Shaping the Clay
A partnership approach has been the secret ingredient in transforming a family vision into a bold new organic fine food store in inner city Melbourne.
Tom and Prue Clay, in the pursuit of their passion for organic fine foods, have mixed the traditional and earthy with a trendy and beautiful shop design, making organic food funky and accessible for the lucky folks of Carlton North.
Background
A young brother and sister are blending the time-honoured and traditional with modern urban funk, reinventing the concept of an organic health food store in fashionable Rathdowne Street Village in Carlton North.
When your surname is Clay, you might say it was meant to be that siblings Tom and Prue should end up in such an earthy place professionally. Their shared passion for organic and health food and products began with a childhood growing up on a vegetable farm on the banks of the Murray River. Prue gained her qualification as a natural health practitioner with a specialisation in Chinese medicine, and then she and Tom decided to embark on the exciting but daunting journey of opening a retail organic store offering products and a suite of natural health services.
Tom and Prue were delighted to secure an empty storefront in the popular Rathdowne Village shopping strip in Carlton North. From its previous life as a second-hand bookshop, it had fallen into disrepair, standing amongst hip and eclectic surrounding stores just waiting for a facelift.
Rathdowne Village, like so many of Melbourne’s fine urban and suburban shopping strips, is the kind of place you can while away an afternoon: fresh grocery shopping, coffee with friends, sourcing boutique gifts and designer clothing – it was the ideal strip to build their dream on.
Objective
Once the ink was dry on the storefront papers, Tom and Prue knew they would require some specialist skills to help them turn their vision into an entrepreneurial reality. They took their brief to the Southsouthwest designers: they wanted a store with a unique mix of high quality fine and organic foods, including a traditional health food store offering vitamins, supplements and services. No daggy, dusty health food stores of old – this had to be new and exciting, but authentic and charming.
Southsouthwest: the right direction
A small team of internationally trained designers, Southsouthwest consider themselves artists, craftspeople and thinkers before anything else. A deeply involved partnership was on the cards, with both teams sharing the Clay Fine Food & Health vision and respecting each party’s strengths. Both parties were also new businesses (Southsouthwest launched in September 2007, and began the Clay project in April 2008) adding another element to the like-mindedness of their goals and motivations.
Clay got Southsouthwest involved as soon as they found their location: this foresight would prove to be the winning element of the successful outcome.
Shaping the vision
The decision was taken early to focus on a strong brand image for Clay Fine Food & Health. Prue and Tom were clear on the products and services they wanted to provide, and the atmosphere and feeling they wanted to create in the store; Southsouthwest knew that a smash hit brand identity was the way to go.
The challenge was to make this brand identity work across two important levels: first, the shop itself needed to fit seamlessly into a successful and thriving retail strip and second, the store itself needed to stand alone as a strong brand that would get customers in and then keep them coming back.
Within the brand identity, two contrasting elements needed to be integrated: the traditional and holistic approach to organic and natural products, but with a modern and up-to-date twist.
Brand within a brand – the fit into Rathdowne Village
You may have heard of Rathdowne Village in North Carlton, or you’ll know of somewhere similar. Many inner urbanites have probably visited the leafy, picturesque strip once or twice: perhaps for a coffee, a baked treat, some groceries or a weekend breakfast with friends. It’s widely appreciated for its sought-after (and pricey) real estate, quaint shopping and dining strip providing specialised retail and foodie therapy.
Says Southsouthwest director Jonathan Price: “Appealing to the aesthetic sensibility of Rathdowne Village, which is lined with re-fitted quaint, heritage shopfronts, was paramount. The area is increasingly becoming a destination strip for shoppers to spend an afternoon, so the design approach had to be memorable and interesting enough to get people talking.
On either side of the proposed shop is an eclectic, hip café called North and a much loved, quirky fashion boutique called Frisk. These stores very much target the same, open-minded, sophisticated consumers that Clay are after, so it was crucial that the Clay brand was sensitive to the feel of its surrounds.”
As a retail shop fitting into an existing family of shops, it was imperative to create an environment and more broadly a brand, which would appeal to customers from the local area and further afield.
Brand within a store – the store itself and its appeal to the client
The next challenge for Southsouthwest was to shape the Clay’s vision and requirements into a strong brand identity within the store, rolling it out across all aspects of store fit out, stationery, store bags and promotional materials. They wanted the store to be cool enough to engender almost cult status and following.
“Melbourne shoppers are notorious for their dislike for crude or bold over-stated design. Every detail had to feel authentic, just as the client was ensuring every product was of the highest quality,” said Price.
The balance needed to be found between the tradition and heritage of organic health food and the modern twist the Clays wanted to bring to the concept.
Solution
Tradition with a difference
Southsouthwest wanted to design a fusion of a deli, a boutique and an organic grocer, intended to be unlike any other store in Melbourne. To design the brand, the designers returned to the concept of Clay – both as the name of the owner and the earthy material – and everything that could mean to and represent for the store – tradition, earth, beauty, passion and feeling.
The logo features a hand drawn image designed to accentuate the crafted, unique nature of the store and the products within. But in a sumptuous turquoise-green colour that shows the modern, funky and playful side of Clay. The inclusion of a music turntable embedded into the countertop also makes a bold statement that this is not a normal health food shop!
It was crucial that these elements reflected both sides of what was a non-traditional health food store, blending the concepts of fine food and health food seamlessly.
Accessorise, accessorise
The look and feel flows right through the store, with every little detail attended to. This was done ‘by blending the graphic elements of food and herbal iconography into a unified, traditional style wallpaper repeat and old-world archetypal crest emblems on bags, stationery, and business cards.
The fit out was then designed to match the identity, with the wallpaper offset against warm shades of raw plywood and recycled timber. Customers are drawn towards the wallpaper from the street outside – which is exactly what the designers were hoping for.
The result was intended to be wall-to-wall goodness, in both product and design: just visiting the store is an engaging and pleasurable experience… now imagine the benefits of using some of those natural and wholesome products!
Results
Sculptured success
Six months after opening, the shop has experienced strong and steady sales growth. It seems that the partnership of Clay providing the raw materials and allowing the Southsouthwest designers the freedom to do what they do best has worked to shape a beautifully fit out store. Together the team have created a piece of retail art.
Says Price: “The key insight we gained from the process was how much more potential can be unlocked from the creative process when the client is trusting of our judgement. The guys at Clay knew a lot about what they wanted to achieve and the feel they were after, but were not overly controlling in terms of how that vision manifested. This opened the door to some non-traditional methods such as hand-painting graphics, which might not have arisen if both sides were a bit more guarded. I think in hindsight it was these sorts of unexpected details that really gave the shop the feel we were after.”
The nitty gritty
The store fit out was completed on time and on budget, with Southsouthwest putting the finishing touches in the form of hand painted wall graphics before the grand opening day.
Customers have been delighted with the store. The bright wallpaper, as expected, is a magnetic force attracting people in from the street.
Twelve weeks after opening, the shop has experienced steady sales growth. Sales have exceeded expectations and most importantly products from every area of the shop have been selling, reflecting that the market has embraced the new retail format whole-heartedly.
Proof in the pudding
In September 2008 Clay and Southsouthwest were given proof that their hard work had paid off. They were profiled in underground cool online newsletter threethousand as: “a gorgeous, community-minded store, stocked with organic ingredients, fresh produce and other convenient bits and pieces.” The cool hunters advise: “If you can survive the North Carlton rent, move now, settle down and eat well.”
I think we can safely say the Clay is setting.
Click here to download the Clay Fine Food & Health and Southsouthwest case study.
Related Links
Clay Fine Food & Health — www.clayhealth.com.au
Southsouthwest — www.Southsouthwest.com.au
Threethousand — www.threethousand.com.au
22 January 2009