Founded in 2012, Jet Set Candy seeks to reinvent travel souvenirs with wearable keepsakes that are playful and cheeky, yet classic and chic. Sold online and carried by Bloomingdale's, Jet Set Candy's pop-up shop at the Grand Central Holiday Fair was its first stand-alone retail presence and served as a fertile testing ground for the DNA of its future brick-and mortar presence.
Situation
In addition to translating Jet Set Candy's core identity into a physical space and experience, two key challenges also needed to be addressed in the design:
• A visually cluttered field. The pop-up shop itself had to work within an existing booth build out that was one of sixty in the space.
• A tiny footprint. The booth was only 7' x 10' which meant that every square inch mattered in dialing in the functionality of the design.
Response
Travel-inspired details and bold graphics carry the spirit of Jet Set Candy throughout the space. Display cases recall luggage trunks, the geometric floor pattern is composed of planes, and the central jewelry display depicts the New York City Skyline.
Considering the customer's approach experience made apparent the importance of defining the secondary walls in addition to the main feature wall. We also realized the importance of defining the floor to delineate the threshold at which one would "enter" the shop.
The floor plan was kept as open as possible, especially since most shoppers would be travelers passing through Grand Central with bags and luggage. Mobile POS devices eliminated the need for a formal transaction counter, which would have taken up valuable floor space as well as created an awkward divide between "front of house" and "back of house" spaces.
process
Early studies of approach experience and early booth configurations.
Details
Fabrication drawings for plexiglass city skyline displays. These have been proven to be extremely popular with customers and have served as a prototype for a potential future product, especially given the simplicity of fabrication and flat packing.
