Of particular note is the immensely long home page, scroll all the way down to read a huge amount of information. We’re still getting comments regularly about designing ‘above the fold’ so it’s refreshing to see a client that understands that scrolling is probably easier than clicking through and keeps customers on the home page longer before they make their choice to enter the store. Think of it as the decompression zone that we build into stores in the offline world so customers can get used to crossing the threshold before deciding where to head.

Also worth noting is the launch. A particular time and date backed up by a twitter campaign (the more tweets the greater the discount) Lucky 10 to get the ball rolling on launch day.

Finally, retail design is all about the details. Nice to see a message about free shipping right there in the checkout button which you can see when you hover over the Shopping Bag button.

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.

More on The Escape Pod’s blog.

Originally spotted on Brandflakes for Breakfast

The full thing on the NY Times.

As always there’s an alternative, the Kick Map

More on the Square website and follow them on twitter @Square could be interesting.

Originally from Seth