by Herman Manson (@marklives) If you’ve walked into a Hungry Lion or a Standard Bank branch, MTN, Tile Africa, Nando’s, or even a Shoprite Liquor store, you would have experienced a retail environment designed by Design Partnership, the specialist retail-and-hospitality design consultancy.
Having won several awards for their architectural practice, architects Callie van der Merwe and Francois van der Merwe left Port Elizabeth in 1994 to launch Design Partnership in Pretoria. The company has since moved its headquarters to Parktown North, Johannesburg, closed the Pretoria office and opened an office in Cape Town.
Grew to embrace
Design Partnership quickly grew to embrace not only architecture but also branding and retail and hospitality specialist divisions. Adrian Morris (COO) and Yatish Narsi (creative director) eventually joined the business after Francois exited.
It now specialises in understanding retail psychology and marrying it to the business of design.
In setting out to ensure better fulfilment for both the retail client and its end customers, you must realise that design is both functional and a scientific process, and not purely about emotional reactions, says van der Merwe. Work must be beautiful — obviously — but at its core it needs to be functional to show ROI for clients.
Construction division
The agency currently employs 70 people and houses it own construction division. According to Van der Merwe, it’s the only way to ensure fast and effective construction, and it assists in aggregating procurement for clients who might not have the experience or the systems in place to do it themselves.
Van der Merwe is especially pleased with the calibre of work Design Partnership is currently producing:
Standard Bank
Banks, by and large, are hostile spaces. There has been a movement towards making them more user-friendly and less intimidating but, for Standard Bank, Design Partnership is stretching the experience to make it feel like a coffee shop environment: pleasant, and where you can be seated and service comes to you — Instead of queues, clients get to sit down and relevant staff attend to them, based upon their requirements (picking up documents, filing a complaint or query, etc).
A case study on Design Partnership’s solution for Standard Bank describes signage as a failure of design. “A customer should find his or her way, not read it,” it states. “The use of space, light and layout of the service points within a branch all contribute to way-finding.”
Standard Bank has rolled out 12 new-look branches so far and it’s functioning well, says Van der Merwe.
Nando’s
Nando’s stores are designed taking into account the client profile of each store. Business sites (close to offices, etc) gets slightly larger tables to accommodate laptops comfortably.
For Nando’s Maponya Mall outlet, the agency is assisting the brand in moving from takeaway-only environments to sit-down eating (most of its UK stores are designed for sit-down). A red carpet leads customers upstairs — a space they resisted exploring before the carpet was rolled out.
Thanks to online shopping, says Van der Merwe, physical retail spaces are growing in importance, rather than being diminished. Shopping online is a bit like watching firework displays on TV; it’s not the same experience.
Instead, retailers are blurring the lines and paying attention to all touch points, including evolving their physical spaces to keep up with the Zeitgeist of the times.