A&F Updates Store Concept with Reimagined Interior

Posted on February 13, 2017 by CBSF
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A&F Updates Store Concept with Reimagined Interior

Posted on February 13, 2017 by CBSF
 

American mall-based retail giant Abercrombie & Fitch is giving its interior a makeover in an effort to encourage same in its financial status. The updated stores will look to shake free the brand’s longstanding dark, thumping hypersexual image (strolling shirtless models, anyone?) in favour of something more sleek, inclusive and personalized.

The first of the new stores, at the Polaris Fashion Place in Columbus, Ohio, was designed by MJ Sagan Architecture.

Among the physical features of the 4,860-sq.-ft. standard bearer—the company’s first revised retail concept in 15 years—find the following:

  • Lighting will be warmer, brighter and more copious;
  • Music will be lighter and softer;
  • Internally circulated air will, as the press release described, smell of a “lighter, cleaner, gender-neutral fragrance;”
  • Interiors will favour marble and wood;
  • Fitting rooms will be creatively welcoming, included paired offerings where friends can try on clothes in connected rooms;
  • Well-staffed terminals will offer shoppers the opportunity to place online orders in store, and pick up merchandise they’ve pre-e-ordered;
  • Shoppers will have access to such “thoughtful amenities” as light and music controls and phone charging stations in their changerooms;
  • Stores will feature spaces for seasonal capsule collections;
  • Stores will offer fragrance “apothecaries.”

The revamped store in Ohio will open on February 17. It’s the first of seven stores that Abercrombie plans to build in the same style in 2017.

Abercrombie & Fitch