CDG to remodel Our Price stores

Conran Design Group has been appointed by music retailer Our Price to develop a new retail format for its 220 stores, less than a year after Diefenbach Elkins Davies Baron developed prototype stores for the chain.

CDG will create the interiors and the façades of the new stores, after winning a three-way pitch against unnamed rivals. Rostered group CDT is designing graphics.

The identities will be trialed in new outlets, at London’s Paddington Station and Manchester’s Trafford Centre, before the end of this year. Eight more shops will open by Christmas.

Our Price head of marketing Brian Waring says the redesign is part of a “significant expansion programme” planned for the next four to five years. If successful, the chain may eventually have 300 outlets in total.

“Davies Baron was appointed last year to do prototype stores in Edinburgh and Heathrow, but there were a number of things about the design that we wanted to move on,” says Waring. “We felt CDG was better suited to looking at the entire estate and creating an atmosphere of being a great local music store.”

CDG account director Caroline Hancock says: “Our Price has long been recognised as a great local music store with a reputation for choice and first class customer service. The design strategy will build on these values and ensure that Our Price meets all the challenges of the future.”

Waring also confirms that discussions about whether or not to stock telephones from the new Virgin Mobile range are underway.

“If mobile phones are the future it makes sense to look at that,” says Waring. “Our Price will carry a small range of mobile phones, but it won’t fundamentally change anything. The core of Our Price is that it’s a music store and it will continue to be so,” he says.