Swedish design brand kikki.K celebrates its Swedish heritage and lets customers express their creativity in a new global store concept designed by Dalziel & Pow.

The kikki.K Studio is an engaging hub for making, learning and meeting in Chadstone Shopping Centre – The Fashion Capital in Melbourne, Australia. It’s a space for design and stationery lovers to be inspired, explore their creativity and share ideas, bringing the passion of the brand to life; “dream, do, enjoy, share”.

As if stepping inside the studio of the brand’s Swedish founder, Kristina Karlsson, this inviting space features all the hallmark of cool Scandi style: natural textures, a tonal white and neutral palette, simple finishes and clean lines. At its heart, a silver birch tree rises to a day-lit light-well, natural tree stumps serve as seating in the store, and a huge lightbox displays a typically Swedish woodland scene. This is offset with localised greeting messages and a sunny, positive, vibrant attitude.

The store integrates a number of digital concepts, external screens to the Mall, table top storytelling to the interior and hidden interior projections to enhance the experience and re-inforce the brand’s authentic story and purpose in surprising ways.

Special events and product demos, from crafting to wellbeing and life skills, will be hosted around a large workshop table, encouraging customer participation and discovery in an informal, inclusive setting.

The signature core materials palette of dappled light, natural leather, white herringbone tiling and whitewashed Douglas fir wood offers a neutral backdrop to rich product storytelling and an abundance of product curated on large free-standing tables. Hero displays showcase why the brand loves a particular product, why they made it and how to use it.

To reveal the influences behind each collection, there are mood boards mixing sketches, photos, fabric swatches and text. These mood boards are pinned to large hanging mesh displays, and laid out on marble tabletop slabs that are imbedded with small digital screens, a subtle use of technology to help bring the stories to life. This mix of soft tech with natural materials also comes through the store’s navigational signage – bespoke LED-lit wooden lightboxes.

This is an agile brand space that feels different every time customers visit, with stackable timber merchandising blocks that can be easily reconfigured for flexible display, and a pop-up cart for special activations or launches.

Brand personality shines through in strong statement messages, and Dalziel & Pow worked with Kristina Karlsson’s unique handwriting to develop an expressive typeface to complement the existing font. Social media call-outs to encourage the wider kikki.K community are joined by customer-generated content such as photos from Instagram and Pinterest, showing how customers are using kikki.K products to enhance their everyday lives.

Fulfilling the brand intention of being ‘unique to you, wherever you are’, the concept is designed to be easily adapted with layers of localisation as kikki.K looks set to bring its Swedish style to other cities around the world. Melbourne, Chadstone is be the first of the new concept with London Covent Garden following in November 2015.

The concept epitomizes a new generation of retail, focusing on experience for a new era of customer. A store for our times.