It's the small stores, especially the higher end ones, which emphasise the experience as much as the merchandise -- high-fashion apparel, home-ware and lifestyle products, jewellery, expensive cars and bikes, and the like -- to its more evolved consumer set, where design innovation comes into play. But how many stores, even in this limited segment, are really distinctive?
"In general, the vocabulary which seems to reflect a path-breaking attitude is normally an inspiration from other parts of the world and its avant garde position is valid only in the context of the existence of the 'other' that is more familiar," says Soumitro Ghosh of Bangalore-based Mathew & Ghosh Architects, which has many award-winning interiors like the Ffolio store in Bangalore, Cinnamon in Kochi, to its credit. It's a view that others agree with.
"None of them inspires me...they all look the same," says Rajesh Pratap Singh, who conceptualised the offbeat interiors of his stores at the Lodhi Colony market and Select City Mall (both in Delhi).
For Singh, every space has to be true to its environment. So, the theme for the Lodhi Colony store, a public hospital, harks back to the original purpose for which the structure was built in 1945 -- a war-time infirmary.
So you have an all-white decor (which works out very well with the austere palette of Singh's clothes), an operating table for a centre-piece with hospital lights above, and most interesting, a line of lockers rising mid-way up to the ceiling opposite the entrance, whose uninteresting facade is what you see first as you enter the store.
The Saket store, which opened in December last, is similarly thematic, taking a train compartment for its cue. This time the colour scheme is light blue ("I didn't want white") and everything, the floor, the benches made of sleeper wood, the trunks that double up as shelves, is painted in the hue.
The glass facade has a train door, with a television screen fixed on the window, playing footage of a passing scenery. Such is the attention to detail that even the in-store audio has a track with a train-like tempo.
Fashion stores are, of necessity, "designer". But look at Rivet, Levis Strauss's boutique store in Bangalore, to see how design can tell and add to the brand story. Located inside the five-star Leela Palace in Bangalore, the store front is an interactive space, made of 8,000 copper rods and 16,000 buttons -- the rivet that's so symbolic of jeans -- set in a giant perforated wall.
The point is for people to come in and play around forming patterns. The 40-feet-long history wall, which covers the 150-year-old history of the company, also invites interactivity with a touch-screen that can virtually scroll along the wall, and an electronic book that turns pages as you move along; were you to stop somewhere, there'd be video and audio inputs to tell you more about the company.
Speaking of high-end lifestyle products, the Bajaj Pro-biking stores are a wonderful example of a design-led innovation not just in store layout, but also in reorganising a business in new directions in keeping with changing market realities.
This is what Sudhir Sharma, founder director and principal strategist at Elephant Strategy + Design in Pune, which came up with the prototype two years ago, has to say: "Bikes in India are traditionally retailed from dealer outlets. But the dealers weren't doing justice to the high-end bikes that Bajaj was coming up with, probably because they had a very limited market.
So we came up with a concept company showroom in Pune, where high-end bikes were showcased as a lifestyle product, with a suitably plush, airconditioned interior that would be more in keeping with the more evolved consumer. There was a riding track, computers where customers could browse through details of the bikes, and so on."
While Elephant is no longer associated with the Probiking Stores, the company has continued with the concept, having opened 10 stores already with 10 more to be added to the chain this year.
Not just that, the company's even broadening the concept as is evident from its recent agreement with Kawasaki to market its big bikes, Ninja 250, Sports Roadster, Ninja ZX-6R, Z1000 and the Vulcan Cruiser, which will soon be launched in India at the Probiking stores.
But there are few clients which are willing to experiment with design. As Amrish Arora of Lotus Design Services which worked on the Rivet store design says, "The client has to take ownership of the idea."
But few people, in his experience, are willing to experiment with anything radical. "The first Khaaja Chowk (a dhaaba in Gurgaon) that we did was far brighter, more kitschy...the later were more conventional. People aren't comfortable in an edgy space."
The design community is also perhaps to blame. "It's a question of attitude and research," says Kapil Gupta, whose Thanks Boutique in Mumbai was one of the projects that got him and his partner, Christopher Lee, the Design Vanguard 2005 prize.
"Most of our designs are one-off, unlike the cookie-cutter global, urban design idiom that was developed in the 1990s." Unfortunately, that's what most Indian store designers seem to consider the height of design.
