Monki store design by Electric Dream
Monki is a Swedish retail concept aimed at teenage girls, one that embraces a magical fantasy story about ‘little black creatures with dual personas’ that live in a derelict City of Oil and Steel. Sound strange? Well it is, this isn’t your typical high street teen clothing outlet, this is a conceptual world which is represented in massive detail throughout the store interiors, graphics, accessories, printed garments, shopping bags and even down to price tags and receipts. This is a retail vision like no other, and having recently been bought by fellow Swedes and giants of high street fashion H&M, it’s a concept which could well be coming your way in the near future.
The Monki World is a story about a parallel universe inhabited by little black creatures with dual personas, born in the derelict City of Oil and Steel. Monkis are cute and friendly, but also evil and deceptive. Their world is made up of places as surprising and ambiguous as themselves; part magical and part ghastly; stunning beauty alongside revolting ugliness.
The Monki saga is plucked from the Peacock Fields, fished from the Everlasting, and woven along the shores of the Rosehip River. Their story is a wild hotchpotch of wondrous adventures among leeches, butterfly choirs, turbine flowers, bow trees and mysterious chemicals. Nothing is impossible in the Monki World!
This story is the foundation for Monki’s all-embracing retail concept. The story is not only communicated as printed patterns on garments, graphics, websites, and store designs; the Monki World is represented even in the smallest details, such as accessories, shopping bags, price tags, and receipts.
Monki has several interior concepts running simultaneously. Every concept is inspired by a different part of the Monki World. So far, the secluded Forgotten Forest and the powerful City of Oil and Steel have been launched. Future concepts will portray other areas of the vast Monki landscape. We did 11 stores with the first concept and after next week, we’ll have six stores with the second concept. Ultimately, all the stores together form an entity that combines recognition, repetition and variation or surprise.
There are three main reasons: One is purely conceptual. The Monki World consists of several places, not just the Swamp and the City of Oil and Steel. It will eventually grow into maybe six different concepts, each inspired by a different part of the Monki World. The different store concepts will belong to the same form family, but each with its own strong individual characteristics. As Monki’s range of products grow, there might be one interior concept devoted simply to selling stationery for example: a refined Monki Stationery Shop inspired by the Peacock Fields or a refined Monki Make-Up Store with an interior inspired by the Sound Farm. The Monki brand will be an umbrella for a multitude of different products, similar to concepts like Hello Kitty or even Muji. Large multi-level shops might also feature more than one concept.
The second reason has to do with scale. The first eleven stores were a huge success in Sweden. Monki wanted to establish new stores faster than they had originally planned. None of us knew in 2006 that H&M would purchase Monki after two years, with the pronounced intent to expand and establish the brand globally. When you have three Monki shops on one street, it’s nice if they are not identical. And, after several years when one Monki concept needs refurbishment, we’re faced with the redesign of, say, 11 shops instead of 200.
The third reason is to keep satisfying the expectations of our zap-happy, easily distracted, quickly bored target group: teenage girls.
No comments:
Post a Comment