PROJECT
DESCRIPTION

Design Background:
Located in Shanghai, XinTiandi, HARMAY has stationed an iconic design and retail space, showcasing its vast amount of merchandise from cosmetics, fragrances, skin care and other beauty products, mostly imported, but with a dedicated percentage of local brands. As an ongoing business strategy, HARMAY seeks to import and develop more unique products from the world, however, due to strict regulations and testing procedures, many potential products fail to be purchased in-store, as it will be accountable for violation of prohibited skin care testing conduct.
As a result, the only available channel for purchase will be an online e-commerce platform where these products are available to the public. The strategy for this installation is to create a space, or an engaging environment where visitor can come to the off-line store for viewing and testing, and eventually driving potential sales revenue through the on-line platform. This presents a challenge where the design strategy needs to be both conceptually viable, as well as retail commercial ready. Visitors will need to leave the store with a strong impression of the space, to continue to develop awareness for the potential products presented in the space.
Concept Strategy
When we has received this brief, the first question we had raised was : how will the visitors engage with the products? Traditional retail display obviously will not satisfy the brief, therefore, we decided to approach the issue from an extremely conceptual point of view. We looked at HARMAY as a presenter, or provider of skin related solutions, and the site as 「the skin」.
The design question became: What will happen at a microscopic level when the skin is interacted with the chemically developed products?
We treated the site as a 「skin」 that morphs, shapes, and carves itself, as if the human skin itself is going through an self-obsorbing and regenerating process. We used pure cubic geometry that allows the most efficient, yet flexible assemble for the rearrangement of forms and shape, thus creating irregular and organic volumes for the display and testing of products. The visitors can experience the products from different heights, depths, and lengths which can then add an impression of specific products and space interactions.
The cubic geometry allows the display of the products to be orchestrated according to specific retail necessities, but it also allows random shuffling of display to create a sense of exploration. Each cube is constructed at 400x400x400 and 200x200x200 modules, where it can be freely rearranged to create different visual display points. The glass window allows transparency, as if its an open lab in-progress of experimentation. The overall colors are based on white and semi-reflective finish coating, that of an actual laboratory. The pop-up is set to up for 45 days on site. After that, it is to be installed on different locations across the country, envisioning a new retail model that is conceptually driven and retail experienced executed.