Holland & Barrett, the UK’s leading health and wellness retailer, opened the doors to it’s first H&B Experience Store on Thursday 20th March on Cardiff’s Queens Street, voted the UK’s best high street. The 3710sq ft store, making it H&B’s largest store to date, comes complete with a fresh look and feel, boasting even more of Holland & Barrett’s latest range of health and wellness solutions and brand-first immersive experiences.
Following customer insights pointing to demand for immersive experiences, Cardiff will host H&B’s first wellbeing studio to offer customers a holistic experience, including yoga and pilates. The Experience Store will also offer health checks and blood testing and an in-store H&B&Me pod to help customers to learn their biological age and discover healthy habits to support their long-term health and wellbeing.
The health and wellness giant partnered with ideas-fuelled creative agency, Syn, to reimagine Cardiff’s in-store experience. In-store customers will experience a sense of community, in which to prioritise their health with personalised support, within a haven of calm and comfort on the high street.
H&B has undergone a period of significant growth, the Cardiff store forms part of a £70 million investment into transforming stores and serves as step towards a blueprint for the brand’s future retail strategy. The store has been designed in a way to guide and encourage customers to seek advice, whilst offering clear and concise instore communication for those who wish to explore independently.
Syn formed a collaborative relationship with H&B, developing the full brand experience at retail. The partnership included brand and creative strategy, customer insights and journey planning, creative direction and design, store design and build, artwork, production and project management.
Richard Fisher, store design manager at Holland & Barrett, said: “We’ve partnered with Syn to embrace a fresh creative vision which has played out in Cardiff’s pioneering Experience Store design. At H&B we are committed to redefining the wellness shopping experience, fostering a sense of community and customer connection.
“The Cardiff team of expert colleagues are all qualified to advise customers.They can successfully cut through the noise of health fads and trends we’re all bombarded with on social media – offering bespoke, expert advice. And it’s this human-centric vision that has been woven throughout the redesign, allowing accessibility, personalisation and engagement at every touch point.”
Syn created multiple store touch points while amplifying a more emotive use of language – from campaign windows and ‘Wow Wall’ to customer journey and shopper experience. They developed brand retail comms throughout the store such as wayfinding, permanent fixtures, store navigation and shopper journey segmentation to help customers self-shop and discover expert wellness hints, tips and products for themselves. H&B are keen to attract new audiences, Syn’s approach was to change existing brand perceptions by elevating key selling points.
Stand-out features include the impactful ‘Wow Wall’, ‘Be strong for life’ window campaign and new storefront design to welcome shoppers. Syn designed the wooden, architectural fixture used at the brand statement entrance which then leads into the store, toward the mission island. The ‘Mission Island’ is a dedicated discovery space for customers to explore personalised wellness solutions – from gut health to sleep support. Cardiff’s store also houses a wellness studio – a multifunctional, community hub for wellbeing classes and activations.
Chris Newell, co-founder and creative partner at Syn, explains: “We developed a ‘feeling first’ concept territory. From touch and tactility through to emotive expressions of messaging. The whole creative approach was about evoking a feeling of calm, comfort and welcomeness. Triggering the visual sense at first, into the tangible softness of materiality and the addition of an emotive script typeface at key signage touchpoints. Finally, we employed a more human tone of brand voice as the connective thread that openly invites engagement into store and with the qualified team of experts for those customers who are looking for advice and help.”
The impact of the Cardiff Experience Store will be measured in the coming months, but it is hoped it will shift consumer perception, whilst fuelling brand engagement with a new wave of customers, signalling the start of a whole new era.
