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Is the battle between physical store and online shopping over? Not according to our round-table gathering of designers specialising in retail, who have much to say about how brick-and-mortar can continue to take the fight to the screen.

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Words by Pamela Buxton

Photography by Gareth Gardner

With online sales continuing to grow, even the most traditional retailers are looking hard at their bricks-and-mortar store strategies.

According to the Centre for Retail Research, online sales in the UK rose by 15.8 per cent, compared to just a 2.4 per cent increase in physical store sales in 2013/4. By the end of 2014, online market share is expected to have risen to 13.5 per cent, with more rises to come as those brought up in the online era increasingly control the now metaphorical purse strings.

Helen Shelley director, M Worldwide

So how should those retailers sitting on substantial shop estates respond to this changing market where everyone, in effect, has a store in their back pocket or bag? How can designers help them reinvent their store environments to appeal to evolving shopping habits? And is store flexibility always the answer?

Anshu Srivastava director, MRA

These were some of the topics aired at the FX Design Seminar: Designing Flexibility in Retail Markets, held in association with Forbo Flooring Systems. Chaired by FX editorial director Theresa Dowling, the round-table event was attended by a range of retail design specialists and was held at the Clerkenwell showroom of furniture designer and manufacturer Morgan Contract Furniture.

Gerald Albury principal Callison

It was clear from the off that this is a complex subject. Anshu Srivastava of retail design specialist MRA raised the question of what is meant by flexibility - is it strategic, technical, or tactical - and suggested that flexibility might sometimes be the result of client anxiety rather than what they actually need. 'Real flexibility might not be the most appropriate response,' he says. But Alastair Kean of Dalziel and Pow pointed out that all retail has to be flexible and easy to change. 'If you're fixed in any way you're on the back foot already,' he said.

Alastair Kean group development director, Dalziel and Pow

These issues are at the forefront of any retail designer's mind. According to Jane Lawrence of Manser Practice, brands are having to work harder than ever on retail presentation and are becoming more specific about how they want these environments to look. 'The retail footfall of stores will shrink because of online so you have to seriously reinvent to make them very experiential,' she said. 'Flexibility is seemingly an incredibly important factor. You need to create an experiential offer that is ever changing.' This means, she added, 'designing something where the masterplan is fixed but the fixtures and fittings can change'.

Fleur Carson Forbo

John Lewis was applauded as a good example of a retailer changing to accommodate evolving spending habits - panellists noted that it was now more frequently quoted as a barometer of retail health rather than M&S. 'John Lewis is challenging physical space as it realises that, down the line, the store is increasingly being digitalised. So it uses it to showcase highlights of its range and be more editorial,' said Colin Melia of HMKM.

Jeff Kindleysides founder, Checkland Kindleysides

Alastair Kean, whose company Dalziel & Pow has worked extensively with John Lewis, commented that investment in physical stores has led to a 30 per cent local uplift in online sales. He said that although the company had installed interactive screens for customers to browse the full product range, it was also making sure it could provide better internet connections in-store, conscious that many shoppers preferred to use their own devices.

BuckleyGrayYeoman's 200 sq m store for Fred Perry in Munich

Lighting can be a useful tool too for changing the mood of a space. Colin Melia described his company's design for German client Fashionation, created in a triple volume space in Berlin department store Peek & Cloppenburg where the design couldn't fix to the walls. The solution was a large wooden frame structure with the flexibility to be adapted by the various brands that inhabited it, combined with lighting to significantly change the mood from day to nighttime use. Where budgets permit, digital tools can help clients respond to the changing retail climate.

Shepherd's Bush Market in West London

Colin Melia referred to HMKM's recent Denim Studio project at Selfridges, which has installed interactive tablets as part of a digital 'jeanius bar' showing customers images such as look-books, street-style, and brand information which can also be projected on to a larger screen.

John Lewis

It's clear that the now long-term trend for the experiential in retailing is more relevant than ever. 'The physical manifestation of the brand is the service proposition - the whole physical environment transports you into a place where you feel loved and nurtured,' says Michael Fern of Edge. 'There's a lot of theatre in it. Even value retailers are trying to get a bit of that.'

Jane Lawrence director, Manser Practice

Stores need flexibility if they are able to offer an experiential store environment that offers tangible benefits to buying out-of-store via a screen. This might be as simple as offering free coffee, as Waitrose has been doing, or integrating a tea shop into the store, as BuckleyGrayYeoman did for Fred Perry in Munich, or maybe offering entertainment such as live music, or events such as Selfridges' six-week Festival of the Imagination at its London store, which took place earlier this year in an 'Imaginarium' space designed by Rem Koolhaas. But maybe they need to go further, as Anshu Srivastava suggested: 'Rather than making shopping entertainment, make entertainment shoppable.'

Michael Fern director, Edge

Colin Melia suggested thinking of customers more as fans, not customers: 'What can you do for them? Because if they're there, they will buy.' Designers and their clients can learn from trends from around the world to offer more than pure retail. Colin Melia cited the idea of co-existing with other attractions, quoting Urban Outfitters' Space Ninety 8 concept at Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York, which brings together retail, dining, a gallery, and a place to gather.

Matches boutique project in Wimbledon

In Korea, he added, they group together similar offers such as whole tower blocks of teenage fashion, as is the case in the Dong Dae Moon and Hong Dae districts of Seoul. Stores for older customers might contain a community floor with classes in activities such as flower-arranging. In the UK, shopping centres might soon start changing how they operate too, he thought.

Colin Melia creative director, HMKM

He also expected that changing shopping habits might open up the high street to retailers such as car showrooms that had previously needed the space of out-of-town units. Instead of actually having the cars to hand in the store, they could use it as a portal to engage the customer and disseminate information, with the car delivered to your door for a test-drive later if need be.

But flexibility isn't a panacea. Too much flexibility can bring its own problems, according to Alastair Kean. 'If you try to build too much in, you can compromise the whole thing,' he said. Sometimes, said Jane Lawrence, what stores might think of as future-proofing is just reacting. Or, Kean said, a sign of insecurity. According to Anshu Srivastava of MRA, whereas flexibility gives the ability to change so that those visiting the store two weeks after they last went see a fresh presentation, there has to be the right balance between novelty and gimmickry. There is also the issue of having enough skilled staff to manage a highly flexible, changing store. And as Kean said, it can come with its own baggage: 'Sometimes flexibility adds complexity and cost. Sometimes it isn't needed.' The shocking point is that flexibility isn't the cost-saving that many clients think. So do designers need to consider this in a different light with their clients?

Theresa Dowling chair and FX editorial director

Certainly there is an issue of appropriateness. Flexibility is naturally more important for clients facing an unpredictable future, such as the Post Office, whose core business, with its current 11,000 outlets, is in a state of change and is likely to be significantly affected by changes in benefit payment methods to online rather than over-the counter methods. Michael Fern's practice Edge has been working with the Post Office on 'future proofing' its store environments to be capable of change, and also to emphasise the community value of the Post Office's service. 'We've broken the store experience into interchangeable modules,' he said.

Amr Assaad associate director, BuckleyGrayYeoman

But such an approach is clearly not so appropriate for luxury brands, which are more likely to have a much more fixed design. A store might actually be really inflexible but still offer a great experience. According to Anshu Srivastava, instead of prioritising obviously flexible designs, luxury brands may choose to create space purely for its own sake. 'They're saying they have the power and charisma to waste that space,' he said.

Maybe the priority should not so much as be flexible but have the ability to embrace change and offer different retail experiences. 'It's more about agility now,' said Jeff Kindleysides, of Checkland Kindleysides. 'The best brands are those that are most able to keep up,' agreed Anshu Srivastava, citing brands such as Jimmy Choo, which creates online games for its customers to engage with the brand.

Brian Pringle Forbo

Kindleysides adds that stores should make the most of their advantages over online shopping: the ability to be local, being able to offer products in stock, and offer more knowledge and dialogue through the quality of their service and staff. A true flagship is not so much a retailer's biggest shop, but where it has the biggest repository of knowledge relating to what it's selling. This, after all, is traditional retailers great USP, along with the social contact that it brings. As Srivastava put it: 'We're communal, social creatures. We go to a shop because we want to meet people.'

It is this human interaction that online retailers seek to replicate in their retail offer. 'Most cutting-edge technology is trying to recreate human experience,' said Michael Fern.

One of the biggest challenges, added Gerald Albury of Callison, was achieving a sense of well-being and community across all the different channels of brand engagement. While digital design has huge potential for stores, not many clients have the often six-figure budgets required to explore this to its full in-store potential.

There's also a lot to be said for a more 'low-tech' approach - in particular via pop-up stores where the signage may simply be stickers on the wall. Helen Shelley of M Worldwide referred to its new temporary facilities for Shepherd's Bush Market, for which it is using shipping containers carrying stencilled logos for the branding on their sides, easy-to-change wooden signs, and nothing digital. 'It's the opposite to hi-tech!' she added.

HMKM has created Denim Studio at Selfridges

Jane Lawrence commented that it is 'quite a difficult time for designers'. But in these changing times there are plenty of opportunities out there too. As Colin Melia said: 'Eighty per cent of retailers wait for the trailblazers to do something.' That's a lot of potential clients looking for help to find just the right balance between traditional and online offer, which won't be able to continue watching from the sidelines. To prosper in the brave new retail world, physical stores will have to work harder than ever to provide agile, experiential environments, bringing more, rather than less, opportunities for designers to make a difference.

The debate's chair Theresa Dowling of FX suggested that the whole retail debate is based on a customer's experience enjoying shopping, and the theatre of which made the consumer spend more. She concluded that she was a lost cause, as she hated it

Case Study: Fred Perry
BuckleyGrayYeoman's 200 sq m store for Fred Perry in Munich includes the opportunity for a cuppa while shopping, as one of many references to the brand's Englishness. Other stores such as Westfield Stratford City explore the sculptural possibilities of the brand's laurel logo.

Case Study: Shepherd's Bush Market
M Worldwide is maximising the branding potential of shipping containers in its low-tech design of a temporary location for Shepherd's Bush Market in west London. While the market's main site is being redesigned, the market itself will trade from a series of colourful shipping containers on a nearby site. These, along with a new graphic identity, will give a sense of uniformity that traders will personalise with their products. The idea is to retain existing traders and attract new while waiting to move back to the permanent market site.

Case Study: Post Office
Edge has worked with the Post Office on a new modular retail format for a community-store concept that aims to bring to life Post Office values. The Nottingham store (pictured) is one of three being trialled. Edge also created a pop-up London store in Camden Market in eight days - the Post Office's first ever pop-up - as part of a project to take the Post Office to the people.

Case Study: John Lewis
John Lewis's new smaller boutique department store format concept was designed by Dalziel & Pow. In the 6,000 sq m Exeter store, 80 per cent of the fixtures are standard with 20 per cent bespoke to give scope for expression of personality.

Interactivity is an important element. Thirty digital sales terminals are placed strategically throughout the store. These are designed to attract and inform customers and also allow them to purchase, either independently or with the help of specialist staff. Other digital features include an interactive store guide on arrival and promotional screens in key locations.

Case Study: Matches
Issues of flexibility and agility were present throughout the Matches boutique project in Wimbledon says MVA director Anshu Srivastava, from client strategic expectations to align the store with the website offer and the commercial brief for product placement, to seasonal changes and how the store works logistically.

Case Study: Denim Studio
HMKM has created Denim Studio at Selfridges, a 2,400 sq m space offering 11,000 pairs of jeans from 60 brands and billed as the biggest denim department in the world.

The entrance to the Denim Studio is signalled with blue neon signage to lead customers into the main space. Here they browse merchandise on white-painted metal display units that fade to transparent acrylic as they reach the ceiling to maximise views through the whole space.

The Denim Studio prioritises both service and interactive engagement. The Fit Studio to the rear of the space includes both a traditional tailoring suite with tailors able to customise any jeans in two hours. Customers can also browse the interactive media screens that access a 'media river' of tips, trends and product, and allow customers to email the information to themselves.