As a brand experience agency Leaping Creative was invited by bosie, the “unisex” fashion designers’ brand in China to design their largest flagship store (2000 sqm) so far in the city center of Shanghai.
“The retail trend in China nowadays is day by day focusing on offering an exciting and fresh shopping experience. By working closely with the brand founder, we approached the design by defining the actual customer expectations for a shopping destination,” said Zen Zheng, the design director of Leaping Creative.
Based on the research of the brand’s target customer which is the “generation Z”, Leaping Creative co-created the in-store customer journey with “bosie”, also a narrative script was written, which told the story of how “bosie” as an intelligent species landed in Shanghai from space travelling.
The final outcome was a retro-futurism styled store contained from fashion products to a snacks bar and a café to a pet hotel with various interactive installations for young trendy customers.
Facade
To respond to the strict building regulations in Shanghai, without changing the outline of the original building, Leaping Creative chose to cover the 40m long facade with custom-made frosty reflective stainless-steel sheets in order to reflect the busy street as well as a space-age installation attracting passing-by pedestrians.
Ground floor theme: terrain exploration
Followed the narrative script of the brand, for the ground floor, inspirations were drawn from space exploration equipment: conveyor belts, turbo engine, etc., to create the surrealistic environment.
For the ground floor layout, a café with ice cream and snack bar, and a vintage photo booth together with the fashion products were located.
To break the isolation of two levels for a whole inner cabin
Designers of Leaping Creative opened up the ceiling between two floors along the central axis, the remaining beam used as a bridge to create further traffic on the 2nd floor.
Due to the basement restriction, the escalator had to install onto a 1.2m height platform to connect the two floors. Designer transformed the platform with spiral steps to a spaceship base form to encourage customers to further experience.
2nd floor theme: spaceship cabin
On the 2nd floor a huge screen wall formed with 92 screens and an iconic “bosie goose” welcome customers from the escalator. The screen wall metaphorically serves as the front window of the space ship, also constantly playing the animation of the brand’s story.
For the 2nd floor, designers transformed the interior to a sci-fi style hi tech lab environment not only telling customers that they are inside the spaceship, but also respond to the similar style of fashion products displayed accordingly.
A pet hotel and playground were located by the window of 2nd floor, which can accommodate 2-3 small size cats or dogs daily, customers can also bring their own pets to stay there while shopping.
Each floor contained 6-8 fitting rooms with individual interior to inspire customers to try different outfits.
Interactive installation
Leaping Creative designed various interactive installations according to the script, for the ground floor a space jet was flying in the mid of air. As if it was just coming out from the universe black hole.
Facial recognition installation: by capturing the face of passing-by customer, artistic “bosie plants” will grow from the face in the screen, and customer then can download the animation clips to play on social media.
Around the pillar, four pilot helmets were installed which reflect different personalities of the bosie brand.
A Whale-tortoise imitated installation was also installed on the 2nd floor which corresponded to the “blue” collection of the bosie brand.
Brand visual materials design
For an immersive experience, Leaping Creative also designed in-store visual elements including graphic signage, motion graphics and shopping bags, etc.
On the 2nd floor for the self-help cashiers background, the designed motion graphic created an impression that as if the customers are inside a speeding spaceship during space travel. Based on the general design concept, Leaping Creative also designed the opening materials.
Location: Huaihai Road, Shanghai, China
Area: 2000 square meters
Design company: Leaping Creative
Design director: Zen Zheng
Experience strategy: CC Chen
Interior designers: Xiaowen Chen, Qiongwei Zhou, Shengyue Xia
Interactive installation designers: Mindong Zeng, Minghao Liang, Zijun Luo, Zhuji Li
Spatial vision and material designers: Jiarong Feng, Zheming Ji, Jiayi Huang, Jiachun Wu
Construction supervisor: Liwei Chen
Project managers: Tianwei Luo, Dongzhi You
Production manager: Zixin Huang
Material management: Yanjun He, Boquan Yu
Photos courtesy: yuuuunstudio
Interactive animations: SeenVision
Model: Funny
Major materials: stainless steel (Hornet steel art), terrazzo concrete (Florina), paint (Hongtufang)
