Store Design and Visual Merchandising - #7

Today we didn't meet for class but we still had an assignment. Anna Marie and I decided to meet in the afternoon to do it so we wouldn't have to worry about it later. For the assignment, we had to go to Soho. I hadn't been to that area yet and I love visiting new parts of London in this class so I was excited to go somewhere new.

We left the tube station and headed toward Soho Square. We had to walk through this area to get to actual Soho. Soho Square is an enclosed park. It was very interesting and completely different than the other parks we'd been to so far. Most of the parks are so beautiful and compare to St. James or Hyde Park near Buckingham Palace. Well this park had some grass but patches of dirt, too. It had a gazebo in the center and some statues in various places. There was even a little old lady walking the cutest dog. The other people there were what made this park so interesting. As we were about to exit, we hear some commotion to our left. There are a few guys sitting on a bench, a few guys sitting on the ground facing them, and a guy standing up yelling at the people sitting on the bench and on the ground. Some of these men were also shirtless and you could smell the alcohol a mile away (it was only 3pm). That was definitely not something you'd see in St. James park.

After that, we entered actual Soho. We knew we were right in the middle of it because it was full of stores catering to the gay market and it had sex shops like Jose had told us about. There were so many bars (almost every other establishment) and it looked like all of them were for the gay market. One was even called Gays. And we did see a rainbow flag flying off of one of the buildings. The sex shops were a little more inconspicuous. There was a vintage shop with a light-up sign in the lower corner of the window saying there was a sex shop downstairs. There was also a store called Ann Summers. From the outside it looked like a nice little boutique so we started walking closer until we realized it was full of lingerie, stripper poles, etc. Then we quickly walked away.

I decided to analyze the floor plan of a chocolate shop called Hotel Chocolat. I don't have their address because I was going to look it up online but apparently Google doesn't want to find it. But I do know it was on Old Compton Road in Soho. And it looks like this:

I liked their floor plan because it was so open. They has a single round display with many tiers in the center of the store. It was a smaller store so this was the only stand-alone display. However, each wall was covered in shelving. The shelving was plain glass. This made it so easy to see the merchandise in an organized manner. Everything was spaced out really nicely and arranged in unique ways, which makes shopping easy and fun. 

 However, my absolute favorite part about this store is the theme of it being a hotel. When you first walk in, the check-out counter looks like a desk you would see in a hotel. They also had cute displays on the wall for messages. The details contributing to the theme added sophistication to the store.