To think store designer shouldn't get paid.,

[RecallRecall]

Ok.name changed.
This is really annoying me. My local department store ( House of Fraser) Chichester had a resign a year or two ago, Obviously someone was paid a fortune to redesign it because that the rate for people that do design. Lots of shop disruption.
So shop windows reflect ground floor layout. Used to be ; Men's, Jewellery, Paperchase, Shoes., There used to be a lovely window display of shoes ( always tempting but great at sale time ) and I often would run into Paperchade to buy cards and wrap being right by the door .

Now new store design is " Mens , Make Up and Jo Malone where shoes used to be.

Its shite. No one looks in a store window and thinks "ah I must look through all those plastic lipstick samples to find a red" And Jo Malone is lovely but it's not " god, I must have those boots in the sale "

Chichester town is heaving. The department store is dead. It never used to be. And they will blame Brexit or something when clearly someone in store design has been a tool.

I really can’t get worked up about that.
I’m sure they will have done much research and put things where they think they will do best.

Why do you care ?

I don't even look in store windows before I go in. I know that I want e.g. a navy sweater, and I march around departments and concessions until I find one. I couldn't care less whether there are boots, lipsticks or sofas in the window.

It used to be a nightmare pushing a grabby toddler in a pushchair through either the homeware entrance with precariously stacked glasses and porcelain or the busy makeup and perfume area. I find it much better now.

I think people go shopping because they need things. Not all purchases start with a tempting window display.

These decisions are usually based on behavioural science and local research, if it's not working they'll soon change it back

YAnbu! But then I do 98% of all shopping online so I have no right to comment!

I care because it will close. It's really really quiet. It's a big old building and lots of minimum wage jobs gone. And someone who gets a massive pay check will still be working.

I don't shop in store windows per say but why put makeup on half the ground floor? Why would anyone go into House of Fraser to buy make up when Space Nk is down the road? People need greetings cards at short notice and need to try shoes on so makes sense to make that easy and near the entrances.

Unfortunate well yes but everyone needs any jumpers , shoes and cards. Not everyone needs make up. Not rocket science

Yes the store is better for pushchairs buts that's because no one is in there. Literally empty.

All the department stores I go into have makeup on the ground floor. Literally all of them. I don’t really understand why this is but it’s absolutely standard practice - not some weird aberration of the Chichester designer.

Why would anyone go into House of Fraser to buy make up when Space Nk is down the road? Because Soace NK is stupidly expensive? Or they don’t like it for another reason? By the same token, why would any9ne go into Next to buy clothes when Marks and Spencer is down the road?

This is obviously based on actual research, because John Lewis in Cambridge also has a giant make up section on the ground floor, opening out into the shopping mall. It is like an entire self-contained street of makeup leading into the normal main store.

OP you seem to want store layouts to suit your own personal needs.

Rest assured, they don't get a window dresser in, feed them Skittles and let them loose.

One of the reasons for say the movement of cards is simple enough. Customers buying cards on the ground floor will literally go to just that department, spend their £2 and leave. If they go up to another floor they walk through other departments, thereby increasing sales in those departments.

If house of Fraser Chichester aren't concerned with their turnover I don't think you need to be either.

I don't shop in store windows per say but why put makeup on half the ground floor?

All department stores have the perfumery (as it was called when I worked in a very old and very grand department store. We also had a department called ‘mantles’ can you guess what it sold?) on the ground floor. All of them.
You might as well be complaining that the supermarket has its fresh fruit and veg right by the door when all you want is bread and milk.

And reason for the make up/ perfumery on ground is a smell and vision decision.

Do you remember what the JL on Cambridge used to be like, Grilled?
I remember trying to find their technology department once and walking for miles in and out of different building, across yards and up and down stairs.

Our John Lewis is ground floor for cosmetics & perfume but our Debenhams is first floor.
Though the Debenhams in the next city is ground floor.

But it totally DEAD!!

And it wasn't before.it was busy.

So some twatty designer has been paid to kill off a store.

Close it. House of Fraser/John Lewis/Debenhams are horrific anyway.

You can't breathe due to the air being thick with a lethal does of every perfume they stock, the staff all have scary eyebrows and their faces don't match the rest of their skin colour and it's just a maze of old ladies with their noses in the air who don't thank you when you hold a door for them.

I’m pretty sure the people they hire to do the redesign and the manager of the store, regional managers (and if necessary national level management) know a fair bit more about how they want their shop to look and what layout delivers maximum profitability than you.

If you don’t like it go somewhere else.

YABU and weirdly overinvested. Go and find some real problems to help with, maybe give some time to your local food bank or homeless charity?

Perfume was in the first floor but you still could buy stuff before you got there,
Now your only choice is Mens or Joe Malone?
The USB of department store is ease of shopping. Hence buying stuff people need ...cards, baby jumpers, bubble bath in one shop.

Flouncy - nope. That's the point. No one is in the bloody shop...,

So your problem is that the stuff that you want to buy isn’t in the order that you want to buy it in?

Do they still have all the same departments and stock?