When a health and beauty client shared their vision and brand strategy for growth, they asked Campbell Rigg, founder and CEO of our agency, to research creative ideas, cross-platform brand strategies and retail design trends in each of the above sectors. In this article, we feature a European retailer in the beauty sector.
So we set our design team the task of benchmarking omnichannel beauty retailers across the globe and a plethora of retail brands soon began to pop up on our radar i.e. Sephora, Boots, The Body Shop, Holland & Barrett, Priceline and Smashbox etc.. During the research phase, we came across Douglas GmbH, whose stores Campbell Rigg has visited on many occasions whilst speaking at EHI conference events and working with the management teams of Metro AG and Tengelmann AG in Germany.
What interested us most about Douglas, is their cross-platform omnichannel strategy. As a multi-channel retail pioneer, Douglas has integrated its brick and mortar, online and mobile retail businesses.
In this article, we look at aspects of their retail branding, store design, online channel and pop up stores in shopping centres, named “Beauty street”.
Douglas is the leading European specialist retailer of selective beauty and personal care products and offers outstanding products, excellent service and shopping experiences across its brick and mortar, online and mobile store platforms.
Its growth strategy relies on four key pillars: a leading multi-channel offering, an attractive and innovative product portfolio, geographic expansion and operating retail store design excellence. Together, these four pillars are Douglas‘ growth and profitability drivers in one of the most attractive and fastest-growing segments in the European beauty market.
Douglas wants to build its pioneering role in multi-channel retailing and also exploit opportunities in the omnichannel retail design going forward. The management team continues to integrate brick and mortar, online and mobile retail offering. For this reason, they make every effort to enhance and standardise the appearance of their retail outlets, online and pop up store experience. At the same time, there is a focus on optimising the service experience for customers across all points of sale. This is a key differentiator compared to their competitors. By further extending the e-commerce activities, management state they want to make the online platform even more attractive and important to their customers and further increase sales activity and customer retention.
We think the online website is fresh, bright, innovative and easy to navigate. The promotions excite the viewer and the overall impression is a feeling of vitality.
There is a section on tips and trends, where you can discover lifestyle trends and current themes such as Hollywood food trends, beautiful pregnancy and street style. There are tutorials on hair and nail maintenance, as well as ideas from their fragrance consultant Douglas Duftberater.
The “Beauty street” pop up store concept delivers unprecedented brand PR, digital and social media reach, and more importantly supports the brand commercially with a significant uplift in brand awareness, customer retention and promotion of sales online and in-store.
Our internal process of renewal encourages us to continually benchmark and write about the best in class retail brands in many market sectors across the globe.
The photographs in this article have been taken from the web and are representative of our thoughts and views concerning multi-channel retailing.
Why not call us and talk about your retail brand strategy, design renewal programme, online digital and social media requirements.
