Copenhagen stores: Retail’s Great Danes

Mention the words design and Denmark in the same sentence and it’s a fair bet that the images conjured up will be of a stripped-back and spare aesthetic in which the simplest products are given a new lease of life by the simple expedient of changing their colour or perhaps simplifying their shape.

It is equally likely that if you think about retailing, pictures will form, based upon the products that are offered, of equally spartan store environments - it’s a Scandinavian thing.

Much of this probably comes at second hand from views of Sweden and therefore, by extension, Denmark. It is based upon the relatively limiting experience of a few trips round Ikea and, for those who managed it before it closed in the UK, maybe a stroll around Ilva.

The truth is, for Brits, there is no particular clarity when it comes to Denmark and even Copenhagen remains an uncommon destination for many. That said, a progress through the main pedestrianised shopping street of the Danish capital does much to dispel a whole smorgasbord of retail prejudices and to show that this is a land of widely diverse retail formats.

It is also a country that boasts a quite distinct retail panorama, in spite of Denmark having only about 5 million inhabitants.

Magasin (du Nord) and Illum

There are many who might dispute their UK equivalents, but it would be reasonable to describe Magasin du Nord as being a little like a House of Fraser branch (a good one, that is), while Illum could be seen as Copenhagen’s Selfridges with a bit of Harvey Nichols.

And one of the more striking features in Debenhams-owned Magasin currently has to be its men’s fashion offer on the first floor that does what many department stores fail to do: make fashion for men as exciting as that on offer for women.

The floor is laid out on fairly traditional lines with a walkway taking shoppers past a series of mats, where brands show their wares. But the quality and attention to detail of each of these individual offers is well above what you’d expect, even in an upper mid-market to luxury store such as Magasin. The Suit branded area serves to make the point, with an Anderson shelter-style structure behind the cash desk and a series of pendant light chandeliers, some regimented and others seemingly sporadic, forming the eye-catchers in the space. This is upscale merchandising of the kind that leads you to expect relatively expensive stock - it does, however, put you in the mood for digging deep.

In Illum, meanwhile, the window tableau features numerous mannequins pushing trolleys of one kind or another, each of which is loaded up with stock that has been purchased. It’s a simple image, reinforced by the rather obvious strapline ‘Shop till you drop’ and is probably a little at odds with the reality of a store where multiple purchases are likely to be the exception rather than the norm.

Urban Outfitters

This branch of Urban Outfitters has been in town for a few years now and it bears all of the US casualwear retailer’s traits, but its form is unique to Copenhagen. Like most of its other branches, this store is located in a historic building and it takes an industrial approach to the matter of fit-out.

Unlike most other Urban Outfitters stores, however, this one is very narrow, a fact that is emphasised by the large RSJs that have been deployed about halfway through the space to form the basic structure, which supports a mezzanine.

It’s a design that is mirrored by the in-store equipment, with the fixture just inside the door looking as if it had been created from steel and then whitewashed. With its very plain floor and warehouse ceiling, the whole interior could, of course, run the risk of being over severe, but this is softened by the use of delicate chandeliers on the upper level.

Jupiter

This is Denmark, where everybody owns a bicycle, where cyclists obey the law and where bike lanes are sometimes rather more abundant than main roads. That being the case, it should perhaps come as little surprise to find that in Fisketorvet - the largest shopping centre close to downtown Copenhagen - there is a cycle shop.

This one is called Jupiter and the entrance to this open-front unit has expensive-looking branded machines strung up overhead, taking the eye through the space towards the back wall, where brightly coloured accessories exert a siren call on those looking in. It’s actually a very basic store, with little having been lavished in the way of shopfitting and store design and with lighting being provided by basic fluorescent tubes, but this does not mean that it is unattractive. What

the store does succeed in doing is presenting a workshop-like store environment in a fairly unusual location.

The store is in one of Fisketorvet’s more distant reaches, but it works as a destination in its own right.

Giganten

When it comes to electricals, Danish retailers have a habit, not unlike their nearby German counterparts, of telling it how it is. The Giganten store, again in Fisketorvet, does what the name above the door hints at, with an outsize space for technology.

The implication of the long lines of white light overhead and the large green font used to form the fascia is that price will be the principal driver when shopping in this store. It comes as little surprised therefore to find that deals and price promotions form much of the offer in this store. It was also one of several similar electricals stores in the centre, although for clarity of messaging, it was, by some distance, the most outstanding.

Petitgas

Situated across a side street from Illum is one of those stores that feel as if it is from a different generation (and probably is) and which you would be hard pressed to find in the UK.

Petitgas sells hats for men and, well, that’s it. The visual merchandising in the window is simple and effective, with the retailer opting to use multiple identical white mannequin heads with a hat perched on each. Each has a price and while this looks a distinctly old-fashioned manner of presentation, everyone passing the store stopped for a few moments to try and imagine themselves in one of the titfers.

The curious point about this store is that a visual straw poll of downtown Copenhagen in the early evening revealed that there were very few hat wearers, even among men of

a certain age.

Skoringen / Feet Me

There are many shoe shops in Fisketorvet, but this is the most unusual. It is a narrow, but deep store and the open front is cleaved in two by an internal wall, to create two totally discrete, yet linked stores.

The main store is Skoringen, a mid- to lower-market shoe offer that uses orange pendant lights, lifestyle graphics and a low-lit cream interior to provide the setting for fashionable, rather than fashion, footwear. But it is the small Feet Me that occupies the front right-hand side of the shop that provides the visual interest.

This is definitely about fashion and a black raft with white spotlights, clean white shelving and a green carpet with coloured cubes to sit on, make this one of the more enticing fashion landscapes in the centre. The interesting bit is that the whole thing is determinedly low cost, yet it was one of the more obviously busy stores on a quiet Wednesday evening. It stands as proof that a little creativity and thought will probably always outweigh bucket-loads of cash when it comes to store design.