Project Overview
Rebel is a well loved Australian sports retailer. But with international behemoths like JD Sports and Decathlon arriving on our shores, this homegrown hero needed to step up their customer experience and take the fight to the global players.
We partnered with Rebel to create an entirely new store concept centred around highly immersive customer experiences.
These new store concepts are now the benchmark for all future store design. And, the flagship Parramatta store went on to win Store Design of the Year and Best CX in Australia at this year's National Retail Awards.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Danny Lattouf, Partner & CSO
Matt Newell, Founder & CEO
Sarah Carney, Senior Retail Designer
Michael Chen, Retail Designer
Megan Gibson, Senior Retail Designer
Caroline Resseguier, Senior Retail Designer
Nicola Hofmann, Senior Retail Designer
Project Brief
With increasing levels of competition and a growing number of international players arriving on our shores, Rebel briefed us to develop an entirely new retail concept.
Our CX strategy was underpinned by two key insights.
1. We needed to flip Rebel stores into Rebel Experience Centres.
2. We had to create immersive destinations for each key sporting code to create a strong centre of gravity that would anchor a broader shopping experience.
The store experience at Parramatta would also provide the benchmark for all future store concepts.
Project Innovation/Need
Immersive experiences were so fundamental to this concept that the stores were renamed rCX stores (Rebel Customer Experience). This was as much a signal to the Rebel team as it was to customers, that these stores would be different.
And different they are.
Product is unboxed to get it in the hands of customers.
We have immersive interactives zones where customers can try on a pair of footy boots, step inside a mini pitch and put the product through its paces. The football zone includes interactive tech that challenges the player to fulfill certain tasks. The football zone includes FIFA on a big screen so customers can come and play while their parents go grocery shopping.
We built a mini basketball court where customers could try out products or just shoot hoops.
And we created an interactive product customisation station to take the product experience to the next level.
Of equal importance to immersive experiences, was creating highly relevant destinations for each sporting code.
From the home of basketball to the home of football, each sporting ‘home’ provides customers with a sense of gravity in the store, but also creates a starting point to branch out into new categories of relevance, such as health and wellness.
Design Challenge
There were three key challenges we tackled with this brief:
1. Our stores needed to be experience centres, not traditional retail shops - this was a significant step change from anything Rebel had done before.
2. We had to balance the creation of these experience centres with the need for business results. Something we can definitely say we accomplished - with Rebel Parramatta experiencing a 60% increase in sales since launching the renovated store
3. We were directly competing against global players with much larger budgets - so had to make every dollar count. There was no margin for error.
Sustainability
Our team made it a priority to use sustainable materials wherever possible.
We introduced the use of screens to reduce the dependence on point of sale for seasonal campaigns.
Any printed point of sale is printed on 100% recycled paper
The entire store was fitted with energy efficient lighting.
We’ll continue to build on these sustainable priorities for all future Rebel stores.
Interior Design - Retail
This award celebrates innovative and creative building interiors, with consideration given to space creation and planning, furnishings, finishes and aesthetic presentation. Consideration given to space allocation, traffic flow, building services, lighting, fixtures, flooring, colours, furnishings and surface finishes.
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