Optimise business interior design
Make your space work for your business - part one
Whether it’s a shop, a restaurant, bar, hotel or an office, the environment that you and your staff work in and trade out of is a significant overhead. So you want to make absolutely certain that it’s working for you.
A design scheme that is exciting and that looks great may work aesthetically, but that’s obviously not enough. For it to bring success to your business, a scheme must also work functionally and commercially; it must be based on a thorough understanding of the operational side of running your specific business. And it must provide your brand with resonant differentiators, communicating the personality of your business throughout.
Truly great interior design schemes are intelligent, insightful and enduring. They enable you to meet and exceed your clientele and employee expectations.
You may have a restaurant business, in which case you’ll want to be attracting new customers and nurturing customer loyalty in a seriously competitive market and in a culture where consumers are increasingly time poor! Your restaurant needs to be a venue where customers are happy to spend both time and money. First impressions are so crucial. Each of the components from the interior layout and design through to the food, service and communications, all need to come together to form one perfectly seamless consumer experience.
Anyone working in the world of retail in the 21st Century understands the challenge of driving consumers offline and into their store for those all important impulse purchases. Retail environments need to deliver value on every level. The whole three-dimensional in-store experience has to exceed customer expectations. And to achieve that, the interior design has to be engaging. It has to surprise and delight the customer and provide a stimulating alternative to the convenience and practicality of online shopping. Each and every customer journey begins with an emotional expectation of the brand. The designer’s role is to ensure that nothing disappoints - that aspiration transfers to reality!
If you run a large corporate or small business one of the keys to success is to attract top quality staff. An investment in intelligent workplace design can help address this issue as well as help to minimise staff turnover and absence. An office environment clearly has to be functional, flexible, optimise the use of space available and relate to your clientele, business, image and location. But if you then employ ecologically sound design principles, the workspace created won’t simply be inviting and inspiring, it could also lead to improved staff productivity, enhanced morale, increased energy efficiency and reduced running costs.
Providing effective design solutions that achieve a particular objective is exactly the job of a commercial interior designer. Enduring great design solves challenges and an interior created by a professional interior designer will help you to position your business in the market and enhance perception of your products and services, increasing sales potential.
Initial meetings with your selected design partner are your opportunity to brief them on your project. A good creative brief is explicit. You should aim to share as much information as you can about your goals and what it is that you need to achieve with your business interior.
‘Brief’ really is a misnomer! Think detail - and lots of it! Commercial interior design agencies will facilitate this project discovery process, as they want to ensure that they reflect a clear and full understanding of your business objectives in their design proposals.
Share with them:
Your value proposition. What’s unique about your business? If you can sum your ‘offer’ up in ten simple words -great! Conveying the ‘heart’ of your business is key to a good creative brief;
Who your customers are. What are the demographics of your target market, and more importantly what do you know and understand about their aspirations, attitudes and intentions?
Your brand aspirations. How do you want your brand to be perceived? Which emotional responses would you like your brand to trigger in potential customers’ minds; what beliefs and attitudes do you want your brand to evoke?;
Your specific targets. Do you have quantifiable goals? Is your goal to increase sales, increase market share or improve profit margins...if so, then by what percentage? Or do you have a more descriptive goal, like wanting to be “the most popular bar venue in the Southwest” for example?
In an increasingly over-communicated world, the concept your design partner comes up with for your commercial environment should convey all of the above clearly, coherently & consistently.
The commercial interior designer’s role is to align your environment with your image, creating a great deal more than just a ‘shop window’. Through gaining a clear understanding of yours and your customers’ brand aspirations, they’ll have the all the direction they need to create an interior that takes customers on a seamless journey from pavement to pay point - adding originality along the way with bespoke furniture and furnishings.
You now have a vehicle for your brand - a means by which to reach out to your market, increase your customer base and sell, so that your business thrives!
So how do you know if the interior created for you has the power to unleash the magic of your business?
What’s great is that the quality of a design is measurable, even before it’s been built! To evaluate the effectiveness of the interior design for your business space, there are a few fundamentals to bear in mind. Read more in part two - business interior design fundamentals.