Shiseido Travel Retail has opened a dedicated Global Design Center at the division’s Singapore headquarters to serve all its design and creative needs in-house.
The design hub, unveiled on 1 October, centralises the development of creative assets and brand collateral. The Japanese beauty group said its aim was to deliver and maintain a strong and consistent expression of Shiseido’s brands in travel retail worldwide.
The Global Design Center will lead Shiseido Travel Retail’s development in three main areas:
- Retail Design & Project Management – Create “inspiring” store counter designs that are tailored to the needs of the global shopper. These to be implemented in a standardised fashion worldwide to enhance the retail experience and facilitate sell-through;
- Visual Merchandising – Manage and provide impactful visual merchandising toolkits and point-of-sale materials;
- Creative Studio – Advise, adapt and develop visual, digital and packaging assets to support specific travel retail needs.
“At Shiseido, we strive to nurture strong brands, and key to this is maintaining brand consistency across all consumer touch points,” commented Shiseido Travel Retail Vice-President Marketing Elisabeth Jouguelet
“We want travelling consumers to have the same outstanding retail experience across all our locations globally, and this starts with ensuring that the right visual elements are in place. With the Global Design Center, we will be able to fully express the individual brand identities within our portfolio in an aesthetically coherent manner that stays true to their unique DNA and positioning, while optimising the way travellers shop in-store,” she added.
During October’s TFWA World Exhibition in Cannes, the Global Design Center spearheaded the conceptualisation of two of Shiseido’s booths (see pictures below). The result was a minimalist design that expressed the essence of Shiseido, using traditional Japanese washi paper, in an homage to its origins.
The name ‘Shiseido’ (資生堂) originated from a passage in the Chinese Confucian classic Yi Jing (Book of Changes) which says: “Praise the virtues of the Earth, which nurtures new life and brings forth significant values.” This naturality is represented by the washi paper, a key material in traditional Japanese interior architecture, often used in religious rituals at the Shintō shrines.
The two Shiseido booths in Cannes were decked out in thousands of strips of white washi paper, expressing the richness of life, the company said.
“This life is created by movement,” Jouguelet noted. “The fluttering washi strips make for a continuously evolving decor, which is also a reflection of Shiseido’s constant transformative process – more than 140 years of innovation and many more years of creation to come.”
“The opening of the Global Design Center is another milestone in our Vision 2020* roadmap and we look forward to unveiling more exciting projects in future, beginning with a new travel retail counter design for Shiseido in 2017,” said Jouguelet.
Footnote: Vision 2020 is the brainchild of Shiseido CEO Masahiko Uotani. The landmark charter, written in late 2014, outlines his vision for Shiseido remaining “vital” over the next 100 years; and for making the company number one in Japan and Asia. Look out for a compelling interview with Uotani conducted by Martin Moodie last month. Out next week.
