design:retail - January 2018 - 40

040

Maria: I really love set design, so I would love to go
into Broadway or television/movies, but what I really like is most of the Broadway set designers also
do retail design and they do concerts and stuff like
that. So I like that idea of kind of crossing over to a
lot of different ones, but mainly set design.
Yoo Jung: I've always been interested in fashion
and interior design. I want to go into visual merchandising or store design. I like exploring. I like to
design the look and feel of the space.

Katia: I spent about a month in Italy over the
summer and also almost three weeks in Russia. I
noticed that people seemed to be [quite] brandoriented. So maybe brand loyalty or brand name
is a really big deal. Everyone seemed to be visiting
stores, but also a lot of the stores were located in
heritage site buildings, so they were kind of tied
into an experience innately, because of where they
were, just because the cities were so much older.
So that was probably part of it. But shopping instore was a huge thing.

"One of the reasons why I switched
into this major is because when you're
creating a painting, you're just sort of
putting it on a wall, but in this major
you're designing something for people
to actually interact with."
SHŌNA NEARY

Giuliana: I think I want to go into window displays.
Lauren: I either want to go into exhibition design or
window displays. I really like working hands-on and
just creating an environment people can have fun in.
d:r: What differences and/or similarities do you
see in retail overseas versus the United States?
Shōna: I'm more familiar with Germany specifically. I used to live there, but they don't use social
media as much as we do. Fewer people have Instagram and stuff that we sort of take for granted
here for our age group, and I'm noticing a lot more
in the stores [here, where] you can hook up to an
app and do all types of stuff with it. People still
like to go into the stores more. I feel like [people in
Germany] don't buy online as easily. In their culture,
they walk every day to get their groceries, while here
we probably go once every two weeks maybe. I think
they're more traditional in a certain sense, and we're
more experimental with technology.
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Asabea: I went to Rome, Florence, Venice and Siena,
and if I would pick one that was most interesting
shopping-wise it was Florence, because you have
lots of markets. They had leather markets going
down alleyways. It's like a district similar to what
we have going on here. I went to France and it's also
kind of the same, district-based areas. If I were to
say anything about the stores in France versus here I
guess I would compare them in size. They're larger.
They have more space.
Cynthia: I'm just going to talk about retail in Indonesia. That's where I'm from. I think in Asia
the retail is so much bigger than any other place.
I agree with Katia about everyone [being] brand
oriented. Even in Singapore from mall to mall they
were all connected underground. You just keep
going for hours and then you go to another neighborhood without knowing, and you're still in
the mall. That's crazy. What I keep noticing is the
same store over and over again, but people keep
shopping even though the tax is much higher in

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Asia. So there's two styles, you shop in town for a
middle-class brand, but when you want luxury,
even though we do have those stores, people would
rather travel to Europe and get the bags from LV
(Louis Vuitton) for example, and go back and say "I
got this from Paris." That's the idea of traveling and
getting from a certain place.
Yoo Jung: Like [Cynthia] said, in Asia taxes are so
high, so if Koreans want luxury brands, high-end
brands, they travel to Japan or to Hong Kong or
Europe or to the United States and buy that stuff
and go back.
Alyssa: My parents are from the Dominican
Republic. I haven't been there in a while, but every time they come back they tell me an IKEA just
opened, they opened this restaurant there. I feel
like the Dominican Republic, they're definitely
brand-oriented and they care about what's the
biggest thing in America that's coming here. So
I have family members that [say] "we just got the
iPhone, let's go to IKEA and buy some super fancy
furniture." So they always want what's popular,
especially through social media. It's like a win/
lose situation, because when you do have those
brand names and those things that they view
there as a luxury, it's also a danger because not
everyone can have that stuff. So when I go there,
my parents [say] "don't take out your iPhone because people are going to view you as a target."
So even small things are viewed as a luxury there
because of the economy.
Asabea: My parents are from Trinidad. I go back
almost once a year. They have malls, but the shopping experience there is more or less...it's a small
island, so you kind of split it up into three parts.
There's a shopping area. It's a north part and a center part and then the south part. You're not going
to find any other stores anywhere but those central
malls. Based on what Alyssa said just now, it just
triggered my memory that they don't have brands
that I know of. I'll go there and look at these stores
and go "what is this? I don't know what this is
supposed to be." They have their own versions of
Starbucks and things like that. They are bringing
things over there, but they're not retail. It's more
food. They just got an IHOP. It's so weird that I'm
just wondering how come there's no H&M. There's
not anything like that. There's just stores where you
can buy clothes. In that case, I don't think there's
any kind of brand loyalty that way. They just kind
of buy clothes because they need clothes.

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