On 8 November in Tottenham Court Road, the London street “renowned for the choice of consumer electronics products, but not for the quality of shopping experience”, Samsung UK and an electrical independent, John Shah of Shasonic Group, made history unveiling their joint retail venture.
The Samsung’s first own brand store, in which consumers will be able to lay their hands on an almost entire range of Samsung CE products, will capitalise on the sales expertise of John Shah’s staff. John opened his first shop in Tottenham Court Road 25 years ago.
Anthony Marsella, Samsung chief marketing officer, commented to IER:
“This is a global first for us. Samsung has never done this before. We have a ‘brand experience’ centre in New York. We’ve run small Samsung’s Shop-in-Shop partnerships with retailers, but in terms of a consistent brand implementation which delivers the brand and the sales message together this is our first venture. My intention is to work in the future with retailers, such as John Shah, who are visionary and experienced with the brand, to implement this concept.”
Samsung employed the US-based Lippincott group to design the 350m2 retail space, which uses modern retail concepts to provide customers with the highest quality shopping experience. For example the store contains an ‘imagine bar’ – a centrally located table where customers can examine and test the products on display.
The look and the feel of the ‘concept’ store will be translated into other Samsung store implementations throughout the world.
