly endless supply of retail novelty and innovation. And then there's Frankfurt the mittel-Europ home of bland.

Bankers may like it, but it's got almost nothing for the visitor other than, perhaps, a startlingly large (and vulgar) sculpture of the Euro in a very unsettling yellow - slap-bang in the centre of the city. In fact, even those living in the city will admit, in their weaker moments, that this is the epicentre of boredom. There's the Kaufhof, tick. There's the H&M, tick. And oh yes, there's the boarded-up Hollister waiting to open. Excuse me while I head off for an overpriced coffee and cake - little reason to do much else.

Berlin is so utterly different, with something worth considering at every turn. I've attached a couple of pics, but even a really extensive gallery really wouldn't do the place justice. Time perhaps for a reassessment of German cities and their retail. Many of them are like Frankfurt, but not all. Think Bremen, Hamburg, Munich and perhaps Köln if you're stuck for ideas. Failing that, just go to Berlin.

And the pics are of the Nike SB pop-up store (it'll be gone by Nov 10) and the Michalsky Gallery, if you're flash and made of cash.

Travelled to Manchester yesterday, jumped into a hire car and visited a place called Rawtenstall, which is about 18 miles north of the city. It's a small Pennine-side town and probably not the first place that you'd think of when seeking out your fab gear...if you're female. Yet, there's an indy called Sunday Best (again, perhaps not a name that makes you think fashion) selling everything from Moschino to Religion (a big brand I'm informed) in a store whose interior is like the most chi-chi parts of designer Manchester. It seems such an odd location, but there again, it has been going for 38 years, so it must be doing something right. And it's just opened a first floor for young fashion shoppers. It's impressive, dark and full of Gothic stage-set trickery combined with a Banksy-like approach to trompe l-oeil graphics. If you're in this part of the world, and I can't imagine why you might be, go visit (alternatively, take a look at Sunday Best online).

Returning to the city, the contrast provided by the newly-opened Helly Hansen store, in the Arndale centre, could hardly have been more stark. This is the UK's first standalone store for the brand beloved (they tell me) of North-Western fashion pundits. Maybe so, but you can't help but wonder at the POS that has been used on the shoe wall at the back of the shop. Each of the technical-looking pieces of footwear has been put on a clear acrylic plinth on the front of which are details of why it's worth buying. All well and good, except that unless you have very good eyesight (I don't) then the font was far too small to read.

A spokesman said that it was "techie stuff" and that therefore it didn't matter that you couldn't read it. The obvious riposte to this is if it doesn't matter, why is is there? Such carping aside however, Helly Hansen has all the attributes of a Scandi-brand - a large, somewhat anonymous white sales floor, large mono-chrome graphics and a lot of brightly coloured clothing - perhaps that's what they like in Manchester, although why it should be so wildly different from London is not immediately apparent. Plans are in place for more stores....in Glasgow, Liverpool and maybe Leeds. Nice touch putting a graphic at the door that reads: "THE FORECAST CALLS FOR RAIN." Where else would this be more likely to happen?

Anthro finally takes a Euro-bow

So this is a few hours ahead of Anthropologie's official opening in London, but given that it's a good effort, I'm sure they'll overlook this. When shoppers, or at least VM sensation seekers make their way through the doors tomorrow morning they will be in for a surprise. Although the 'living wall' - a 50ft high structure containing 1,000s of plants - has been pretty well trailed, what will probably be less well-known is that the store also contains a full-size fabric narwhal (yes, it's one of the smaller cetaceans found in Arctic waters which has a unicorn-like appendage emerging from the middle of its face), algae blooms made from white bin liners and mannequins wearing crockery skirts.

All of which is certainly impressive and designed to make you gape. But will it compel people to dip into their pockets? The pricing of many of the articles, even allowing for its Regent Street location, certainly looks ambitious. That said, there is quite a lot, especially in the homewares area that falls into the upper end of the impulse buy category.

You'd be hard pushed to find a better merchandised range in London at the moment and almost every card has been played in this VM Royal flush. It seems probable that Anthropologie will garner column feet rather than inches and that its unveiling will be the signal for much rejoicing among the VM community.

The second store will open on Kings Road, by which time Anthro's European chief, James Bidwell, will have had sufficient time to gauge its long term future. Hard to call this one, but go see.