German company: Liganova Stuttgart & Berlin

To brand retailers Liganova ‘the store is the stage’. Their innovative displays employ such props as weather systems, spy-mirror technology and inflatable jeans to offer big-name clients a little more than window dressing and a whole lot of theatre. Stephen Whelan pops to the shops.

From start to finish, the process of enticing consumers to swap cash for commodities is surprisingly like dating. With its seductive promises of untold sensual delights, advertising seeks to seduce consumers into the bedroom of consumption that is the retail experience – a space for intoxicated and heady fumblings that may or may not result in feelings of emptiness and guilt.

For some brands, though, the transition from sofa to street to store is more like a religious conversion. Take Apple, for instance, whose glass and brushed aluminium cathedrals to technology are the living embodiment of the brand promise that their products can transport you to an afterlife in the present where everything is designed with you, the user, in mind. Word and image made flesh and blood and preached by a multicultural army of evangelical 20-something store assistants.

Whether brands adopt a sinners’ or saints’ approach to their retail spaces, the key objective is to connect the dots between the various touch points that have led consumers to the fabled Point of Sale. Once the glossy pictures and moving images have convinced them to Be Stupid and Just Do It, it’s down to the retail environment to complete the marriage of creativity and commerce in such a way that the act of purchasing becomes inseparable from (and integral to) the brand experience.

Leading the charge in designing and executing innovative and engaging retail spaces is the German brand retail company Liganova. Co-founded by Michael Haiser and Bodo Andrin in 1995, Liganova boasts a high-end client list clustered around the lifestyle, fashion and luxury goods sectors. The company grew out of the shared creative vision of Haiser and Andrin, who first partnered to launch a Stuttgart nightclub before breaking away to create branded events together in their mid twenties.

Attracting the attention of Hugo Boss, Liganova picked up its first commission to produce a commercial environment for the brand’s Las Vegas store. At the same time Haiser and Andrin turned their attention to developing temporary spaces for trade fairs and retail POS design, diversifying their offering while growing the company. Today Liganova numbers over 100 staff across its two sites in Stuttgart and Berlin, incorporating ideation, production and R&D divisions.

“Back when Bodo and I were running the nightclub, we realised we shared a passion for conceptualising and executing innovative live happenings,” explains Haiser. “Working with a multi-talented team we were able to apply a holistic approach that meant we could push creative and commercial boundaries at the same time. Since then we’ve held on to the belief that it’s vital never to separate those two components.”

According to Haiser, reinvention has been key to Liganova’s ongoing expansion and evolution. Working with a roster of clients including Mercedes-Benz, Diesel and Cartier, the steady process of gradually building trust and introducing design and manufacturing innovations has enabled the company to remain adaptable. “Usually we work in direct contact with the client,” says Haiser. “We’ll design the concept and implement it as well. Depending on the scale of the project we can call on the support of a worldwide creative network so that gives us flexibility to shape our approach around the needs of the client and the project.”

While Liganova is structured in such a way that it can conceive and execute a project from scratch, Haiser and Andrin have been equally keen to provide plug-in solutions at any stage of the creative process. Their work for adidas is a case in point. “When we work with adidas we sometimes collaborate with the agency 180 to extend a campaign that’s already underway, while other times we have free reign to develop our own creative concepts from scratch.”

The company has been deliberately structured with a middle finger held up to the idea of siloing teams by area of expertise. Instead multi-disciplinary groups collaborate on projects to apply a 360? perspective to the creative challenge at hand. “At Liganova creativity is more the product of a team effort and therefore a creative director in the classical role doesn’t exist,“ reveals Haiser. “Instead we have teams who straddle disciplines, including architecture, fashion design and marketing, working alongside industry partners with an international background. We do have certain specialist domains separated by their area of expertise, but for us it’s important that our creative teams are closely intertwined with our production specialists.”

That structural model, cross-fertilising between different skills bases, has allowed Liganova to keep a clear line of sight on the cultural zeitgeist. Part of the impetus behind the ongoing reinvention and focus on innovation is the company’s client base. “When the majority of your clients originate from within the fashion industry you have to operate at the same pace of change. The production cycle for lifestyle brands is unbelievably fast moving and therefore they’re naturally open to innovation, new ideas and the constant push to better your previous work.”

Recent projects have seen Liganova create a fully interactive storefront window for Diesel in Berlin that used live motion capture to enable passers by to unleash rain, wind and lightening to overturn tables, break lamps and inflate pairs of jeans. The installation also utilised a proprietary ‘thru-glass’ sound system that turned the store’s windowpane into a speaker membrane to transmit sounds generated in response to players’ actions.

Other innovations include back-lit spy-mirror technology that plays with surface transparency to reveal and hide products positioned inside specially constructed display cases. A recent project, christened ChangeRetail, seeks to overcome the limitations of fixed-build store designs by employing a flexible grid system with an adaptable range of display units, bespoke furniture and 3D installations. The idea has already been adopted by Esprit who are testing the solution in proto-stores.

Executed singly or in unison, the range of next-gen retail design innovations championed by Liganova bring brands and consumers together at the point of decision, breaking down the barriers between visual merchandising, retail architecture and brand communications.

“Taking ownership of innovation and building it into the DNA of our company lends credence and individualism to the work we create,” says Haiser. “We live, and believe in, the ideas we build for our clients and have sought to embed innovation at the heart of our business. Whether it helps to improve sustainability or simply opens up new business opportunities, our aspiration is to always be one step ahead and to break fresh ground.

http://www.liganova.de