Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
Issue link: https://sct.epubxp.com/i/231459
r e T a i l i n g T o d a y Suspended from the ceiling on cables will be a glass-encased, 900-square-foot space the company calls "the ultimate New York apartment." end furniture shoppers. That store will measure 11,500 square feet. In Chicago the retailer will go into a former Borders space belonging to Acadia Realty Trust. The new space set to open on the Upper East Side will replace the existing Design Within Reach store at 62nd Street and Madison Avenue, which is crammed with the many products from designers around the world that the company wants to put on display. The idea is to try to show what the furniture will look like within a home setting. And the store's method for doing this is nothing short of dramatic: Suspended from the ceiling on cables will be a glassencased, 900-square-foot space the company calls "the ultimate New York apartment," accessible to customers by means of a walkway on the second level. Throughout the store there will be sections for bathroom, kitchen and living-room furnishings. Textile samples will hang on the walls, and a display of lamps that management calls a "lighting cloud" hangs from one of the ceilings. Spotlighting these products this way is important for reaching the "wholesale customer," as the company calls the professional designers it wants to draw. But all of this is good for attracting the nondesigner customer too, says McPhee. "Furniture takes a lot of space, and we want to show a lifestyle vignette concept so when you walk in, you can imagine, 'Oh, I could live here,' " he said. "It's hard to buy a sofa without sitting on it." In keeping with the co-tenancy strategy the company is pursuing in other markets, the New York City flagship shares a neighborhood with other home-furnishings tenants. And Richard Hodos, executive vice president of the New York tristate region retail services team at CBRE, calls it the perfect place. Furthermore, he insists that the multilevel scheme is necessary, and that it will pose no problem of the sort retailers typically face when trying to get shoppers to go upstairs. "For Design Within Reach, they couldn't possibly afford to do that on one level," Hodos said. "They had to go up." SCT Why is Insurance Such an Aggravating Topic? At PIPINO, we recognize that insurance is a complicated product that creates frustration for most business owners. So we made it our goal to create, implement , and execute insurance risk management products and services that alleviate that burden for you. INSURANCE RISK MANAGEMENT 800-726-8177 • dpipino.com • info@dpipino.com Keep the Marketplace Fairness Act Bill Moving Forward. 18 SCT / J a n u a r y 2 0 1 4 Mary T. Pipino, CEO