When the globally ubiquitous Beauty & Cosmetics brand was ready for a radical shift in it’s retail experience, they turned to Mapos to lead their retail design department and the global shop execution team. The brand first looked to Mapos to create a brief for this ground-breaking project. Mapos led a corporate-wide interactive “Discovery Day” designed to tease out targeted thought on the brand’s current positioning. The successful day-long exercises resulted in a comprehensive brief to allow the brand to build a complete team and initiate the project.

From there, an immersive design process began, during which Mapos deconstructed the normal silos of thought which had prevented the brand from effectively evolving for decades. The ultimate directive became to express Clinique’s origins: the collaboration of 2 personalities which founded the brand in the 60’s, a glamorous magazine editor and a science-driven dermatologist. It was also important to emphasize their color cosmetics offerings and bring the idea of fun and lifestyle back to the brand.

Mapos developed 3 store variants to be executed in 3 different locations in Hong Kong: Color, a playful and fully saturated direction which celebrated color and content for younger markets, Luxe, a clean and material focused direction balancing content and design for more sophisticated markets, and Clean, a light and simplified approach for global shop rollout. Inspired by the Magazine Editor concept, the design allows visitors of the space to experience and explore content in much the same way one would experience a magazine.

One is first attracted and greeted by the digital door, an interactive touchscreen which acts as a digital magazine, allowing visitors to experience the stories within the store without ever setting foot inside. Next to this is the analogue but highly browsable “Index Table” which features tidbits of their best product-driven stories sprinkled throughout the shop. Throughout the space, Mapos created “inspiration boards” inspired by the types found in editors offices. These boards became the coded communication devices throughout the store, working on a very intimate scale with the product that is in the adjacent fixture.

Above these fixtures Mapos also introduced a large scale metal grid wall which becomes a giant, informal content matrix, one which can be easily changed from season to season. This holds the Clinique inspiration writ large on the walls.Each wall or table color station becomes a place to learn to ‘Get the look,” featured in ipad how-to’s and in the inspiration boards, to share through selfie sticks connected to social media, and to play and have fun with friends. The skin care area takes a more clean, minimalist tone appropriate for medical consultation and the core aesthetic of the Dermatological roots of the brand.

Inspiration for the furniture and pastel tone was taken from the mid-century era from which the brand first sprang. The point of sale, inspired by the clean art supply and magazine archive desk from editors offices, became an opportunity to express the heritage of the brand. A space is made for art work, particularly to show the incredible photography which feature original ground-breaking advertisements by the brand that closely paralleled the evolution of the womens’ liberation movement of the late 60’s.

Design: Mapos