Ales Kernjak Head of Global Store Concept Puma

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Interview with Ales Kernjak
Head of Global Store Concept
Puma SE
Ales joined PUMA in 2010 as Head of Global Store Concept. In this
role, he developed and launched the new PUMA Retail 2.0 concept,
which focuses to elevate the sportlifestyle brand into a unique, joyful,
and sustainable retail shopping experience for consumers in retail and
wholesale environments.
His profession in the fashion industry has spanned more than 18 years,
including a prominent position at Timberland, running the Global Visual
Communications Department. His passion for retail lays in Store
Design and In-store communication, in particular story-telling and
consumer engagement principles. During his tenure at Timberland he
received many worldwide recognitions and awards for Store design, Instore
Marketing, and Sustainability activities.
Interview conducted by Doug Berger, managing director, INNOVATE doug@innovate1st.com
Doug: Ales, one of your aims for the redesigned store concept was to deliver a strong
emotional message and experience. What you were looking to accomplish?
Ales: We looked at what we want to convey to the consumer in terms of a particular
shopping experience and 360 0 environment. From a retail point of view, we aimed
for a clear positioning of how PUMA presents sports and lifestyle. We are aiming to
“bring more joy into sports” compared to our competitors that are high performance
driven. Our message is delivered through real people and their sportlifestyle rather
than icons. We are telling one story and delivering one consistent message.
For me it is all about the emotion. Maya Angelou, the novelist says, “Emotion is the
key, because people will forget what you say. People will forget what you did, but
people will never forget how we made them feel.” In today’s retail world, the
consumer has overwhelming buying opportunities, multiplied in the online world.
So this emotional experience from the retail store is most important. Under the
umbrella of joy we developed a couple of emotional points, like celebration. We
celebrate in our products; we celebrate in our marketing campaigns. We talk about
passion, because passion is one of the values that everyone possesses for the
sportlifestyle he or she loves.
Conversations
On the Cutting Edge
Social is a point around joy. For PUMA, retail means a social environment, a place
to relax and explore. We have introduced our ‘Dylans’ which are iconic pumas in
the store. People are taking photos next to the Dylans and sharing them on their
social network. Another point is desirability. A retail environment can create
desirability to come back and discover the store a next time. The store can create
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June 2012

the environment to showcase the hotness of products and the desirability of the
brand.
Doug: Looking at pictures of your new retail environment, I can see that you set out to
create a varied visual experience.
Ales: You need to be different, which sometimes involves taking risks. In particular, you
have to be unexpected. We included different surfaces, features and spaces within
the store. We split the store
into several focus areas. We
have a clear navigation of what
we are offering the consumer in
which area of the store. The
most important thing we have
done is taken the footwear and
brought it from the walls into
the middle of the store.
Footwear is the heritage of the
PUMA brand, which means it
belongs in the core of the store. We call it, ‘the CAT walk’ like the cat in our logo.
You enter the store and you get engaged right from the entrance with the footwear
running down the middle of the store. This drives you backwards into the
sportlifestyle area of the store. We created a clear sports area in the back of the
store, which we hadn’t done before and we can see the uplift of sales into each of
these individual areas.
Doug: You are also using bright colors as a consumer trigger for the emotion of joy. What
else went into the design principles of the store, through which you were looking to
connect the consumer with the emotion of joy?
Ales: The second thing about the store format is our emphasis
on the color red to convey the sense of joy. We have
introduced the PUMA Un-Smart phone. They are red and
very old style, and when you pick one up you get fun
messages. Some of the messages are PUMA facts, and
some of the messages have nothing to do with the brand.
They are just fun messages out of nowhere.
We created an interactive space on the walls …. a red box with a door. When you
open the door you have different visual sequences. For
example, you open the door and you see a hamster in a
hamster wheel. You close the door, open the door again and
you see another sequence, like a guy or a girl in the fitting
room. It is not brand-related; it is just a fun thing, which is
unexpected from a retailer. We call them the PUMA
Peepshow. Each time you open the door you get an
unexpected image or animation. We have red iPads with videos highlighting the joy
in sports. The result is a clever, fun, and engaging shopping environment.
The third element is the way that we introduce local influence, such as the iconic
red telephone booth in London. Typical for Amsterdam Old Town are houses with a
mirror on their windows so that you can look out and see down the street or see
your door. Moving from one house to another is so different in Amsterdam than
anywhere else in the world because buildings are so narrow and staircases so steep,
you have to move furniture out of windows using winches. We incorporated these
elements into the store.
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Local Influence: London Amsterdam
We want the consumer to be connected. “That’s the London PUMA store. It
belongs to this city and it can’t be placed into another city.” That is why we are
cooperating with local artists for developing more and more creative pieces.
We have done about 25 pilot stores all over the world. We have taken learnings,
landed something that works for the regions, and are now rolling it out on a global
basis. In retail store design you get immediate response on how it works from the
consumer and from staff. We had 360 0 feedback of this concept in a very short
time period.
Doug: I want to highlight the notion of designing the store so that the consumer wants to
explore the store and the brand. The store becomes a destination. In the United
States, Apple is one of the few retail stores seen as a destination.
Ales: Regarding PUMA, we are talking about elevating some stores to premium locations
on the street. We have a fantastic project right now in Osaka, Japan, where we
have the rooftop completely open and where we can play football, mini-golf, or
other kinds of activities.
Doug: You are also incorporating sustainability into the retail store design.
Ales: We already talk a lot about sustainability within the industry. We wanted to get into
how we elevate our sustainability down into a retail environment. We got involved
in the LEAD certification process. This is focused mainly on buildings and is not
specific for retail environments. We set out to be better. We then started working
together with the Fraunhofer Institute for Building Physics, a well-known
independent organization to develop a distinctive Puma system. This means that
we needed to start building tools to support a strategy. We started working on a
different set of environmental indicators, not just carbon footprint. We have
environmental indicators like the LCA (large circle assessment) of the materials
used. We have social indicators on level of comfort or accessibility. Our target is
25 percent reduction of the environmental footprint by 2015.
Doug: How do you see technology evolving the in-store consumer experience?
Ales: My future point of view is that multi-sensorial enhancement will be implemented in
store environments, but in selective ways that are valuable for the consumer and
the brand. If we talk about digital, augmented reality it is really a question of how
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we begin to implement. Where is the value and how can we implement this in a
way that it is related to the brand and the brand message?
The store isn’t just a destination for buying what you had in mind. We are aiming
to place the consumer is in a very different mentality. We need to sell. We need to
make money. It is just a question of how you create the environment to display the
product and engage the consumer. We are seeing increases in store traffic, time
spent in store, and uplift of sales.
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