Retail Ambiance?

A quick trip to Kingston this morning to get a christening present. I also popped into Hollister as they have a sale on and Amy loves their tops.

Now Hollister is a strange retail concept that fascinates me. I have over 15 years experience of working in retail, a lot of which involved visual merchandising and the principles of setting out a store to encourage the customer to buy. Hollister seem to get away with breaking many of these 'rules'.

Good lightening... in Hollister it's so dark in places you really struggle to see the true colour of the garment, let alone see the price tag.

Making it easy for the customer to browse... the clothes are mainly folded and piled really high, and you need to be a size zero to comfortably move between the merchandising units.

Ambient music.. here the music is so loud, you'd be forgiven for thinking you had walked into a night club! And they spray their own brand perfume all around the shop so that not only do the clothes you buy smell of it, so do you when you come out... it's bad luck if you don't like it!

But they are obviously very successful and I guess that's the power of a strong brand... the customer will put up with a lot, to get hold of that certain 'look'. Utterly fascinating!