Also worth looking at his flickr group of the café. The Rapha website’s not too shabby either and a nice video on Monocle.

These days there’s no reason not to have a shop, a pop up shop, a twitter, a facebook page, a van, go to festivals, write a book, a photo essay, a magazine, have a loyalty card, a website, a microsite, a tumblr, a flavors.me, print a t-shirt the list goes on. Brands that market themselves as authentic and have an idea win. Those that buy off the shelf and stick their logo on, fail.

Update: just came across another piece about Rapha here on everydaylife.style loads more to explore on there too.

Originally spotted (I think) from Erik Spiekermann’s twitter.

More images below, including Mel Elliot’s brilliant colouring wall, Peter Ibreugger’s fab moustache mugs, the super cool WORK IT girls making their wall and the illustrator phoebe Eason painting her Bird wall.

If I wasn’t a country bumpkin I’d be there filling my golden shopping basket with goods, various.

Details of how to get there on the Supermarket Sarah blog

A newish retail blog called Store Sentinel is worth a look.

Todays post features the new Marmite pop up store at the bottom of Regent Street.

I’ve added it to Issuu so you can flick through at your leisure. Click on the centre of the presentation to go full screen, press esc to return to your original screen. If you put your cursor to the top of the screen you’ll see additional navigation.

So what do customers want and how can retailers afford to give it to them?

“We want experience, fantasy and value”

“We will not desert the High Street if retailers can make it fun.”

What will this mean, less stores more experience is my prediction – its very simple.

What does experience mean?

A different thing to each retailer is the key:

• The latest cat-walk fashion at prices I can afford. Worth searching any store environment for, e.g. Primark.
• A brand committed heart and soul to a lifestyle, a patch of a store with flowery paper is not enough, e.g. Jack Wills.
• Niche retailing with real passion about the product, e.g. Games Workshop.

The list is endless, this is what customers want – happy days spent with friends roaming our High Streets.

I suggest retailers need to concentrate on one great destination store in each city not three. Each store needs to work hard to live and breath their brand. White stuff is a great example, the York store has a cinema – I might not go but I love them for providing it! It’s a great experience (with gnomes at the moment).

I know this is just one aspect of the complex mix, that creates a profitable retailer, and there are some retailers who need have units everywhere – takeaway food retailers need to be convenient, we are lazy and lack time. But experience is the future, not the white box. For designers this means working hard to develop the brand with our retail and leisure customers at a cost that is sustainable and profitable.