Sector: Sports & Fashion

• Within the fashion industry, sportswear is the sector that undergoes the most changes and trends every year.
• Shop design should facilitate such rapid and frequent transitions.
• Customisation, dynamism, agility, sustainability and exclusivity are the 5 most important points to consider.

Concept store design is probably one of the most exciting, but also one of the riskiest fields of design. And undoubtedly the most critical discipline in Retail.

It is a field that needs to combine in equal parts knowledge about consumers and brands, materials and their working processes, graphic arts and technologies, costs and sustainability, etc. 

But above all, it must get it right from start to finish for three tremendously important reasons:

1. The investment in time and money involved in implementing a new shop concept is a long-term commitment for brands and retailers. There may be changes, but getting it wrong will involves not only an opportunity cost but also a direct cost to fix it.
2. “Playing it safe” is not allowed. The less novel and risky the design of our shop, the less eye-catching it will be. Less attractive means fewer sales. It’s as simple as that.
3. To top it all off, the design of a shop must remain current and unperturbed by changing trends. This is the only way it will stand the test of time and fashions and continue to attract customers.

Renew or die: an ever-changing sector

Retail is usually a whirlwind of change, with a rapid succession of seasons and new products that requires transforming shops every few years, or even months.

To the seasonal changes we must add:

• The new season’s trends.
• Fast fashion.
• The sport that is fashionable at the time.
• The calendar of launches or “drops” established by brands such as Nike, Puma, Adidas or New Balance.
• And then there is the fashion for collaborations between brands from different sectors to create exclusive clothing collections, such as the collaborations between Lego and Adidas or Levi’s with Pokemon.

Therefore, adapting to these continuous and fleeting novelties makes the design of sportswear shops one of the most challenging in Retail.

If you are sure you want to radically change the design of your sportswear shops, our Consulting & Design teams are eager to inspire and help you.

Contact!.

5 sports sector furniture trends

1.Sportswear = streetwear

“Streetwear” or urban fashion dominates sales worldwide in practically all age groups. This is no doubt due to comfort, the influence of new musical styles, and the rise of a healthier lifestyle with a focus on sport.

Sportswear is increasingly present in all styles, and we can find trainers combined with suits or dresses, even on the main fashion catwalks or glamorous galas. 

Therefore, it is normal to see how sportswear shops impose recreations or elements of the cities themselves in their designs: neon lights, cement and metal textures, glass and marble, etc.

In fact, the most premium sportswear shops have nothing to envy to high fashion boutiques in their choice of materials and final appearance.

2.Streetwear = technology

One of the greatest exponents of urban culture is technology. If being trendy in fashion includes wearing trainers, being trendy in sports concept store design includes technology. It can:

• Be integrated into the displays, to attract consumers’ attention.
• Serve as a query point in the form of interactive totems.
• Assist in brand activation or customer loyalty as points of play or exposure.

3.Reinforce your brand personality over your product brands.

Sportswear consumers are unfaithful by nature. They like a variety of brands, which is why multi-brand retailers are in an ideal position to expand.

Something that has led to the success of brands such as Foot Locker, Foot District, Snipes, Sportland or Deportes Base has been to reinforce this positioning as “street fashion experts” through a very marked personality in their furniture. The choice of textures, lighting accents or shapes of the murals and displays are part of the brand’s visual identity manual.

The trend, as opposed to hiding furniture behind products, is to give it visibility and prominence, to add an element of constancy to such a fast-changing sector.

4.Sustainability as a cross-cutting value

For almost a decade now, practically all brands have been committed to sustainability as an added value for consumers. From being included as just another CSR section, it has become a guarantee for more and more products. The inevitable evolution is that this will be transferred to the design of all the brand’s points of contact with the consumer.

Whoever does it first will be able to offer it as a brand differentiator. The latter will simply be accused of greenwashing by the consumer.

In this post we gave you 8 key pieces of furniture that you can now integrate into your points-of-sale, from decorative to product displays.

5.Play with modularity

Using modular furniture that we can easily transform to always offer a visual novelty to consumers is something that we consider a trend in all retail sectors but it is even more important to keep it in mind when we talk about sportswear retail and its volatility.

Having the ability to play with the product displays and dedicate them to T-shirts, sneakers, accessories, etc., depending on our launches or campaigns, or simply use them as rotating elements helps to maintain the interest of consumers who visit our shop by way of showrooming.

Are you ready to apply these trends in your brand redesign? Contact us!.