Retail Design 

In our capacity as a retail design agency, we offer a plethora of service offerings that create enhanced customer store experiences. We intuitively understand that shopping cultures are shaped by global paradigms that go beyond individual preferences. We apply a multi-disciplinary approach, helping us tailor experiences that have tangible, positive and far-reaching impacts on business. From graphic design to ergonomics, from architecture to the nuances of industrial design: we blend them all to drive retail experiences that increase footfall and sales conversions, augment brand positioning and allow differentiation from competitors.  

Elephant's umbrella of Retail Design agency offerings

An understanding of retail necessitates an understanding into the anthropology of consumption and buying patterns. At their core, these are linked to human behavior. This leads the Retail Design & Experience team at Elephant to focus on a human-centered approach that revolves around understanding various customer segments and an exhaustive idea of the journey they undertake through a retail space.  

While approaching a focused retail design company is the norm in today’s increasingly competitive environment – in addition to the disruption provided by the advent of digital – the field in itself is budding. Interior design and architecture traditionally dominated the retail space with consumerism acquiring an air of superficiality; however, the discipline has a serious identity that the team at Elephant Design has long recognized. This leads us towards providing a different, exhaustive perspective when it comes to the field and naturally, drives us to create experiences based on a more nuanced understanding.   

The best retail design agency is one that undertakes a fundamental re-examination of branded spaces. In line with that, we cover, but are not limited to Retail stores, large format stores, multi brand outlets, mobile retail solutions and kiosk based interactive retail programs. 

Playing with Totality: An Immersive Approach 

Consumers decidedly perceive a retail environment in a total, immersive sense. easily We morph into a dedicated retail design studio via our intuitive understanding of these environments and use it to approach the creation of retail spaces through a holistic lens. This incorporates the sensorial aspects within the structural ones. From the overall structure to the atmosphere and thematic, from conveying brand identity through visual branding to curating an experience through lighting, sound and materials – we undertake everything that is expected of a retail design studio and beyond. 

Once a direction is clear, initial design concepts can be created that explore the mood and tone, general atmosphere and the interior look-and-feel of a typical space. Initial expressions of how your brand can be executed in a 3D environment form a critical component at this stage as well as exploring tentative floor plans and store layouts that show how traffic flows through the space. 

The retail design team at Elephant Design is a multi-disciplinary group that manages the design process across architectural detailing, retail products, furniture, visual language & store brands, wayfinding and signage as well as any interactive content. At the heart of it all lies our finetuned process, which takes several facets into account.

The Double Diamond for Retail Design

We utilize the Double Diamond product design process. The Discovery process begins by mapping customer journeys that describe our customer’s path from the moment the brand enters their awareness. This extends through to the in-store experience, purchase and post-sale phases too.

1. Discover: For any retail design agency, assumptions are dangerous – especially if they are not backed up with proper research. The process begins with a wide understanding of the business intent of stakeholders and a deep audit of existing stores. Our understanding is also augmented by exhaustively interacting with end users who are directly impacted by the issue at hand. We deploy the customer journey map tool, which provides us with a high-level overview of all of the touchpoints between brand, product, staff and the customer.

2. Define: After having garnered valuable, unbiased insights from the Discover phase, we can now accurately define the problem. This serves two purposes: eliminating the problems that don’t need our attention while prioritizing those that are essential and pertinent to the solutions we seek to develop.

3. Develop: The development phase provides added direction and focus. Since our process is human-centric, it involves extensive definition of user personas and the context within which these myriad users will interact with our space. We ensure that our deliverables include an understanding of customer behavior, gaps in store experience and a design approach.

4. Deploy: For retail spaces to work as they are intended to, validation prototypes, user testin

Key Retail Design Phases

Ultimately, the best retail design agency only deserves such a moniker provided that their processes are in order. They need to indicate a clear, rigorous commitment towards the complete suite of retail design services offerings where no stone is left unturned in the pursuit of the ideal retail space. 

1. User Research

2. Customer Journey Maps

3. Experience Design Strategy

4. Concept Visualization

5. Design: Store Brand

6. Design: Visual language elements

7. Design: Retail Systems, furniture, lighting & Fit-outs

8. Design Detailing & drawings data

9. Mockups

10. Validation Prototyping

11. User testing

12. Standards & guidelines

From Cognition to Purchase

Our inquest into the world of the store & the customer’s mind generates significant data about the functions, gaps, effective size & scale and performance gaps in the service & in-store experience including consistency across all channels. Ultimately, our design approach is created around insights grounded in cognitive psychology and behavioral science that provide tangible, appreciable results in real time. This ensures that our results rival and even exceed what a conventional, dedicated retail design company can provide. 

In tandem, when we consider business goals and other stakeholder interests, our frameworks cement our role as a retail design agency that manages to integrate the latest, best practices while re-examining the way in which the retail design space functions