BHS and Dolcis launch new retail concepts

Two major high street retailers, BHS and Dolcis, are opening new pilot stores with concepts designed by 20/20.

The 143-strong BHS chain has unveiled the “latest development in BHS store design [which] embraces a whole new approach to space, lighting and colour”, according to BHS marketing director Helena Packshaw.

Elements of the new store, which opened on Wednesday in Cambridge, will be tested in new and refurbished stores, but Packshaw says she is “confident that [the concept] represents the future direction for BHS”.

Features of the new BHS store include a floor-to-ceiling glass frontage, a central atrium, and a childrenswear department with a natural history theme incorporating interactive monitors and tanks displaying marine life.

British Shoe subsidiary Dolcis – the UK’s largest multiple fashion footwear chain – will unveil its new image next week, with redesigned logo and interiors. Created with the “promiscuous shopper” in mind, the key issue was to “position Dolcis, first and foremost, as a fashion business that sells shoes – not just a shoe shop that sells fashion merchandise”, says 20/20 creative director Bernard Dooling.

The concept is the culmination of 14 months work. “Every time customers step into the new concept Dolcis, we want them to feel as though they’ve walked on to the set of The Big Breakfast,” says Dooling. “But don’t be fooled – beneath the apparently anarchic atmosphere of the programme, there’s the strongest of structures. Similarly so with Dolcis.”

The new Dolcis logo owes “more to The Word than to the traditional high street. The window displays are bold fashion stories, not dozens of shoes lined up like magpies on a telegraph wire.”