Branding within the box

Celebrating its 50th anniversary, perhaps it was befitting when Rustan's Group of Companies contracted Retail Planning Associates (RPA), Columbus, Ohio, to reposition its 250,000-sq.-ft. flagship department store in Makati, Philippines, in the fall of 2000. With a total of six department stores in the country, the well-known and revered Rustan's felt it was time to target a new group of consumers. The new format would include essenses, bath and beauty retail; U, young adult apparel; and Jill, women's basic apparel. All three brands would target the younger, trendier consumer without leaving behind its current customer base. "We convinced them to refocus their business, to go for a younger target consumer without alienating the mature consumer," says Peter McIlroy, partner of international services at RPA.

The company is a three-generation family-owned business with a rich history and a high standing reputation. The goal of launching the three brands was to appeal to consumers who might have been overlooked in the past. "Rustan's is a department store and with their history, they have a very solid relationship with a mature audience. It's the most prestigious department store in the country, but their market is getting older and their house brands were not leveraged as sub brands," says McIlroy. "They've been looking to get rid of most of those brands and relaunch the store with a number of very significant house brands. The idea was to simplify the shopping experience and come up with a new positioning strategy that really stands for something."

With a clear objective, RPA began the process of designing three new brands that could also substantiate freestanding units in the future. "These new brands give them the opportunity to grow outside of the traditional department store market," says Jason Woods, store planner/visual merchandiser at RPA.



essenses

Opening in November 2000, Rustan's 6,000-sq.-ft. bath and beauty department known as essenses takes a holistic approach to store design to draw customers to its products, which cater to mind, body and spiritual health. "Essenses was a concentration of body and bath, younger cosmetic lines and fragrances. We felt it would draw in the younger consumer and keep the older consumer coming back. We tried to reach a broad market," says Nicholas Baughman, senior studio officer at RPA. Essenses stands on the ground floor of Rustan's flagship store in Makati and offers sidewalk access.

The store design, accomplished by a collaborative effort between RPA and Philippine-based design firm SSO.a, emphasized graphics and lighting to convey its personality. Graphics on the valance depict parts of the body that represent the senses, such as the ear, eye, mouth and hand. The larger window and column graphics have images of the faces of young, beautiful and energetic men and women. "Essenses is based on the senses. That's how we evolved the graphics program. They became images of happy, healthy young people. We wanted to use fresh, bold colors—something that no one had been doing in the Philippines to date," explains Baughman. "We chose a white, bright base so that we could emphasize the colors in the graphics and the colors in the product." The lifestyle graphics are on backlit Plexiglas and illuminated by fluorescent strip lights. "We wanted to look at backlighting every wall fixture to make that product stand out, fully accentuating the color of the packaging and drawing consumers to that product," Baughman adds.

Lighting in the space is of the utmost importance, as customers need optimal illumination to test various products. "We had the best of both worlds going in on the ground floor with windows, as we get natural lighting all day long inside the space," Baughman says. The cosmetics section in the store is presented in open-sell fixturing and tester stations allow customers to apply makeup. The cosmetics units have internal lighting around the mirrors and lighting above, as well as the ceiling light downspots that are approximately every four feet on center throughout the space.

RPA implemented column fixtures to give the space a more consistent appearance. "The white marble floor started to flatten out when compared to the beautiful back-lit walls. We created tower fixtures to give us an opportunity to show a lot of different product and add a metal and glass feel around the cashwrap area," Baughman points out.

Essenses offers its customers a healthy snack haven, the Tea Bar, which serves an array of health foods plus a variety of tea-based drinks. Residential style pendant lighting and retro-style furniture add to a comfortable environment where customers gain a sense of well-being. And after all, that's what it's all about.



U

RPA also created the store design for U, the nearly 20,000 sq.-ft.-store that debuted in June 2001 at Rustan's Department Store in Makati, which offers young adults basic streetwear and trendy apparel, accessories and footwear. Lighting and music play key roles in achieving the desired effect of the design, which targets consumers between 18 and 28.

"We wanted the light to be brighter in some areas and darker in others," Baughman says. A majority of walls are basic white, and an LED lighting system in focals and escalator wells produces a dramatic effect where color becomes the draw.

Loud, almost intrusive music representing various genres blasts throughout the space, hoping to identify with the customer and evoke an energetic mood. "Hardcore, youth-oriented music is playing in the store. And they don't bleep out any of the words," Baughman notes.

"All of the entrances to the U space have a built out, black painted "portal" with double action glass doors that have the U logo applied (just an adhered graphic) in black and green to each side," Wood says. The mall entrance leads off with the U branded concept and then goes to international brands, including Steve Madden, Gap, Old Navy and Quicksilver and Levis.

U also features a cosmetics area for shoppers that carries Rustan's essenses branded products as well as other international brands. "The goal is that if we can get a targeted consumer into these spaces, we want to offer them as much as we can. We don't want to traffic them back down to a specific area to buy their cosmetics, shoes and accessories," says Paul Teeples, environmental designer, RPA.

Graphics in U are images of youthful faces that exemplify the targeted consumer. "On fitting rooms there's a shadow of female and male bodies on a plexi [Plexiglas] lit door," says Baughman. "Just like the music and the lighting, we wanted graphics to be extreme. We used extreme angles on these graphics and close-ups of faces and then color-toned them."

Metal powdercoated fixtures in the space were understated to allow color and light to dominate the design. Most merchandise is displayed either from a simple cantilever wall shelf or a monkey bar from the floor. "We wanted to lessen the fixturing in this whole area. We didn't want the fixtures to have an opinion. We wanted them to just blend into the environment," Baughman explains.

An added bonus U extends to its customers is The U Zone, a 250-sq.-ft. space in the store allocated for surfing the Web via store-provided laptops, perusing through youth-oriented magazines, recharging a mobile phone or drinking a latte from the Starbucks vendor located around the corner. "People could actually linger for awhile and feel they're not on display," Baughman says.



Jill

Jill is Rustan's new women's apparel store appealing to the 25-to 35-year-old professional. Offering a modern basics apparel collection, Jill's tagline is "She Works. She Plays. She Dreams." The 1500-sq.-ft. store is also the last project of the three new brands developed for Rustan's department stores by RPA. And again, the objective of the Jill store design was to better address the consumer.

"They had gotten so carried away with their private label brand, they were struggling to focus any of those brands to the consumer," says Baughman. "We decided to look at a basics branded program that was fairly inexpensive. We wanted to bring her a basics product at a good value and good quality and to set it up in an environment that wasn't typical. I think when most retailers develop private label programs, they don't focus them strongly enough on the consumer. We wanted its own graphics program, its own fixture program and its own design program, so that it could go head to head with the Banana Republic that's next to it, and with the Docker's that's across from it."

The store takes on a residential feel not found in the other two departments. One of the most notable elements of the design is the colored soffits, which lead the customer to the cashwrap. "The soffits get painted out every time they change their graphics, which is three times per year," says Baughman.

Essenses, U and Jill have been rolled out into all the Rustan's department stores. A fourth children's concept, JAM, opened in November. Rustan's is also looking to implement these as stores into other company-owned malls, one called Tower, which is located in downtown Manila. Perhaps one day these new brands could take on a life of their own and become freestanding units. If a department store brand can break out of the box, the possibilities are endless.