13-03-2017 22:52    Vincent

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EuroShop 2017 The Village

During my visit at EuroShop 2017, I thought to myself that the show lacked a place where different innovations would be placed in a real lifelike environment. However, I noticed that many exhibitors placed very impressive stands on the exhibition floor. And one pavilion in particular attracted my attention it was The Village. Allow me to share with you why this concept stood up from the crowd.

Two years of process and research

You could think that an exhibitor has enough time and will prepare his booths just a couple of months before a trade show. In the case of The Village you’d be wrong.  EuroShop takes place every three years. And if an exhibitor wants to present a stand that’s is out of the ordinary, he better prepare well in advance. The group composed by the three entities Vitra, Ansorg and Vizona started early with its concept for this year’s EuroShop. Two years ago already the thinking process started.

The genesis

It was going to be the first time that the three entities of the group would share a stand together, so the question was how to come up with a booth representing the group and what the three companies can do for their customers. The concept should show the qualities of each entity. But also the group pushed further, and wanted the concept of the booth to answer to the question: “what does the consumer of tomorrow expects from a store?”

So the group went through a lot of research and internal reflection. The process gave as a result that consumers today and tomorrow expect different values such as personalisation, holism, simplicity and more…

The translation into a booth

Concretely, the space created by the group for the EuroShop was a village concept where five different stores were concentrated around the town square. The plaza, or town square, was a welcoming place where visitors could of course sit down and have a drink or a bite at the village’s inn. The five stores around the square represented five different worlds: automotive, fashion, health & beauty, food and consumer electronics. A fictitious brand was created for each of these retail planets, and to make the store more realistic the group called the services of professional visual merchandisers.

My 20/CENT on The Village

First of all, this concept answered one of the expectations I had about EuroShop, meaning it was a realistic lifelike model of different exhibitors’ innovations. Of course The Village put in the spotlights the innovations of the three companies Vitra, Ansorg and Vizona at first, without mentioning the other innovations included. But if you’d ask nicely about a specific item that didn’t belong to the group, you’d get the information as well.

Secondly, and this is essential of course seeing the investment, the stand clearly showed the different services and products of the group in a pleasant way. It was a concept well designed to help the employees of Vitra, Ansorg and Vizona do their work. The sales and other responsible of the three companies could show their products and services in real-life situation, and on demand could also go into technical details in a specific workshop area. Even meeting rooms were available if necessary.

Finally, and most of all, I particularly liked the level of details brought to the concept. For example, if you looked closer in the Health & Beauty store, you could see that the store had different categories (e.g. scrubs, lotions, …) and the labels even would talk about the product’s virtues in details. In the automotive store, the unique model on sales was a unique design inspired by different famous brands. Even in the accessories, the watch on sale had the logo of the fictitious brand. In many cases, an exhibitor would have simply put the same bottles everywhere, or not go into the trouble to put the correct branding everywhere.

To sum up, if a university would put up a program about how to be present at a trade fair and how a stand can be optimized, The Village should be on the curriculum as it was a clear school case.

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