Temporary or not temporary, that is the question
Hello, my name’s Manuel and I’ve just started working at Mandarina Duck. I’m a visual merchandiser and I’d like to tell our Duckside audience about the latest shopping trends and innovative stores.
The new shopping frontier is likely to be quite different from the one we are used to. No more downtown stores with luxury furnishings and young, smiling sales clerks. The new trend is just the opposite! Unusual selling points set up for short periods with no signage. These are Temporary Stores, created not only to sell goods but also to amaze, to sensationalize and to attract a new target group to new fashion brands.
This trend started in 2004 with the Guerrilla Stores of Comme des Garçons, which transformed ordinary retail points into events located in short-term shops. One of these opened in Berlin in a former bookstore leaving its original signs and adding only essential furniture.
The temporary store is already present in Italy, particularly in Milan. Yo-Vi (Coin Young Village) debuted in Corso Vittorio Emanuele on 24 May 2007 and will close on 31 December. It offers all the new, trendy fashion brands and a space for concerts and events. Bstripe just opened on 16 November at no. 53 in Via de Amicis and will close on 31 January 2008. Along with buying brand name clothing, you can also trade-in your old tops for a 20% discount on new ones. Spazio Tokyo, at no. 2 in Via Lattuada is perfect for fans of Asian style, as it has the best clothing items from Japan.
While wandering through the news on our “shared disks”, I found out that Mandarina had already done this. The “MD Lab” concept started in 2003. It’s a shop where “All new products are first experimented and then assessed by the MD head office before being manufactured and marketed”.
The result of this concept could only be a new store far from the main city streets, the Borne in Barcelona. It has a personalised layout and a feeling of temporariness just like modern, trendy temporary stores do now.
Take a look at these pictures.
