Retail Concessions
Inset: Image supplied by Checkland Kindleysides
CONCESSION CONFESSIONS
Taking a small space in a larger store provides brands with access to huge footfall with less of the stress of owning a store of their own.
Concessions offer retailers an excellent opportunity to get their products into prime retail locations without paying excessive rent rates. By taking root in a small section of a popular store, brands are seen by a huge number of customers, including some that they might not necessarily attract if they had their own store. Concessions are a perfect choice for
brands that cannot afford to rent an entire store, or those that have a successful flagship and want to make their products more widely available. With the increasing popularity of concessions as a viable alternative to paying out for a whole store, the focus on designing captivating spaces has increased. This has resulted in some incredible concessions being introduced into the retail arena. “When I first started at Estée Lauder,
concession design was fairly standard across the board – a circle of counters creating a barrier between the customer, the product and the consultant,” explains Mark Fanthorpe, Founder of Umbrella Design. “It was all about motorway traffic – big aisles that led people from one concession to the next on their way through the store”.
Cosmetics brands are a classic staple for
concession spaces, and the grouping together of these brands into their own
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space in department stores makes life easier for customers browsing for new products. Fanthorpe believes that the changes in cosmetics brands in recent years have definitely altered the face of concessions; “With more and more brands entering the market, the cosmetics floor is more competitive than ever, and as competition has increased the amount of space a brand has to make an impact has decreased”. The need to make the most of less
square footage has meant that brands have upped their game to get customers’ attention. This has resulted in a surge of captivating uses of space, which in turn has caused an increase in popularity of concessions across different retail sectors. Although the focus for brands can be completely different, the general premise for each concession is very similar. “At the heart of concession marketing
is the job of brand awareness and advocacy, which in a crowded market place amongst tough competition can be difficult to achieve,” explains Heidi Gray, Director of Client Development at Checkland Kindleysides. “Due to the need for constant newness and customers’ expectations to be able to shop the latest and must have products, concession sites and formats are adapting to facilitate a
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