Staging connects
The umdasch world of experience at the EuroShop 2020
umdasch The Store Makers are presenting new perspectives for the retail sector of the future on a fair stand extending over 900 square metres at the EuroShop in Düsseldorf from 16–20 February 2020. In an integral tour of all sectors of retailing visitors can experience multimedia ideas, unusual materials and countless opportunities for profitable measures at the point of sale.
The Fair Stand
The staging of retail spaces links people and brands. It makes them walkable and tangible and makes them come alive. In line with this theme, the Store Makers at umdasch will present numerous opportunities and facets showing how retailers can present themselves successfully in future at the point of sale. The umdasch fair stand embodies this concept through its radial floor plan and multi-dimensional structure. Thus the circle symbolises totality and serves as a synonym for umdasch as a holistic provider of solutions. Even from outside the visitor can catch glimpses of the Store Makers’ stage: walls made of wooden slats over three metres high permit guests to discover the circular fair stand. The roof is constructed of some ten kilometres of tight cord in a trendy shade of blue and complements the stand concept not only as an additional dimension, but also by serving as a symbol for the interconnected thoughts demanded by retail concepts.
If you enter this remarkable fair stand through the inviting entrance extending around the corner, you will immediately be greeted warmly at the Welcome Desk. Here the reception counter is worthy of special notice – it is not an ordinary item of furniture, but is a wooden structure surrounded by a casing of printed concrete created by the Austrian cooperation partner 3D-Betondruck Solutions. The Welcome Desk provides an example of thinking outside the box. With its free formal language it is a true eye-catcher and it makes this unusual material combination interesting for designers, architects and building contractors.
Lifestyle Retail Experience
Now, however, the visitor will have to make a first decision: “Clockwise or anti-clockwise?” Following the natural visitor flow, the guest will walk along the right-hand wall to the first exhibit with the exciting title “The Future of Retail”. “Fold-up!” is a newly developed furniture item which is presented as an innovative approach to how modular systems can provide an answer to new challenges in retail spaces. Variability and multi-functionality are important functions, regardless of whether for the revival of empty spaces in inner cities or as a temporary presentation of seasonal goods.
The “Retail Experience Wall” stands as a symbol for the way in which a store can become a magnet for the public. Here EuroShop guests have the option of experiencing precisely this and becoming playfully immersed in the world of umdasch. It consists namely of an interactive wall which conveys the services provided by the Store Makers at the touch of a finger tip with beams of light and sound – from design concept via construction management and implementation as general contractor to the integration and recording of digital elements.
After this multi-sensory experience the excitement will continue on your journey through the umdasch experience world: the next station on the Customer Journey permits the visitor to study umdasch success stories at close quarters. “Shipping Boxes” with peepholes provide an opportunity to gain insight into the different facets of successful retail projects. Prize-winning references of the Store Makers are built inside as small-scale models – together with useful information. The stories show clearly what customers can learn from the best aspects within other sectors, offering a very special kind of analogue experience.
As the last exhibit in the Lifestyle Retail Experience, the “Project Garden” is dedicated to the trend topic of “Greenery” in the form of an abstract version of a greenhouse. The “Greenery Wall” will become a selfie point. Here umdasch shows its visitors the communication potential which exciting places can have within the social media community. The right store concept creates a brand experience with which the customer can identify and which they can share online. Thus stores not only become third places, but they also become advertising spaces with the customers themselves as brand ambassadors.
Luxury Rich in Details
The Customer Journey leads the visitor to umdasch on into a world of luxury that is rich in details and prestigious materials linked with technological sophistication. In this area a digital abstraction with stretch displays underlines the concept that today digital signage is an essential feature in luxury stores as well by providing subtle support for brand communication.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall – which material is the fairest one of all? Two “Tetris objects” will provide an answer to this question, which makes use of the technology of halfmirrors. They reflect in plain black from noble materials like stone, marble and Corian. Inset behind them are high-resolution displays, which either present content or become the mirror of the object. These monolithic exhibits symbolise the love of detail and high quality which the customers of umdasch can expect in the Premium segment.
“Luxury becomes tangible”: High-quality materials – all in use for high-end projects of umdasch – nestle up together by the opposite wall in a palette of colours, and come to life when you scan the QR code that has been mounted on them. In addition to the haptic experience, the images and personal stories of the product installation breathe real life into the display.
“Fly with umdasch” – The Retail Cart, one of the latest innovations of the Store Makers, shows a mobile sales solution for airports on the chassis of an electric vehicle. It is already in use at airports including Beirut and Muscat, among other locations. The obvious added value: The shop comes to the traveller – sales can take place even at the Gate, after the potential customers have already left the duty-free shops behind them.
Sustainable Omni-Channel Shopping
The final stations on the tour through the experience world of umdasch are dedicated to the visitor’s basic needs: all those exciting and innovative displays will make them thirsty. For refreshment they will find not only the Store Makers’ Bar, which like the Welcome Desk is constructed of the exciting material combination of wood, glass and printed concrete. The guests will also find sparkling and sustainable ideas at the umdasch fair stand for their food, convenience and health and beauty stores, enriched with process-supporting technologies.
The Lift & Learn technology integrated into the shelves shows appropriate recipe ideas on the screen when a bottle of spirits is removed, complemented by further technical details from the Store Makers. Next to this display, umdasch uses the example of natural cosmetics to present how the stock on the shelves can be permanently monitored automatically. A new Out-of-Stock Management System is supplied, whereby strip conductors in the shelves provide the inventory control system with information about the current stocks.
The only constant here is change. This also applies to the new products “Turntable” and “Varitable”, in the form of variable systems which can be transformed from a shelf to a table in less than no time, for example, or which offer a wide variety of presentation options through small modifications. The tried and tested “Bake Off“ shelf for baked goods convinces not only through its modular structure; it now also presents a retrofittable option for warming the baked products by means of heated presentation trays.
Sustainable behaviour starts in the retail sector and ends with the consumer. For this reason, umdasch shows solutions for packaging-free purchases. The “Liquid Dispenser”, winner of the German Innovation Award 2019, is a solution for refilling packages with liquid products which is now ready for series production, shown on the fair stand using biological shampoo by way of example. The “Solid Dispenser” on the other hand represents the same principle for dry goods. umdasch has set another milestone in sustainable shopfitting with the GreenShelf, with which the Store Makers at umdasch were pioneers in the field of sustainable shopfitting many years ago at the EuroShop. The shelf with the smallest ecological footprint, consisting of natural materials such as processed straw and rice husks, complements the food-retail sector’s approach to the sale of regional products with environmentally friendly presentation options. But as if that were not enough: with “umdasch refresh your shelf” retailers have the option of increasing the useful life of their existing shopfitting quite considerably by cleaning, re-coating and re-installing their existing shopfittings.
