Shoe retailing tends to come in two forms. There’s the top end where the stock is displayed semi-museum style with each item being afforded the kind of reverence normally afforded a second dynasty Ming vase - clearly nonsense - and then there is the mass market.

Here in the UK, shoppers are more and more frequently subjected to mid-shop racks full of stock where single shoe selling has been abandoned in favour of pairs, in the interests of lower staffing and faster throughput.

But it doesn’t have to be this way and Elisa, a shoe shop in the heart of Antwerp’s historic district, shows how.

In essence, this is the simplest of shoe displays, consisting of a mid-shop low plinth, extending the width of the shop with stock arranged by style along its length, followed by a marginally

higher plinth on which the shopper can sit. The pattern is repeated from front to back of the store, allowing for both stock density and the ability to see from the entrance to the rear in one uninterrupted gaze.

It is the kind of layout that looks immediately old fashioned, but which works well and makes you want to take a closer look at what’s on offer.

Elisa is not cheap when it comes to product and is in an area of town where improbably named Flemish-speaking designers display their wares. For all that, the store is an object lesson in how to make the most of a fairly mundane retail space of an unexceptional shape. It is also the kind of thing that could easily be replicated by the less rarefied mid-market.

Topics