London Retail Guide

London is complex in character. Yet what is conclusive is the city’s creative charm. We have been inundated with new stores and we took to the streets to reflect upon some of the most innovative brand and retail concepts residing in the city.

Sweaty Betty

As experience overtakes product in brand differentiation, retail is now a place for shoppers to eat, socialise, exercise, and shop. Spanning across the store’s three floors, shoppers will find fashion, beauty and fitness products.

Shrewdly situated in Soho’s vibrant Carnaby street and true to the brand name, this experience driven flagship invites those who enter to sweat in this part studio, part healthy café come shop.

The brand has collaborated with some of the city’s hottest fitness brands in the game such as Frame and Model Method. Trading on the appeal of approval from key influencers such as food blogger Ella Mills, the workout timetable provides justification to ditch the class pass and head to store.

Browns x East

In the heart of Shoreditch at 21 Club Row, Browns has opened the doors of its first store in 20 years. The store contains an augmented retail environment that allows consumers to constantly interact with new products.

Shrewdly, the store staff will use technology to monitor consumer activity and make improvements to the experience accordingly.

Combating the speed inducing stress of 
city life, the store launched with BeBox, to incorporate breathing spaces and meditation to offer opportunities to improve consumer creativity.

The new store courts the menswear driven nature of East London, though products are merchandised in a gender-neutral format.

Despite the innovative technology included in the store, there is focus on human interaction as the space is merchandised by a series of installations. Mixtures of materials have been included to create a space that is both playful and sensory driven.

Jacob The Angel

Set in the vibrant and quirky enclosure that
is Neal’s Yard, you will find Jacob The Angel. This coffee house is the latest venture from the masterminds behind the wildly popular The Palomar.

Once you set eyes on this coffee house, you
are sitting in on a history lesson. See, in 1637, a Greek student brewed the first cup of coffee
at Oxford University. In the years that followed, England’s first coffee house was opened in 1651. And it is that year that is proudly positioned on this coffee house.

The typography that wallpapers the walls and adorned the baking paper and menus reflect the style of the 1670’s manuscript for The Character of a Coffee-House. Whilst the first coffee houses in London were primed as social structures that allowed businessmen, politicians and intellectuals to assemble and debate, the lack of space here means that Jacob The Angel is more of a take out affair.