EHI has named the best store concepts

In cooperation with Messe Dusseldorf, EHI presented the EuroShop RetailDesign Awards for the best stores showing the most inspired concepts for the eighth time on the evening of May 13. 79 projects from 23 countries were submitted this year – a new attendance record. Once again, a holistic store concept with a clear assortment message was decisive for the award. In order to emerge from the competition as a winner, contestants had to address customers with a successful mix of shop architecture, colors, materials, lighting, and visual merchandising and convey a clear range message. The international jury chose this year’s winners from 28 finalists. They come from the US, Poland, and Italy: Hershey’s Chocolate World, Jabłka Adama, and Replay The Stage convinced the jury with their concepts. Jabłka Adama marked the first time that a Polish retail company has received the EuroShop RetailDesign Award.

Hershey’s Chocolate World, Las Vegas, USA

The US confectioner Hershey opened its flagship store in Las Vegas in September 2014. The store is integrated into Hotel New York-New York and boasts over-sized products on its storefront. In the store, customers will find a white-silver color scheme and high-gloss terrazzo, wallpaper, graphics, and wall paint. In addition to the New York buildings made of chocolate, interactive elements make the brand “experienceable.” “Flavor Walls” and food stalls featuring various Hershey brands offer customers the chance to personalize their favorite products. Customers can also star in a specially created Reese’s television advertisement and share it via social media. At the “Hershey’s Chocolate Bar Wrapper,” visitors can pose for a photo that then adorns the product packaging and is shown on the digital exterior wall on the Las Vegas Strip. JGA was responsible for the store design.

Jabłka Adama, Poznań, Poland

Jabłka Adama (“Adam’s Apples”) is a combination of the name of the store owner, Adam, and the Apple products sold there. The challenge was to integrate a brand with a high level of awareness into an atypical brand environment. The interior of the 60-sq-m shop was designed by the Polish architecture firm Modelina Architekci and is reminiscent of a fruit market, thus playing with the Apple brand. For example, the company uses a rolling wooden stall to present the products. The side walls are also decorated with brown paper bags. Wooden fruit boxes integrated into the rear store wall offer more display options. Two white pendant lamps form a visual contrast to the dominant wooden materials in the store.

Replay The Stage, Milan, Italy

In September 2014, the Italian jeans label Replay opened a flagship store in Milan’s trendy district of Porta Nuova. The 1,500-sq-m “Multi-Experience Store” is a symbiosis of a shop and a stage construction. Stage equipment, a polished concrete floor, film lights on a black-colored ceiling, cables, house walls made of wooden planks, and backdrops create a rough yet busy interior. Each setting represents a different scene: A modest house in the Midwestern United States is enveloped in a tornado of vintage wallpaper that on closer inspection turns out to be a whirling kaleidoscope of brass butterflies. There is a tailor from Manhattan in the year 1928, who makes tailored jeans for the customers. Tables, steel shelves, and mannequins present the goods and the garments are also integrated into the various sets. The variable spatial concept of the New York design firm Roman and Williams Interior allows a quick change of each “stage set.”

About EHI

The EHI Retail Institute is a research, training, and consultancy institute for the retail industry and its partners. It employs approximately 60 people. The international EHI network comprises around 700 member companies from the retail, consumer, and capital goods industries. The company was founded in 1951. In cooperation with EHI, Messe Dusseldorf hosted EuroShop, the world’s leading capital goods exhibition for retail, and EuroCIS, where the latest products, solutions, and trends in IT and security technology are presented.