Debenhams marketing director Richard Cristofoli talked about lessons from its Oxford Street store overhaul a year after its completion at Retail Week’s Shop.
Debenhams’ overhaul of its Oxford Street flagship store was one of the biggest the shopping street has seen – and it didn’t come a moment too soon, Cristofoli said at the Retail Week Shop conference today.
“We realised for some time that the projection of our brand on the most important shopping street in Europe was, to put it politely, suboptimal,” he said. “The store hadn’t been touched for 20 years and there was a need to modernise.”
The retailer wanted to create a store that acted as a showcase for its international customers and franchisees, as well as a flagship for UK shoppers, he said.
Plus, it gave the design team more freedom than they usually enjoy. “One of the challenges of having 165 locations is that pressure – you cant do things everywhere. This enabled us to unleash our own creativity, and filter that out through the whole estate.”
Debenhams worked with landlords British Land and design agency Dalziel and Pow.
One of the key lessons, Cristofoli added, has been the importance of continuing to evolve the store now the overhaul is complete. Part of this, he added, is determined by local and seasonal trends – during Gay Pride, for instance, the front of the store was decorated with the slogan “Freedom to be Fabulous”. He said: “We want to it be part of the conversation in the city that we’re in. It hasn’t just been about the physical transformation of the space, but about how we make that space live and breathe in that season and that location.”
There is still work to do in some areas to bring them up to scratch, he added. “The home floor is one floor that is ok, but not as good as it could be.”
One final lesson is that Debenhams is unlikely to wait so long before the store’s next overhaul. “We won’t leave it 25 years again,” he said.
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