A while back I put together some Ideas for London [see linefeed/425]. Now it’s Melbourne’s turn. The city that often boasts of it’s ‘most liveable city’ status [economist.com], is currently attracting over 1000 new residents a month and sits in the Monocle’s Top 10 Most Liveable Cities Index [monocle.com] has problems. The 3 main problems are transport, broadband and retail (it’s news media could do with a bit of a kick in the arse as well). Public transport could possibly get a boost now that Connex have been ousted in favour of the MTR Group based in Hong Kong [theage.com.au] (although the trams are back in the hands of the French. Do they even have Trams in France?). There still needs to be a heck of a lot more done to get people out of their precious, beloved cars. The nationwide broadband issue has been left the hands of the major telcos, and therefore looks like it will never be resolved. Working out the best way to transport citizens about is a constant in most cities, so I’m going to focus on the Retail side of things, after all this has to be the most visible sign of a cities intelligence and creative nouce.
Retail sucks in Melbourne. It’s most often an ugly and highly cynical operation designed to extract cash from consumers and give as little possible back in return. Not so for the entertainment industry. Melbourne has some of the best restaurants, bars and cinemas you’ll find in any city anywhere (which isn’t necessarily a bad way to prioritise things). But the shops! OMG. When I think of shops in Melbourne I think of florescent strip lighting and garish painted signs (spotted on shop front in Brunswick Street — ‘Annual Closing Down Sale’). And I mean Chapel Street [Google Maps]… is that really the best there is? Nowhere is there the warm functionality of a Muji or a Habitat (New Zealand and Indonesia have Habitat stores – is it assumed that Australian shopper’s lack the sophistication to support these sorts of ventures?) or the sparky vitality of Uniqlo or Graniph. Core department store, Myer’s thoroughly modern remodelling being the only glimmer of any change in the city [nharchitecture.net], although even this could just be refreshing the packaging on a poor offer. The quirky niche stores are there but are few and far between.
So here a few (not overly) humble suggestions for store concepts that could lift Melbourne’s game and contribute to bringing the city inline with it’s contemporaries locally and around the world.
Local is a reinvigorated take on the local supermarket or mini mart, supporting the idea of local producers and city farms. It is essentially a ‘market store’ with a farm perched on top. Outside of Melbourne it is possible to purchase goods direct from suppliers by visiting stores on or close to their farms. By bringing this idea into the city and building high (we’re talking multi-storey) instead of wide, there is a chance to create an innercity farmer’s network, exchanging produce via a fleet of nippy, clean energy fuelled vans and trucks. In store, produce could then be divided into two distinct categories. One category would be for unprocessed produce, sourced from local producers, straight to the shelves with minimal fuss and packaging. Pricing would be affordable depending on the seasons. This section of the store would seeks to mimick, though not replace, the fresh food market experience you get at places like Victoria Market. The second category would be for pre-prepared meals, put together in the ‘Local’ kitchens utilising fresh produce from category A. Australia has very little in the way of quality ready made food that you can take home and cook yourself with minimal fuss. It is often looked down upon for being of an inferior quality to food that requires more effort in the kitchen. This needn’t be true.
Format would be a new sort of music and entertainment store with some old fashioned ideas, namely bringing back the ‘listening booth’ as well as new ideas such as ditching tacky, wasteful plastic packaging like the (now way past its use-by date) jewel case. Music and entertainment megastores have been made redundant in the age of digital downloads and yet people still like shopping for entertainment on the high street. So Format would give us modern formats we can take home, that take up less space and are easy to organise. Inside Format, customers would be able to settle into their own personal listening booth to review potential purchases (like you see featuring in films of the 50s and early 60s). Then make a selection via the listening device in the booth. At the counter we’d then get to choose how our purchases are to be supplied: Are they burnt to disc, with the option of purchasing various containers for keeping your discs (preferably in bulk, like a photo album)? Or are they downloaded onto an iPod or a USB device or any other hard drive you may choose to buy or bring in with you? Or are they sent to you via email, removing the need for any container at all? Incentives to purchase products instore could include limited edition posters and promotional items, with an emphasis on ‘keepables’, similar to the racks that previously lined the walls of the Pure Groove store in Clerkenwell [puregroove.co.uk].
Kiosk follows a simple premise. It aims to support quality independent magazines from around the world by supplying an outlet of equal quality for them. Kiosk outlets would be deliberately small, intimate and ‘bookish’ spaces (ie warm and inviting, specifically lit, wood panelled interiors). This is for two reasons, the first being cost (business of importing independent magazines can be an expensive one), the second being to strip out any of the commonherd distractions most newsagencies are under the illusion that they need to carry in order to lure consumers in. There is a hunger for information from around the world that international magazines satisfy in Melbourne as evidenced by the popularity of the MagNation model [magnation.com]. Kiosk deviates from that model by shrinking down the offer to it’s bare minimum rather than attempting to expand upon it.
London Stores is the name given to a building slap bang in the heart of the Melbourne CBD [walkingmelbourne.com] in what used to be the city’s main shopping thoroughfare, which seems to have shifted up the road to the top of Swanston Street. The building seems to have struggled to retain tenants, and floors are often empty and under utilised. The London Stores idea proposes using the 10 storey building to encase a number of brands specific to the Melburnian’s desire to be part of the world and be able to purchase the same products shoppers enjoy on high streets around on the globe. Brands that could possibly be installed would be sourced from all over the world particularly London (Habitat, Eat, Marks & Spencer Simply Food, Yauatcha etc), Paris (Ladurée, Paul) and Tokyo (Muji, Uniqlo, Aoyama Book Center). Space would also be set aside for ‘special guest’ brands as part of an ever-changing schedule of pop-up style outlets.
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