Every time I walk into this store, which is very often, it makes me feel like I am in this house with all these beautiful, vintage and unique elements at every corner that come with a story of their own. It is a retail environment that gives almost everybody a personal, homey feeling that you can’t ignore. Anthropologie conveys its brand identity through their unconventional retail environment with great success and perfection.
It is the ambiance created by these vintage store fixtures and retail displays that pulls you in and makes you feel like you are walking in a Parisian flee market with carefully selected antique furniture and many other vintage accessories around you. It is quite easy to spend hours in the store just exploring all the aged wood, cast iron or porcelain home goods as well as the inspiring clothingpieces with an unmatched fashion attitude.
Anthropologie stores appeal to all your senses with perfect combination of colors, textures, patterns and even scents, coming from the lid candles, creating this very warm environment that you don’t want to leave without taking a piece of it with you.
This is a store where the conventional and popular retail environment rules andmerchandising methods are gladly ignored in favor of unusual and creative ways of displaying products. Using old, rusty pipes as shelf poles? Perfect. Displaying towels and table cloths on the aged wood crates that are attached to the wall? Why not. Using ropes and old nautical pulleys to hang some clothes? Sure.
As you walk around the store, you find yourself in your dream kitchen where a French country style china cabinet in a rustic finish and with antique knobs welcomes you, displaying nice dishes and kitchen products from vintage jars to linen dish towels. These antique store fixtures give the perfect set up that makes you want to have exactly the same one at your own house. Of course, as with almost everything in the store, this china cabinet is for sale and the pricey tag reflects all the expenses of bringing it from a flea market probably in some small village in the south of France.As you keep walking, you come across this corner of the store that looks like it is from an ethnic bazaar in Istanbul or Fes with oriental rugs, lanterns, pots and baskets. Crowded and unorganized, it is set up serve to the overall concept, and you almost want to start negotiating with the store owner over that nice Egyptian rug.
There are many unusual elements in the store that are used as a part of the product POP display like old nautical pulleys, ropes, old buckets, pipes and old rusty nails, all of which catch you by surprise.
Some of these store displays look hand-made and almost too simple. It feels like they were designed and built inside the store with the available materials and components coming from different parts of the world combined with ones coming from your local hardware store.
Vintage vanity tables, china cabinets, barn wood tables, wood bar stools and so many other antique furniture pieces are used as product displays as well as being for sale for anyone who can afford a $1900 antique night stand.
Even though so many different textures and materials are used in the store, they come together in perfect harmony. Anthropologie’s eclectic design approach finds its own definition in this well-thought-out environment. The vintage metal shelving unit from an old grocery shop goes very well together with an old ceramic pot next to it.
Imperfection gives this very lived-in looking environment its cozy feeling with old distressed wood floors, chipped tiles and old, cracked door panels on the walls. Anthropology embraces its own character with the perfect collaboration of its product and store design. It is definitely worthwhile to spend at least a couple of hours in this store as well as spending a couple thousand dollars for that beautiful vintage armoire you fell in love with.
Jim Hollen is the owner and President of RICH LTD. (www.richltd.com), a 35+ year-old California-based point-of-purchase display, retail store fixture, and merchandising solutions firm which has been named among the Top 50 U.S. POP display companies for 9 consecutive years. A former management consultant with McKinsey & Co. and graduate of Stanford Business School, Jim has served more than 3000 brands and retailers over more than 20 years and has authored nearly 500 blogs and e-Books on a wide range of topics related to POP displays, store fixtures, and retail merchandising.
Jim has been to China more than 50 times and has worked directly with more than 30 factories in Asia across a broad range of material categories, including metal, wood, acrylic, injection molded and vacuum formed plastic, corrugated, glass, LED lighting, digital media player, and more. He also oversees RICH LTD.’s domestic manufacturing operation and has experience manufacturing, sourcing, and importing from numerous Asian countries as well as Vietnam and Mexico.
His experience working with brands and retailers spans more than 25 industries such as food and beverage, apparel, consumer electronics, cosmetics/beauty, sporting goods, automotive, pet, gifts and souvenirs, toys, wine and spirits, home improvement, jewelry, eyewear, footwear, consumer products, mass market retail, specialty retail, convenience stores, and numerous other product/retailer categories.
