Fantastic fabric displays for dixons flagship london store
The flagship store of electronics retail giant Currys PC World is located on London’s Oxford Street, Europe’s biggest shopping thoroughfare and home to numerous leading lights in the worlds of shop design and retail architecture.
The Brief
Currys PC World wanted to create a ‘store of the future’, with dramatic point of sale displays that worked for multiple brands and products – so Cestrian designed a tension fabric system framework with lots of flexible features.
Challenge
The company’s vision was to create a ‘store of the future’, with large displays of imagery that could be changed on a regular basis. Plus, multiple departments of the store each needed to be satisfied with their own section; while the entire system had to simultaneously fit together as a full picture. As Cestrian’s client, Currys PC World already used our tension fabric system (TFS) frames for retail and point-of-sale (POS) displays throughout many of its UK stores – and, having experienced the benefits of this high-quality system, wanted to replace all existing POS presentations in the Oxford Street store with our TFS framework. Our team was required to consider a wide range of products, brands, wall sizes and profiles, working to very tight timescales and also around other contractors to make sure the work was completed to a high standard.
Solution
We organised brainstorming meetings with Currys PC World and each of their product managers, which revealed that even within each area of the store, multiple marketing messages often needed to be displayed and rotated. To accommodate this, we scoped and developed a grid-like TFS framework that offered huge flexibility to each department of the store, allowing product managers to change sections of graphics whenever needed – and without relying on professional fitters each time. Our EFI Vutek HSR Pro printer was the ideal tool for the high-volume, premium-quality printing required, thus enabling us to meet the timescales preferred by Currys PC World; while our Monti Heat Press also provided invaluable support in producing fabric prints.
Results
After some test-runs in-store to make sure the artwork was displaying as intended – as much of it was in a grey colour that needed to be viewed with the in-situ lighting – we went ahead and produced the entire framework and the high-quality fabric prints to be stretched over it. We also offered system variations to suit the display requirements each product and brand, including illuminated LED light boxes, fabric pelmets, illuminated halos, divider walls, plasma screens sunken into fabric, plasma screens on top of fabric and logo illumination. Both we and the team at Currys PC World were very happy with the final results.
“Cestrian helped us enormously with creative ideas, design, project management, fitting and installation,” said our contact at Currys PC World. “We also really appreciated their flexibility in producing test-runs for viewing in-store before the full roll-out; and their expertise in applying a system that embodied our original vision.”
