Retail Special | An AV Magazine supplement in association with Midwich

AVMAGAZINE 10 | AV RETAIL SPECIAL | MAY 2018 F enwick is a leading department store with a reputation for distinctiveness. So when it opened a brand new location last year in the recently built Lexicon shopping centre in Bracknell, Berkshire, it wanted to make a big visual impact. The new Fenwick store brings all the kudos of the Fenwick brand to Bracknell, and the company wanted to make sure this store could live up to its premium reputation and provide innovation and high-end interior design to reflect the brands on sale. The interior designers working on the project, HMKM, enlisted the help of interaction design practice Kin to provide the latest AV technology. Kin had previously worked with both HMKM and Fenwick, supporting the retailer with its locations in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, and Colchester, Essex, so the firm was considered ideal to take on this new challenge. The area had recently gone through a full regeneration as part of the Greening of Bracknell project to turn the town into the destination of choice for both residents and visitors. HMKM decided to keep the wider “green” theme of the Lexicon and designed a bespoke hanging trellis which LEDsolution centre stageat Fenwick’sBracknell launch The premiumdepartment store, Fenwick, wanted premiumsignage for its newBracknell store. climbed the three floors of the store, as well as including artificial plants interspersed throughout the structure. Kin was looking for a display screen that could be custom built to fit around the frame to work as an advertising platform for customer videos and content from Fenwick, which included a forest setting to tie the whole theme together. “Fenwick strives to provide the perfect balance between prestige and value, and to push for innovation,” says Kin’s director, Kevin Palmer. “Both the interior design and the AV technology needed to match up to the Fenwick brand, as well as fit in with the renovation of Bracknell. We wanted to make sure that the full solution we provided could bring a smart and up-to-date feel to the store.” LED THE BEST SOLUTION Having previously implemented the Absen N4 BLK 4mm LED screen at other Fenwick stores, HMKM knew that LED would be the best product again thanks to its modular structure which can be scaled to any shape and size. “LED provides a flexible solution that’s the perfect canvas for a bespoke and unique design,” says Palmer. “This really helps bring the whole store together to RETAIL SPECIAL produce stunning image quality and the perfect platform for high end brands to show off their content.” LED is characterised by high brightness levels, even in environments with high ambient light, which Kin considered perfect as the screens were being installed in an atrium in the centre of the store where there is a lot of natural light. Customers would be able to view the displays as they travelled up and down the escalators right in front of the screens, meaning there would be minimal viewing distances. Because of this, Kin recommended the use of a finer pixel pitch. Kin then got in touch with PSCo, the specialist LED distributor and part of the Midwich Group, to look at what products would work best for the application. Kin had worked with PSCo on previous projects and so knew that PSCo had a full portfolio of LED products that could fit the brief. Hugo Fenwick, director of the department store company, and his team were invited into the PSCo Assessment Centre to view the Absen 2mm, 3mm and 4mm LED technologies side by side and to test content. PSCo also set up a bespoke 5.5m x 7m, 3mm pixel pitch screen in its research and In association with Wayfinder and mirror screens by Midwich