In pictures: Blacks new store model

Walk into the City these days and the view is  more akin to that encountered in perhaps Chicago, Hong Kong or, at a stretch, Manhattan, than to the rest of London. Soaring skyscrapers in myriad shapes compete to fill the skyline and there is a sense that these are jagged glass and steel peaks of some futuristic mountain range. Perhaps the urge to scale them might explain why outdoor retailer Blacks has just revamped its store on the area’s western fringes, adjacent to the main entrance to St Paul’s – either that or a lot of City folk like the outdoors life when they’re not busy moneymaking.

Whatever the motivation, the store has a completely new look and when set against the nearest branch, which is on Chancery Lane and represents much of what Blacks has been about, this is a major departure.

It is, however, worth dwelling on the reasons that Blacks’ owner, JD Sports, which acquired the business for £20m in January, might have for creating something new. Close to 100 Blacks stores have closed since January, and a further 50 are expected to shut during 2013. That will leave about 150 Blacks shops – at which point a refurbishment of the total estate becomes a financially realistic proposition.

Out with the old

And there is a pressing requirement to do something. Visit the Chancery Lane store, less than half a mile from the St Paul’s branch, and this quickly becomes apparent.

Chancery Lane has a perfectly pleasant and helpful complement of staff and the product range has most of the gear that you might hope for if you fancy a weekend hill-walking or intend to spend a night or two on the moors.

The problem is, it looks tired, a mite lacklustre and, in parts, in need of a lick of paint and a spot of polish. It also looks remarkably generic in terms of the way in which the interior has been laid out and the product displayed.

With light-coloured vinyl wood flooring covering the ground floor (stone flags in the basement), white suspended ceilings and a relatively low level of ambient light, and no particular product highlighting, this is strictly functional. It’s also the kind of thing that most shoppers will have encountered many times before.

From the outside, it also suffers from a degree of anonymity, owing to its location in a prosaic building. It does have a long, glass frontage, but this does little to alleviate matters and the contrast with what’s on view at the St Paul’s store could hardly be greater.

Catching the eye

The St Paul’s branch is also part of a modern block, but the black surround that has been given to its fascia immediately sets it apart. And anyone passing by will notice that visual merchandising thought has gone into the face that Blacks presents to the world through this store. Asymmetrically arranged boxes have been piled on top of each other to provide a display frame for a range of different items in the window. Each box is highlighted with a string of LED lights around its interior and at the back of each there is a printed outdoors vista.

Reinforcing the perhaps obvious, a message has been applied to the glassline stating ‘Life outdoors’.

Stepping over the welcome mat, which carries both the brand name and the address for the Blacks website, the initial view is of a darker but more strategically lit space. Where Chancery Lane was a white-box store, this is a black box with an exposed ceiling void into which strip lights and spots have been inserted. The effect is to create a degree of light-and-shade drama, even before the shopper begins to look at the stock or the rest of the interior fit-out.

There is a more rugged feel to this interior than elsewhere and a greater degree of departmental segmentation, thanks to the interesting but cost-effective deployment of graphics featuring category names and outdoor images.

On the ground floor, a typical example is the fitting rooms, where wallpaper featuring stones piled on top of each other fosters the notion of a dry-stone wall – you could easily be in the Cumbrian Lakes. The floors are also less prescriptive and generic feeling, being a mix of untreated wooden planks and stone flags.

Definition for the various products is also provided by colour-coded strips around the upper perimeter. It’s a simple device and an age-old way of doing things, but it works and is a real contrast to what has gone before in other Blacks stores.

The other point about this floor is the use that has been made of multimedia, whether it’s the panelled video screen in the wall backing the stairwell, showing film of places you might want to hike across, or a variety of light-boxes. The latter are scattered across the store and while some may be used as brand signal points, they do serve to vary the view as you look across the space.

Attention to detail

Leaving the men’s clothing and shoes on the ground floor, the basement is used for camping, equipment and women’s clothing. This level is, if anything, more of a bells and whistles job than the ground floor, with touches such as a mannequin lying in a snug-looking sleeping bag and there are a lot more light boxes.

Even the commodity displays work well here and the rucksack display is a case in point. The bright colours of the products provide contrast with the black wall panel on which they are hung.

The merchandising in this part of the shop is very dense – a lot has been crammed into a relatively modest space, but the mid-floor display equipment has been kept low, meaning that there is no sense of overcrowding or feeling cramped. Even on the way back to the ground floor, Blacks has not missed a trick – each rise on the staircase is used as a location for further brand messaging.

Quick smart

A good store therefore and if other Blacks shops looked like this one then perhaps this retailer’s history might not have been quite so problematic. On a positive note, a roll-out appears to be taking place, with a second store refurbishment already completed at the Lincoln branch.

This has been a fast-track project – from the initial design brief in May to the point at which the store was handed over post fit-out was less than three months. And the use of graphics and merchandising, rather than wholesale in-store structural change, means it is a format where costs can be controlled. It’s just as well really, JD Sports has been keeping a close eye on this one as it has been developed and will be keen to see some sort of ROI sooner rather than later.

As long as City workers continue to crave something other than an office, JD may well be pleased.