What I'm obsessed with this week..

When the fashion store Topshop opened in New York just over a year ago, a torrent of hype ensured there were queues of shoppers at the door on the first day. There was a blizzard of red, white and blue ticker tape to mark the moment, and at the opening party A-list celebrities including Jennifer Lopez and the editor of US Vogue, Anna Wintour, rubbed shoulders with Topshop's chunky billionaire owner, Sir Philip Green.

Six weeks ago, just a few hundred yards further along Broadway, another big name in British fashion retailing – AllSaints – arrived in the Big Apple with an altogether lower-key launch.

But the word in the rag trade is that it is going down a storm with New York's fashion-conscious consumers, and has taken more than $1m in its first two weeks – beating the takings at Topshop, whose shop is almost twice the size.

The 70-strong AllSaints chain is a little bit Goth. Its edgy clothing rails are a sea of black, beige, and grey. Its trademark motif is a skull and its speciality is the distressed look; clothes made to look well worn-in and scuffed Victorian-style boots without laces.

It's not cheap: leather jackets are north of £300; there are 45 graphic and skull-print T-shirts at up to £80 a piece; and more than 100 dresses averaging around £50 to £250. However, that doesn't seem to deter the masses who are paying not just for the trend that is All Saints but the sensational brand experience they get when they walk into one of their stores.



And what's interesting is that it doesn't advertise, preferring to drum up sales from free mentions in the fashion press and customer referrals. Equally, no staff are allowed to speak on behalf of the business.

What they do however is to promote the All Saints brand to their target by association. In NYC this Summer they have teamed up with the Williamsburg concert series, Jelly Pool Parties. At the event they set up an AllSaints pub where guests drank complimentary cocktails by Sailor Jerry rum and Dos Equis beer. The pub venue was decked out in their traditional heritage East End style with an antique bar, authentic piano and distressed AllSaints furniture.

All Saints have also teamed up with Agyness Deyn and fashion journalist Fiona Byrne who video blogged the event for their newly launched website NAAG.com and interviewed Alexa Chung, fashion designer Christian Siriano and model, Becka Diamond.

Their 'Flipbook' station was also housed in an AllSaints on-site container, which was painted by a local NYC artist. Every participant has a short clip filmed which is then turned into an original, hard copy flipbook and a digital version for them to share on Facebook and Twitter.

This is a retail brand that customers want to engage with both on the high street and off and one to watch for the future.


Thanks to The Guardian UK

Dixon's

UK electronics retailer Dixons earlier this year launched a wonderful print campaign across Great Britain. With a well executed strategy, they cleverly used the insight that customers generally shop around for the best bargain, yet still want a great experience in store. So what better way to communicate their price advantage than by taking the piss out of the big department stores:

Video in supermarket aisles

FOR many marketers, advertising in stores is an increasingly important way to influence shoppers at the so-called moment of truth, as they finally make up their minds about which brands of soup, soap or cereal to buy — or not buy. Now, a company is hoping to bring commercials to the retail point of purchase on screens that will be attached to shelves and above aisles.
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Automated Media Services plans to test its system, 3GTV, in stores this summer. This screen displays an ad for Kraft macaroni and cheese.

The company, Automated Media Services, known as A.M.S., has been working for years on a system that would deliver television in retail environments in a way that would allow media agencies to plan and buy commercial time in stores just as they do on the networks, channels and stations watched at home. The system, which the company calls 3GTV, also includes provisions to verify that commercials have actually run.

The initial test of 3GTV is scheduled during the summer in Maryland and Virginia, at nine stores that belong to the Bloom supermarket chain, part of the Food Lion unit of the Delhaize Group.

The executives at Automated Media Services, who have backgrounds in television, advertising and marketing, have raised an estimated $10 million to develop 3GTV. Investors and advisers include some names well known on Madison Avenue, among them Burt Manning, former chairman and chief executive at the JWT division of WPP, and Stephen Grubbs, who held senior posts at media agencies owned by the Omnicom Group like OMD and PHD.

Source: NY Times

Puma's pop-out shop

Puma has developed a “pop-out shop” that will tour the country as the sports fashion brand aims to allow customers to rediscover the brand’s retro lines from the 1970s and 1980s.

As part of its Rewind Forward project, which launches next month, Puma will drive a customised vehicle that “mutates into a shop” representing those two decades to London, Manchester and Liverpool as well as various festival locations throughout the summer.

The brand said that it may pitch up in car parks, railway stations or even people’s gardens. “The stranger the location the better,” it said.

The shop will be made up of various elements that pop out, which include seating, storage, TV screens and a projector.

The Rewind Forward project, which encompasses other yet-to-be-revealed events, will “enable the consumer to re-discover and see the Puma Archive range in a new light”, it said.

The inside of the pop-out shop will be “decked out with the best archive moments in Puma’s history alongside Puma Archive product”, added the brand.

Source: Retail Week

Mobile charging wellies!

Thanks to a new prototype, powering up a cell phone can simply mean using heat from the feet. The catch is it takes a lot of walking.

European telecommunications company Orange is displaying a new phone-charging prototype in a pair of rubber boots. The company is unveiling a set of Wellington Boots that have a "power generating sole" that converts heat from the feet into electrical power to charge battery-powered handheld appliances.

The boots were created in collaboration with renewable energy experts GotWind. They came about through Orange's efforts to find alternative, sustainable and eco-friendly mobile phone charging technologies. The boots are debuting at the Glastonbury Festival of Contemporary Performing Arts, where patrons can check them out.

GotWind explains that the power is collected through a process called the "Seebeck" effect. Thermoelectric modules created from pairs of "p-type and n-type semiconductor materials" are located inside the power-generating sole. They form thermocouples that are connected to other thermocouples and placed between two thin ceramic wafers.

Heat from the feet are applied to the top side of the water and cold is applied to the bottom side from the cold of the ground, causing electricity to be generated.

The company states that 12 hours of stomping should produce enough power to charge a phone for an hour. Hotter feet mean more energy

Orange stated in a press release that the Orange Power Wellie follows other innovations created for use at the festival.

Previous projects included the Recharge Pod that used wind and solar energy, the Dance Charter that was powered up by kinetic energy created by dancing and the Orange Power Pump that used energy from a traditional foot pump and turned it into electricity.

Prince Charles opens his own organics store

Highgrove Stores

You know Britain is in a recession when Prince Charles opens a chain of retail stores! Highgrove is The Prince of Wales' organic produce brand and has seen him open it's third branch on Wednesday, despite suffering from a lingering chest infection.

Charles has cancelled a number of visits so he can fight the illness, but is honouring key long-standing commitments this week, Clarence House said.

Among those engagements is the opening of the latest incarnation of the Highgrove store, this time in Bath, Somerset.

Highgrove sells organic foods and lifestyle products, which take their inspiration from his Gloucestershire home of the same name.

The majority of goods in the collection have been created by British artisan manufacturers and craftsmen.

Profits from the sale of products are donated to the Prince's Charities Foundation.

A second branch of Highgrove opened in Tetbury in March 2008, near to the Prince's home, where the first store is open to visitors touring his gardens.

Have a browse and purchase online at http://www.highgroveshop.com

Whole Foods Map of Local Growers

Map of Local Growers

Whole Foods has recently developed this cool map of local growers and vendors. It is still a work in progress but well worth a look. Local partnerships are added all the time and some of Whole Foods' regions and stores aren’t represented yet. Users can search for locally grown producers near them or near a specific store. Check out their interactive local growers map.