CommLink Integration took home the award for best user experience in this year’s Systems Contractor News Install of the Year Awards.
The shopping experience has dramatically shifted from in-person to online over the past decade – which is why it was so important for CommLink to create an immersive audiovisual experience that draws shoppers physically into the store versus shopping online.
Overview of the Concepts Experience
Concepts opened their first doors in 1996, melding the worlds of street, skate, and fashion years before it was commonplace. In the time since, Concepts has combined those authentic roots with their natural ability to convey a narrative and translate their identity through an immersive audiovisual retail experience designed and executed by the crew at CommLink Integration.
The global retailer opened its flagship store in Boston, Massachusetts at 18 Newbury Street, the iconic street in the heart of the city. The 4,700 square feet store introduced immersive products, alongside brand and digital experiences covering three floors in Boston’s Back Bay.
The flagship celebrates Concepts’ Boston roots and community while continuing to redefine the future of style and storytelling through streetwear and luxury.
Designed in partnership with Sid Lee, the multidisciplinary global creative agency, the space is a reimagination of the traditional retail model, taking the form of an art gallery, with the goal to drive social engagement and exploration. Built with materials inspired by nature, the marriage of zinc, concrete, and stone creates a modern yet comfortable environment. The visual experience is built to talk and connect with people, further driving the depth and breadth of brand and product storytelling Concepts is known for. This is what CommLink strived to accomplish when designing the complementary audiovisual experience.
“This is a historic moment for Concepts, especially as we head into our 25th anniversary. This flagship store is more than just a retail space and with Boston being our home, we’re proud to further infuse our DNA into the city,” said Tarek Hassan, founder and CEO of Concepts.
“During this unprecedented time, now more than ever, we are proud to invest in a retail expression that elevates the space and our brand in a bold new way– we’ve always been risk takers and we’ll bet on ourselves every time,” said Hassan. “We are committed to the power of brand expression and dynamic storytelling – nothing beats the in-person shopping experience and this opportunity has allowed us to perfect that, our product offering, and our customer service.”
Connecting three separate floors with a unique expression of the brand, is a main staircase inspired by the Greek term ‘theatron,’ “a place of gathering for spectators.” The layout was designed to give users a complete journey experience – a path through the different environments, presenting different collections, all focused through the sense of discovery that an art gallery would elicit.
Taking the role of center stage, the stairs welcome the community into the world of Concepts. In the heart of the store is a striking zinc cube, designed to cast light at different angles, creating an individualized sensory experience for each guest.
The ground floor and main entry space houses Concepts private label apparel and accessories, multi-brand footwear and apparel, and a headwear customization space. In the mezzanine space, consumers will find Concepts’ “Constant Change,” a dedicated area for rotating special projects and collaborations, as well as a DJ booth.
The top floor unveiled the launch of VRSNL, a new women’s-focused luxury boutique from Concepts through the lens of streetwear. This is the first and only brick and mortar expression of the VRSNL brand, which soft-launched its e-commerce and social media presence in September 2020. Designed to inspire and meet the needs of its growing community, VRSNL included a curated offering of Concepts private label, and streetwear and sportswear brands.
In addition, the upper level of the storehouses the Concepts Cafe, a space that houses made-to-order food and beverage offerings for consumers as they experience the store.
CommLink Approach
We needed to design a system that gave the illusion of permanence while providing the flexibility needed to host a rotating door of brand experiences. The audio system needed to be completely transparent during normal business hours, without having large obtrusive industrial speakers, while also being able to support live DJ events. While the system does this without any issue, there were an additional 12 extra speaker outputs hidden in the space for potential expansion of future events.
The audio itself needed to be easy to control and modular to allow for different clothing brand areas to broadcast their own vibe. The system had to simultaneously play nine audio sources in any configuration of the ten zones using CommLink’s custom control software. In addition, the DJ Booth had to be completely plug-and-play – allowing for DJs to come in with a laptop, hook up the turntables, and immediately start playing in the space with just one tap from our custom control interface.
Four screens comprise the visual piece of the project – an 86-inch display in the café area, an 86-inch and 55-inch in the skateboard room, and a 6-foot x 6-foot video wall in the mezzanine welcoming guests to the second floor. Each screen has a dedicated BrightSign player, while all video is run through a 16 x 16 AV Pro Edge Matrix. This allows for easy transitions when new brands are featured, and combined with three cable inputs, allows for major live events to be sent anywhere in the store.
It’s important to note that all these great features aren’t worth a lot if they’re too complicated. In many retail environments, you see complete AV systems with in-ceiling speakers distributed without, yet they are using one Bluetooth speaker in the corner. This is why we configured our own customizable server and customer control interface (Latitude) to create a personalized UI experience specifically for Concepts. This allowed us to offer easy access to playlist selection, audio/video routing, and quick ongoing customization without cumbersome programming that similar control programs require. Ongoing content updates are directly handled by the Concepts team; however, all services can be controlled remotely for additional needed support.
Whether it was for Concepts, or Commlink, the goal of the space was to create something that hasn’t been done before in a retail space but also is never complete. The space is going to continue to grow and evolve with the brand and the AV will remain an important tool in expressing that. We love the partnership with the Concepts team, and I think, together, we achieved just that. We recently completed their fifth retail location located at 99 University Place in New York, NY.
To watch a video testimonial, please click here.