Friday 3 December 2010

Forever 21 comes to the UK :)

Forever 21 opened its first UK store in Birmingham's Bullring on November 12




American fast-fashion retailer Forever 21 has launched into the European market with a 53,000sq ft store in Birmingham's Bullring. The three-storey store is brightly lit and spacious yet remains small compared to the brand’s 125,000sq ft flagship in Las Vegas.

“Birmingham was a top-priority destination and we had to seize it while it was available. The Bullring is fashion-forward, which suited our customer, and it’s a great space.” - linda chang






The merchandise mix
Beyond its mainline collection, Forever 21 has included a number of its sub-brands in the Birmingham store. Love21 is a contemporary women’s line for the 20- to 40-year-old, catering for a more mature customer, where attention is paid particularly to details and trims. Twelve by Twelve is a couture-like aspiration line designed exclusively for Forever 21, aimed at the fashion-forward customer. A small section of the store is also dedicated to the brand's plus-size range, Forever 21+.

“Our fashion-conscious customer looks to the catwalks for inspiration and loves the "couture-for-less" collection we offer. It’s all designed in-house so she knows she won’t see it anywhere else,” Chang said.







The first floor houses a small selection of activewear, which consists of running and gym apparel as well as everyday street-inspired items. Birmingham will be the only store in Europe to sell this collection.

At the back of the first floor is a huge accessories and footwear section with a large selection of jewellery, hair accessories, intimate apparel, pyjamas, tights and shoes.

Shoes sit on oversized glass cake stands creating a tiered effect on merchandising tables, while scarves and handbags hang in ornately decorated frames, which create a window effect on the wall. Long display tables are used throughout the store and are decorated with product, with styled mannequins placed on and around them showing the customer how the accessories can be worn.






In-store visual merchandising
In-store visual merchandising plays a lead role in separating trends on the shop floor and cornering off sub-brands from the mainline range. The lower ground currently stocks a Country Heritage-inspired trend, with stately home scenes created through tartan wallpaper and homely visual merchandising. The heritage section caters for the younger customer with plaid shirts and wardrobe staples.

Long tables are used throughout the store to display product in a fun and quirky way and create youthful, girly scenes reminiscent of tea parties, with oversized slices of cake  dominating parts of the ground floor.

A white gazebo on the first floor houses festival-inspired product with luxurious white and gold armchairs dotted around the floor welcoming customers to sit and relax while shopping.
Interactive VM is used outside the store, where an oversized screen stretches the height of the store, showing images of the collection styled on models. Customers walking past are invited to move the picture onto the next look by waving their arm left or right in front of the screen. This interaction catches customers' attention before they have even set foot inside the store.






Future store openings
Forever 21 opened a store in Dublin on November 13 and also has a store set for mall giant Westfield’s new Stratford centre in east London, which opens next year. The retailer has also confirmed it will open a flagship store in London’s Oxford Street, in the space currently occupied by HMV.

Earlier this month Forever 21 executive vice-president Larry Meyer said he was looking for stores in Liverpool, Manchester, Belfast and Edinburgh as well as “multiple” London sites, and that eventually he thought the chain had the potential to expand to 100 stores in the UK.

However, Chang said the retailer will not be making any more official announcements about UK openings until the new year.

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