When exploring the area of Hoxton, we came across a shoe store called “Anna Shoes ltd.” It was in dire need of help; there were no customers, the shoe designs themselves were lacking in a fashionable sense, and the overall display of the shoes look overwhelming for potential customers. Toby, the store owner, told us about how the shop has been in business for 20 years. He also mentioned that all the shoes are made by Italian designers, so they are of high-quality (despite the cheap garish look). We asked about the demographic, about what type of customers buy the shoes – only to find out the shop attracts one demographic… African women over the age of 40 who are planning on attending African Weddings.
We decided as a group this is what we would focus on – the target audience. How can we change the demographic of African women who attend African Weddings into, for example, a group of university students ranging from the age of 21-25 who are walking on the streets of Shoreditch on a normal day? Widening the targeted audience would bring more customers and money to the business.
When first stumbling upon the store, we couldn’t help but notice the lack of advertising in the shop windows or surrounding area. By splitting this project into two phases; creating advertisements and the intervention, we can fulfill the requirements of the project brief: a design intervention.
After buying a pair of sandals from Toby, we held a photo shoot to create multiple posters with different designs. Thinking about what sort of objects would attract a younger demographic, we pulled together an array of objects such as, different types of fruits, plastic jewels, colourful tinsel, pom poms, bright boxes, tin foil, and other shiny materials. Following the photo shoot, we headed back to Shoreditch to interview the public about the posters we created. Had we fulfilled our purpose of creating an atmosphere for the shoes that was geared more towards a younger range of women? We targeted store owners from the BoxPark to conduct our interviews on, we thought that interviewing competing retail shops would be a good idea. Receiving positive feedback, it’s time to think about phase two: the intervention.
For our final outcome, we had the idea of taking the designed posters that we have now, print them bigger (possibly A2). Using these big printed posters, we will hang them at the store as well as around general area of the shop. We had the idea of making an installation using the posters, so we would ask about 20 people to volunteer to hold up the posters along the same road “Anna Shoes ltd” is, sort of leading potential customers to the store, sort of a dot-to-dot connection for customers to be led into the shoe store.
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