(Photo Credit: Browns)
Browns Fashion brings together art and retail
Browns Fashion takes over the Berlin nightlife community with a new retail experience in the city of club culture. From the past Thursday to Sunday Browns set up shop in an abandoned supermarket in Mitte featuring a curated collection of Bottega Veneta, Gucci, Prada, and more.
This new experience is apart of an ongoing series called “Browns Nomad” in an ongoing series where they set up a temporary shop in various locations seeking more experimental retail experiences. They look at this project in the midst of the break down of brick and mortar retail locations, which is a declining industry and is becoming less popular with time.
The retail experience isn’t just about shopping but providing a unique experience that retail customers aren’t too familiar with, like getting a tattoo. Louis Loveless is a tattoo artist that stayed up for 48 hours giving free tattoos on-site in a makeshift studio.
(Photo Source: Browns)
They also offer shoppers palm readings and a nightlife experience like a club with DJ performers. There are also performance artists that sing and dance with art installations for a truly unique experience for the audience. Brown’s Director of Men’s and Women’s buying, Ida Petersson explains the concept behind their idea of a unique shopping experience, “For us, immersion is key. And Germany is our largest market.”
Petersson explains, “The preconception with brick-and-mortar is that a lot of people feel it’s a static experience. But it’s not. It doesn’t have to be.” It is true that most retail shopping experiences can feel uniform and static, sticking to what’s best for marketing and not focusing on enticing the customer with a unique experience with the only goal in mind to sell.
Brick-and-mortar locations can also provide a unique experience that can’t be utilized in e-commerce retail, gaining an advantage over the competition. Yet it seems that this concept will need more time to develop and hopefully brick-and-mortar locations can learn a thing or two from Browns Fashion.
