The "Big Box Branding" of Brownwood Texas !

RETAILING
For retailers, the big box is part of the brand
Distinctive building designs inside and out create identities that help to hook shoppers.
By Joan Verdon
THE RECORD
Sunday, May 28, 2006

HACKENSACK, N.J. — A neon orange awning. A bright blue wedge jutting out of a storefront. A red stripe around a building. For retailers, these are signs of the times.
As retail corridors grow more crowded and municipalities clamp down on the number and size of the signs that stores use to draw shoppers, "branding the big box" has become a top concern of retailers and their architects.
Furniture retailer IKEA covers its buildings in blue and yellow, the colors of the flag of Sweden, where the company was founded. Unlike other big retailers, IKEA is unwilling to compromise on its design.
Visual cues — such as the bright orange favored by Home Depot or the red bulls-eye circle Target logo — stamp a store's identity on the mind even when no sign is visible. Those elements can turn a big box into a virtual billboard, without violating any sign ordinances.
"Branding the box, and creating an icon for the box itself, certainly is a trend," said Barry Seifer, a principal with Cubellis Marco Retail, a leading retail design firm in Michigan.
Retailers are following in the branding footsteps of McDonald's, which made its golden arches synonymous with burgers and fries decades ago. While fast-food chains need good highway visibility to drive impulse purchases, retailers are looking for ways to stand out in a landscape cluttered with otherwise indistinguishable big boxes.
The Target store planned for the Bergen Town Center complex in Paramus, N.J., will have subtle details, such as the logo cut into the facade and the use of red bands on the building, to brand it from all angles as a Target.
A giant file folder
OfficeMax has a new prototype store designed to look like a giant file folder, with a yellow tab jutting up from the building and the tab motif repeated inside the store and in all advertising.
And Babies "R" Us is making the color purple a key design element in its new stores.
Retailers strive to make their stores as recognizable as big-box leaders Home Depot or Best Buy. Best Buy's design, with a blue wedge shaped like a corner, can be applied to most storefronts without triggering zoning board or developer objections. The blue panel allows Best Buy to use relatively small signs, yet still send the message that a Best Buy is nearby.
"You recognize the blue of a Best Buy even if it is outside of your 60-degree cone of vision," said Navid Maqami, a principal in the Manhattan office of GreenbergFarrow, an architecture and engineering firm. "You know you saw it somewhere — it was that Best Buy blue — and then you turn around because your brain sort of gives you that signal that it's out there."
Retail design specialist Andrew McQuilkin thinks that branding big boxes is good for a retailer's bottom line. "I have a theory: Those who have the more iconic storefronts are more successful."
McQuilkin is vice president of design for FRCH Design Worldwide in Cincinnati, which created the OfficeMax prototype. He also led the team that created an experimental design for Linens 'n Things. FRCH cut a wavy line into the facade of the building and lighted it so the top of the building resembles a billowing white sheet. The "wave" image is repeated inside through signs and curtains hung to conceal stacked merchandise.
McQuilkin thinks retailers need to brand their stores with colors, shapes or a combination of both — images that become so linked in consumers' minds with a retailer that the retailer comes to "own" those images.
"It's easier to own a shape than it is to own a color," McQuilkin said. "If you can own both, even better. Best Buy owns a shape and a color. Home Depot owns orange. The biggest challenge in the world is red." That's because many retailers already use it. But McQuilkin thinks Target is beating the competition for ownership of that color.
Office supply chain Staples is identified by its corrugated red awning with horizontal stripes. OfficeMax recently ceded the battle for red "ownership" to Staples, and in the future wants people to think of OfficeMax when they see yellow and black.
Facing restrictions
Retailers aren't always allowed to build the iconic, branded big boxes of their dreams. Often, a developer gets approval for a shopping center, with restrictions on allowable colors and signs, before the tenants are on board. So a retailer that wants a red stripe around a building may be required to stick to the shopping center's color scheme.
Retailers start out asking to create their "A" storefront — their full prototype store with the colors, shapes and signs they want on all sides of the building, McQuilkin said.
A "B" level design lets retailers control the appearance of the entrance. A "C" level store lets them use their brand color on the building. And in a "D" level store, the only element they control is their logo on the building.
"A lot of times . . . you're stuck with what the developer has already committed to," McQuilkin said. That's why you can find Targets without a square inch of red, or a Staples without the red awning.
Architect Michael LeFande, a principal at SBLM Architects PC, said materials are another way retailers brand their stores. Home furnishings retailer IKEA uses a shiny metal paneling for its exterior; Urban Outfitters uses textured glass with a shattered appearance.
The company often cited as the most successful at branding its big box is IKEA, which covers its stores entirely in royal blue and yellow, the colors of the flag of Sweden, where the company was born.
Joseph Roth, director of public affairs for IKEA USA, said the company is upfront in telling municipal boards that its color scheme is nonnegotiable: "We're pretty straightforward: We build blue stores with yellow accents."
IKEA, however, is not yet trying to squeeze into the types of city streets and suburban centers that have caused big-box branding kings Wal-Mart and Home Depot to be more flexible.
Trying to blend in
When Home Depot converted a landmark cast-iron building in New York into its first Manhattan store, it was so sensitive to the fact that New Yorkers didn't want a garish orange box that it directed IBEX Construction to use white construction barricades instead of the planned orange ones.
Wal-Mart, which led the way in big-box branding, now has so many stores that it is re-branding itself as a company that wants its stores to blend in rather than stand out too much.
"In the past, our stores were always battleship blue and you could always tell a Wal-Mart miles and miles away," said spokeswoman Mia Masten.
"We don't build those boxes any more," Masten said. "We're dealing more with earth tones, the browns, the greens." They're also trying different styles that mirror communities.
source: http://www.statesman.com/business/content/business/stories/other/05/28retailsigns.html