Trying to get shoppers into your store when you’re positioned on the third floor of a glass and steel tower block is probably a matter of having a very substantial shout. In the pedestrianised Drottninggattan area of Stockholm, fashion retailer Esprit has overcome this by making a feature of the newly refurbished dedicated escalator that takes shoppers up to the store.
In the normal way, an escalator would be just that, and certainly hardly worthy of comment. Esprit, however, has worked with German lighting company Ansorg to create a “light wave” that is intended to draw shoppers towards the store in much the same way as a fly is attracted to a bright light.
Running the full length of this long escalator, the light wave is in fact a series of lighting tubes set into the ceiling above the moving stairs, each of which is capable of having its intensity and
colour individually programmed. The fact that the tubes are positioned in parallel to the escalator stairs creates the impression of movement for shoppers as they head upwards.
And here comes the science. According to Ansorg, the light is dimmed and then undimmed from 40 per cent to 100 per cent of the tubes’ luminous capacity, fostering a pulsing wave
effect that is reinforced by a combination of six light colours. In addition, the colours are programmed to run over a bed of white LED strips, providing a contrast setting.
This sounds like an expensive way of attracting customers, but given the location of this store, a spectacular solution was required.
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