Local retail designer makes coveted national list
Joy Dayaw, a design PM at MG2’s Seattle office, has been named one of Visual Merchandising and Store Design (VMSD) magazine’s 2024 Designer Dozen.
Market: Consumer Experiences
First Look: Kizik opens NYC pop-up as it preps for brick-and-mortar expansion
“Hands-free” footwear brand Kizik has dropped anchor in New York City — and it’s staying longer than it expected.
The company, whose shoes are designed for those who hate tying their shoe laces or are unable to do so, has opened a pop-up on Greene Street in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. Created in partnership with MG2, the outpost was originally scheduled to be open only for a few days. But the response was so enthusiastic, Kizik has decided to keep the space open through Memorial Day.
Kizik Extends NYC Pop-Up Through Memorial Day Due to Shopper Demand
Footwear brand Kizik partnered with MG2 on a pop-up concept in New York City’s SoHo to gauge market demand. The people have obviously spoken, because the brand has decided to extend the pop-up through Memorial Day.
ENR 2024 Top 500 Design Firms: Artificial Intelligence Ramps Up
Commentary from the Top 500 Design Firms in 2024 reveals a shift in the use of artificial intelligence to complement design services. Last year, AI was the exception more than the rule, but this year more design professionals aim to integrate tech into operations.
MG2 CEO and Chairman Mitch Smith summed up the proliferation of AI use among design firms as “exciting,” but says the technology is “daunting to comprehend.”
Kizik Unveils New Look at NY Pop-Up and Sets Store Openings
Kizik, a purveyor of hands-free footwear, has taken the wraps off a new brand platform with the national introduction of its brand promise, “Motion Is Magic.”
That proposition will guide Kizik’s continued growth into retail, wholesale and international markets, including an experiential pop-up this past weekend in New York and plans for six more brick-and-mortar stores this year.
Bellevue Nordstrom Unveils a Fresh New Look
Nordstrom has reliably served as a robust hub for Bellevue shoppers chasing quality casual wear, high fashion, and everything in between since 1958. Anyone who’s perused the store in the past year might have noticed, though, that the brand has been working toward a new spring look.
Photographer – Benjamin Benschneider
Kizik Introduces New Brand Platform and Identity With an Immersive NYC Pop-up and Omnichannel Campaign
Kizik, the industry leader in hands-free footwear innovation, debuts a new brand platform with its national introduction of its brand promise, “Motion Is Magic,” The integrated campaign unlocks the power and potential of Kizik’s category-creating, hands-free technology, inviting consumers to enter a life of frictionless freedom where they can experience the limitless possibilities of a life in motion.
This widely resonant proposition will guide Kizik’s continued growth into retail, wholesale, and international markets, culminating this April with a limited-time NYC experiential pop-up that features the launch of five new silhouettes.
Perspectives
Our Inaugural Sustainability Impact Report
April 2024 / By Our Inaugural Sustainability Impact Report
MG2 is proud to share our inaugural Sustainability Impact Report for 2023. This annual report will measure our progress year-over-year towards meeting the AIA 2030 Commitment to reach towards carbon neutrality by 2030. Taking this step helps us reach our goal of transparency and accountability to our clients, our industry, and the communities where we live and work. This report demonstrates our progress in design and project work and also calculates our corporate carbon emissions.
While sustainability has long been part of the MG2 ethos, we formalized our position in 2020 by joining the AIA 2030 Commitment and publishing our first Sustainability Action Plan. With this 2023 Sustainability Impact Report, we’ve taken the opportunity to refine our plan and take advantage of new tools and processes. As part of that plan, we have established four goals as a firm:
Goal 1:
Operating Energy
With a focus on building performance, we aim to reduce the amount of energy needed to operate buildings. In new construction, this involves building heating and cooling, lighting, plug loads, etc. For retail tenant improvements (TI), we primarily focus on the lighting power density which calculates the light output per square foot.
Goal 2:
Embodied Carbon
This goal represents all the building materials required for new construction or retail TI. Each material has an associated Global Warming Potential (GWP) number which considers the material’s extraction from the earth, manufacturing process, transportation to the building site, and building construction, called “cradle to gate.” We calculate the material quantities in the building (typically from a Revit model) and apply a GWP number to those quantities to determine the metric tons of CO2 a building uses. Reducing this number requires higher efficiencies in our designs and our materials.
Goal 3:
Material Sourcing
Many material manufacturers provide Environmental Product Declarations (EPDs) for their products. This goal emphasizes the importance of collecting EPDs when we procure or specify materials. In addition to the AIA 2030 Commitment, we are proud signatories of the AIA Materials Pledge. Our job as designers is to bring a deeper awareness of the material makeup and offer our clients “good, better, and best” choices when selecting materials.
Goal 4:
Water Conservation
Water is one of our most precious resources. We calculate and track water usage for irrigation as well as indoor water use. No matter where you live, water is becoming a scarce resource, and as designers we are responsible for implementing innovative solutions.
You can’t improve what you don’t measure, and as a firm we always challenge ourselves to do better. We are constantly tracking data for the above goals during each design phase of a project, from Concept Development through Construction Documentation. Each design team is responsible for collecting and evaluating data during the design process and looking for ways to improve efficiencies.
MG2 invites you to check out our 2023 Sustainability Impact Report and check back each year to see our progress. Enter your name and contact information below to gain access, then click on the report to read full-screen.
Harnessing the Power of Fitting Rooms: Elevating Visual Storytelling and Unified Commerce Experiences
The fitting room has a reputation of being a little sterile at best — and completely unbearable at worst.
While few have prioritized the fitting room experience, Good American, River Island and Victoria’s Secret are among a growing list of retailers turning it into a point of differentiation by leveraging immersive visual storytelling and intentional tech integration.
“Sensorial elements set the tone and the mood from an environmental design standpoint…and then the technology facilitates the efficiency for the customer, and the learnings and data for the brand. Anything you can do to minimize the amount of time it takes for a customer to get an answer while they’re interested in a product increases the chances of a good experience.” Melissa Gonzalez, Principal, MG2
SOREL Pop-Up Named a 2024 Shop! Design Awards Winner
We’re excited to announce SOREL named Pop-Up Store – Gold at The 2024 Shop! Design Awards.
MG2 Listed in Interior Design’s 2024 Top 100 Giants
We’re excited to be listed in Interior Design’s 2024 Top 100 Giants.
Eye on Five
There are many questions surrounding denim, from how to engage consumers with exciting retail experiences to how to reduce overproduction waste. These five companies, including MG2, offer up some answers.
“Brands and retailers want to create in-store experiences that feel impactful and unique, but too often they create mood boards that are just a canvas of what everyone else is doing,” said Melissa Gonzalez, Principal at MG2.
Retail design trends: Consumers are looking for wellness in where they shop
Consumers are making lifestyle choices with wellness in mind, which ignites in them a feeling of purpose and a sense of motivation.
That’s the conclusion that the architecture and design firm MG2 draws from a survey of 1,182 U.S. adult consumers the firm conducted last December about their seeking healthier shopping experiences. (Download the full report.)
Creating Immersive Retail Experiences at SXSW: What’s the Future of Brand Engagement?
How can brands leverage theater-driven design to create immersive retail experiences that resonate with consumers? Melissa Gonzalez, Principal and Shareholder at MG2 Design and the host of Retail Refined, has illuminated this topic at SXSW (South by Southwest) 2024, highlighting the significance of engaging consumers through multiple touchpoints.
“What do you stand for? Why do you deserve my money? It was great to see so many of those themes and topics really bubble up to the top of conversations,” Gonzalez said, emphasizing the need for brands to craft compelling, personalized narratives that capture the consumer’s imagination and foster a connection
VMSD Announces Its 2024 Designer Dozen
VMSD magazine celebrates the best and brightest young designers in retail design through its annual VMSD Designer Dozen awards. These 12 emerging stars recognized this year come from retail organizations and design firms across the country and internationally, and Joy Dayaw, Design PM at MG2, was selected.
What Gen Z expects from in-store experiences
Floor Covering News Publisher and Editorial Director, Steve Feldman, penned his column this week about Gen Z and MG2’s research and insights report: “Gen Z: A Deeper Look at 4 Key Personas and How They Are Shaping the In-store Experience.”
“‘This is still a young generation that’s just coming into their career, still largely living with their parents, so they’re still going be motivated by cost, even if they want to make sustainable decisions,’ said Melissa Gonzalez, principal at MG2.”
New Store Strategies: Flexibility, Adaptability Key to Engaging Today’s Demanding Consumers
“Flexibility is definitely a key component whether you’re doing Store 1 or Store 100,” said MG2 Principal Melissa Gonzalez in a Chain Store Age’s interview with Debra Hazel.
Read the cover story, “”New Store Strategies,” on why flexibility and adaptability are key to engaging todays demanding consumers.
Consumer Experiences / MG2 Advisory
Prestige Beauty Company
Building a Sustainable Store Design Program
MG2 partnered with a prestige beauty company to assess and develop a customized, scalable sustainability program for both new and existing retail stores globally, spanning their family of brands.
The objective of this more than 12-month endeavor was to establish a framework, along with measurable standards and criteria, that could be incorporated into the built environment across various categories, including store buildout, energy, and water conservation, sustainable sourcing of materials, and operations, among others.
Goals included:
- Immersion into corporate and brand goals
- Establishment of standards for sustainability in the built environment
- Create a set of criteria to measure sustainability
- Evaluation of the full lifecycle of the brand environments, including design and materials selection, vendor selection, fabrication, installation, operations, visual merchandising, and end-of-lease removal/recycling of all elements
Deliverables included:
- Stakeholder workshops to establish priorities by brand
- Toolkit and guidelines, creating standards and specifications for sustainability in the built environment
- A scoring system to evaluate and rank achievements within the brand’s custom sustainability program
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Project Details
- Multiple Locations, U.S.
- Confidential
- Strategy & Insights
Consumer Experiences / MG2 Advisory
Navy Exchange
The Navy Exchange (NEX) oversees more than 300 NEX retail stores on 92 naval bases worldwide, varying in size from small self-checkout convenience stores to large department stores. In 2020, NEX enlisted MG2 to partner with them in a department-by-department exploration into how to redefine value at its owned locations. This exploration encompassed Beauty, Consumer Electronics, Kids, Footwear, Home, Jewelry, Food Hall and Provisions – all utilizing Oceana base store as the anchor test store.
Once implemented at Oceana, the NEX team worked with MG2 to leverage learnings from the pilot location to apply a guide for further iterations and eventually a rollout playbook to adapt and scale each department’s evolution.
Goal:
Due to the continued elevation of the competitive landscape, NEX has invested in evolving and elevating their value proposition to their patrons by reimagining the store experience department by department.
“Thirty years ago, it was really convenient because everybody lived on base, but now more families live off base.
It’s about creating a sense of excitement, a sense of community, a sense of belonging, and being able to allow patrons to check more off their list.”
– Rich Honiball, EVP and global chief merchandising and marketing officer for the Navy Exchange Service Command (NEXCOM)
Let’s not think of
ourselves as the military store;
let’s think of ourselves as
a retail destination.
Process:
The MG2 Advisory Team, in partnership with our design team, took a multi-pronged approach to assessing how each department could best support consumer needs.
This included:
- An audit of brand insights (both qualitative and quantitative) as well as competitive benchmarking analysis
- Evaluating consumer trends (for example: identifying the desire to shop for beauty products in store by regimen)
- Surveying the NEX consumer audience as it relates to opportunities to elevate in-store experiences and identify key drivers to make Navy Exchange their shopping destination
- In-person field interviews – immersing ourselves on base with new recruits and sailors and talking with store management to learn first-hand where they are seeing gaps both experientially and operationally in store
This evaluation identified opportunities beyond price to deliver value across the fleet of locations. Through a deep dive analysis into trends and customer pain points and desires, including areas that provided demystification, we could identify drivers and preferences to inform the in-store experience evolution, allowing the Navy mission to be more deeply reflected in the spaces visited by sailors and families.
Based on the insights and research the MG2 Advisory Team brought forward, MG2 designed stores that provided greater space for storytelling, fostering excitement and a sense of community. As a result of these findings, the NEX team revamped each department, reimagining the customer journey, merchandising, wayfinding and operational change.
Beauty Initiative Highlight / The Results Are in the Data:
The beauty department redesign was first introduced in the Oceana store in 2022, followed by the Pensacola Navy base store in Florida. Post Oceana’s redesign: The beauty departments now demystifies customer discovery. The products which had been arranged by brand alone are rearranged by regimen instead. New end caps feature educational tips and how-tos and a flexible space in the new beauty department hosts special events and live streaming.
The post-redesign sales increases have been significant:
- Oceana beauty department sales rose by over 10% year over year compared to the same period prior. In the remodeled Pensacola store, sales increased by 6% Y/Y.
- Beauty Zone increased 510 bps to Tidewater, 820 bps to Enterprise.
“The way that the departments are structured and organized elevates the product, elevates the experience, and makes it easier for the customer to find what they’re looking for…”
– Rich Honiball
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Project Details
- Multiple Locations, U.S.
- Navy Exchange Service Commany
- Large-format Retail
- 2,300 – 25,000 SF
- Architecture, Strategy & Insights
2024 Retail Forecast: Three Wise Moves
We were thrilled to discuss our Sorel pop-up with Matthew Hall for VMSD’s “2024 Retail Forecast.”
“Saturated inside and out with the brand’s signature orange, the space’s interior walls also feature a collage of vintage ads combined with new campaign imagery to celebrate the breadth of the brand’s heritage. An augmented reality ‘Magic Mirror,’ with branded filters and experiences at the store entry, invites consumers to fully immerse themselves in the brand story and interact in a unique way. ‘The product features were a key inspiration,’ says Melissa Gonzalez, MG2 Principal and The Lionesque Group founder, ‘and New York’s energy and characteristics was the muse.'”
MG2 Named a Finalist in This Year’s Glossy Beauty Awards
We’re excited to be named a finalist in this year’s Glossy Beauty Awards for our partnership with Victoria’s Secret on VS Bombshell Gardens pop-up on New York City’s High Line.
The award spotlights the competitive beauty industry and today’s consumers’ desire for new and innovative products and experiences from the brands they love.
MG2 Listed in BD+C’s Top 90 Restaurant Architecture Firms for 2023
We’re excited to be listed in BD+C’s Top 90 Restaurant Architecture Firms for 2023.
The Best Restaurant Architects in Seattle, Washington
We’re excited to be named one of The Best Restaurant Architects in Seattle, Washington by GC Magazine.
Inside The Mind Of Gen Alpha
“In Gen Alpha’s mind, there are no boundaries in terms of how they’re able to access information…And the information and resources they have access to are more far-reaching than what we’ve ever had access to. In their mind, they can figure out anything.”
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